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Using an Existing Field in Movable Type for the Flash Photoblog World Map

February 21, 2005 – 4:40 pm

Last month, I added Mark Zeman’s Flash Photoblog World Map to my Photos section. When I originally put the map up, I used the admin tool which came with the map to add the map locations to a separate database. This required using two separate interfaces for each posting — not an ideal solution. So since then, I’ve been looking for a way to integrate the map with Movable Type.

One of the initial options I considered was to use an existing field for the extra information required by the map. This was the easiest option available. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really an option for me, since I was already using all of the fields for my posts. However, I’ve decided to explain how to do it, since it isn’t all that difficult. You can read the details about the more complex option I decided to use, but if the idea of adding columns to your database, or rummaging around in Perl code doesn’t appeal to you, then using an existing field is probably the solution for you.

The object of this post will be to help you implement this solution (using an existing field) for integrating the Flash Photoblog World Map into your MT installation. The main advantage to this approach, besides its simplicity, is that it requires no modification of your MT files or database. All that’s (possibly) required is an extra PHP file in the directory with your Flash Map and creating two templates. You’ll be using the PHP based version of the Flash Map, so you’ll need to have PHP on your server. If you don’t have PHP on your server you could try using Brad Choate’s Key Values plugin, which will let you store the data in one of your fields as key/value pairs and then extract that data into a MT template tag suitable for use in your MT templates.

By Robby | Also posted in Blogs, Photos, Technology, Web Design | Comments Off

Integrating the Flash Photoblog World Map with Movable Type

February 21, 2005 – 4:28 pm

I initially considered two options:

Using an existing field for the extra information required by the map. This was the easiest option available. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really an option for me, since I was already using all of the fields for my posts. Details on this method are available.
Or, I could add the necessary data to the EXIF data of the image. But this was hardly ideal either. I would need to use another program to add the data to the EXIF fields, not much different from using the admin tool to add the data to a database — my original problem.

So, I went looking for another option. In the end, I decided to add some custom fields to the Movable Type entry interface. In the rest of this post, I will detail what modifications I made to my Movable Type installation. But first, most of the credit for this goes to Deane at Gadgetopia for the instructions on adding custom fields to the Movable Type entry interface and Mean Dean at Heal Your Church Web Site for the instructions on using the custom preferences of the entry form to show or hide the new fields.

One last thing before I get started. A warning: this not a simple hack — use it at your own risk. I am not responsible if you attempt to implement this and something goes wrong. I agree with both Deane and Mean Dean, this is not for the faint of heart. If the idea of adding columns to your database, or rummaging around in Perl code doesn’t appeal to you, you are probably better off if you don’t use this method. You might consider the simpler option of using an existing field.

So far these modifications have worked for me using version 3.15 of Movable Type and MySQL. Also, it goes without saying that doing this will probably create problems when performing any future upgrades to your Movable Type installation.

So with all that said, if you are still interested keep reading for all the gory details.

By Robby | Also posted in Blogs, Photos, Technology, Web Design | Comments (1)

More Firefox Hoopla

December 23, 2004 – 8:30 pm

Uh-oh! Looks like there’s more hype about Firefox. The New York Times has an article with a very favorable assessment of Firefox’s chances to re-ignite the “browser wars.”

Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account “all the factors that led them to choose I.E. in the first place.” Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn’t I.E. come bundled with Windows?

Mr. Schare has said that Mozilla’s Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed “a bit of a free ride.” If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company’s browser free on every Windows PC, I’d be more careful about using the phrase “free ride.”

eWeek.com also has an article encouraging Windows users to switch to Firefox for security reasons.

People who don’t get security often say that if Firefox or any other open-source software were only as popular as IE, their security would be just as bad. Nope. Wrong.

First, open-source software is constantly being looked at by numerous developers. When problems are found, and they are all the time, they’re quickly fixed. With Microsoft code, you have to trust that its programmers are on the ball and that they’ll fix problems quickly. You look at their track record and you decide if that’s true. I know what I think.

Second, on Windows, open-source applications are just that: applications. Microsoft programs, by their very nature, are tied directly into the operating system kernel. This means, IE—and other Microsoft Windows applications such as Outlook—enables any security hole to potentially rip open the entire operating system.

Earlier, I linked to an interview with Mr. Schare where he named backwards compatibility as a major reason that Microsoft is not offering updates to Internet Explorer.

We could change the CSS support and many other standards elements within the browser rendering platform. But in doing so, we would also potentially break a lot of things. We have to strike the balance of what’s okay to break and what shouldn’t we break, and how do we roll this out in a way that does a clean break, if you will.

However, some people think Internet Explorer has already broken the web. And I think there is a lot, a whole lot, of merit in these arguments.

Now, Scott Ott has the full details on Microsoft’s latest plans to update IE.

UPDATE: Here’s a contrasting opinion.

By Robby | Comments Off

Recognizing the Small Bloggers

December 22, 2004 – 4:45 pm

La Shawn Barber provides some background on the smaller blogs which helped to break and spread the Ra^thergate story.

La Shawn on her blog also shares her motivation for writing the story.

These are the kinds of contributions I had in mind when I wrote the other day that “Bloggers” might have been a better choice for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. (Not that the President isn’t a darn good one.)

By Robby | Also posted in Blogs | Comments Off

President Bush Named Person of the Year

December 19, 2004 – 8:40 pm

President George Bush has been selected by Time Magazine as its 2004 Person of the Year.

President Bush’s bold, uncompromising leadership and his clear-cut election victory made him Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2004, its managing editor said on Sunday.

Time chose Bush “for sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters this time around that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years,” Jim Kelly wrote in the magazine.

Congratulations also to Power Line, which was chosen as the first ever Blog of the Year.

Power Line is certainly an excellent choice, although both LGF and INDC Journal played significant roles in the breaking of Ra^thergate. Also, blogs were instrumental to getting the story of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth coverage from the MSM and keeping the MSM honest in its reporting of that story and many others. Perhaps, a better choice for Person of the Year would have been “Bloggers”. An strong argument can be made that a great deal of credit for the success of President Bush and the Republican party in this year’s election was due to the right half of the blogosphere.

By Robby | Also posted in General, Media, Politics | Comments Off

Firefox and the Blogosphere

December 16, 2004 – 10:58 am

From Instapundit, I came across a post by Colby Cosh about Firefox, the recently released browser from the Mozilla Organization and its representation among the readers of the blogosphere.

The latest public independent data show Firefox’s share of the browser market growing fast–from 3% to 4% between November and December. (Ãž: Taylor.) Is this surprising news? It is to this Firefox convert, not because 4% seems like a lot, but because my own browser-share figures have had Firefox running in double digits for some months now. Check out the browser-share numbers at Instapundit, which should be similar (they vary from hour to hour). It seems like Firefox users are overrepresented amongst people who read weblogs, who may be relatively savvy and Internet-immersed. Internet Explorer, of course, can last a long time as the Browser for People Who Don’t Know Any Better. (AOL, which occupies a similar position amongst ISPs, is still chugging along.) But Microsoft must at least be a little bit unnerved about all this.

Judging by this story, at least publicly, Microsoft seems to consider Firefox a nuisance more than a threat.

His post then prompted a response from a web developer, who’s over the hype surrounding Firefox.

I think I’ve brought this up before, but there’s nothing “light years ahead” about Firefox. It’s just Mozilla with a precious logo and some browbeating marketing behind it. It’s perfectly fine for standard web browsing, but what isn’t these days? The browser reached functional maturity years ago and all that has been done since then is feature twiddling and graphical polish. I find Firefox easy to develop for, but serious stuff — anything really complicated — is still easier in IE.

Oh, and here’s the serious footwork Microsoft would have to do to “catch up”:

Put the Explorer control in a tabbed shell

The end. Well by god I don’t know if the boys in Redmond are capable.

Apparently, it’s not that easy:

For architectural reasons, it turns out you can’t just add tabs via an add-on into the IE app itself. You can get tabs by running a different app like those other browsers that build on the IE platform, so it’s a nice option for people.

We’ve looked at whether you can add tabs through a browser helper object or some other way of extending IE, and it turns out you can’t. Then of course the Web developer stuff is also that core platform
changes and wouldn’t be deemed an add-on. The challenge there, as we have been kind of public on our blogs when discussing with Web developers, is backward compatibility.

Now, I would agree that some of the hype for Firefox is overblown, but I really do think that it is a better browser for me for a number
of reasons:

Tabbed Browsing: I love this feature, and I find that when I am forced to use a browser that doesn’t have it (Internet Explorer) that I miss it and quickly become frustrated by not having it, but if, like the developer I quoted above, you don’t like it then fine. There are other reasons for me that make Firefox superior to IE.
Security: Just removing ActiveX makes Firefox more secure. Does it lose some functionality? Sure, but nothing that I have not been able to live without, and if I really want to see some ActiveX widget, then I can always use IE to view it. And I am not really crazy about a browser component having system level access to my operating system, anyway. One point in Microsoft’s favor on this issue is the inclusion of an ActiveX blocker in the latest enhancements to IE included with Windows XP Service Pack 2. But to get those security enhancements, if you aren’t using Windows XP, it’s going to cost you.
Live Bookmarks: This useful innovation has changed the way I read blogs. Basically, a live bookmark is a bookmark (in IE, that is a favorite) which contains the current headlines from a weblog’s RSS or Atom feeds. I find this to be a handy way for me to quickly scan the headlines on many weblogs. I really hadn’t found an RSS reader which I liked, but when this was introduced, once I started to use it, I found it positively changed the way I read blogs. Suddenly, syndication feeds were much more useful to me.
Web Standards: I admit that this is an esoteric reason for most of the general public, but to web developers it is a big deal. When Internet Explorer 4 came out, I switched from Netscape 4 because developing for IE was easier and it supported more of the standards that had been established at the time for web development. But Microsoft has not kept pace with the industry in this regard, so when the original Mozilla browser was released, I switched and I started using Firefox when version 0.2 was released. I haven’t looked back. Unfortunately, IE is the market leader and so I have to conform my work to it and all of its quirks, just as I had to conform my work to Netscape Navigator’s quirks when it was heavily used on campus.

Not to be too hard on Microsoft, I do believe that the programmers who develop IE want to make it more secure and improve its standards support, but are hamstrung to a certain degree by keeping updates to the browser backwards-compatible. And they are looking for feedback about IE, and if you truly do like IE then by all means use it. But don’t try to sell me on the line that it is as good as other browsers because for me the evidence points elsewhere.

UPDATE: Uh-oh! More hype for Firefox now that the New York Times has run an ad for Firefox. I have posted before on the Firefox ad campaign.

By Robby | Comments Off

The Sides of the Blogosphere

December 8, 2004 – 8:57 pm

Arthur Chrenkoff links to a post on Iraq the Model, where Omar explains how he became acquainted with the sides of the blogosphere. Chrenkoff then goes on to explain his own introduction to the West.

Living for the first fifteen years of my life behind the Iron Curtain, I - and many others, even those older and wiser - had a somewhat skewed view of the world. For us, the world was divided into the communist part and the capitalist part, the East and the West. The communist world was dreadful, and 90 per cent of us imprisoned inside desired nothing more than to see the Evil Empire crumble and fall. Then there was the legendary West, the world of democracy, freedom and capitalism, inhabited by happy people who enjoyed their liberty and prosperity and were as hostile to communism as indeed we were. The Party told us the West was the Enemy. But we knew that was not the case; since we wanted to be like the West, The West couldn’t be our enemy, it was only the enemy of our communist overlords, and therefore our friend. The world seemed so simple then.

I was sixteen and a half years old when I arrived in Australia in November 1988. I had so many other things to do with my time (like learn the language, for starters) that the political reality did not hit me straight away. It dawned on me slowly over time: my old Polish world-view was a sham. Or at least half of it was. The part about the overwhelming majority of my fellow residents of the Evil Empire wanting freedom and democracy was still right. The part about the West being full of… well, Westerners, wasn’t.

You can imagine my shock and disappointment upon discovering that only a minority of the inhabitants of the Free World were truly committed to the ideas of liberal democracy, capitalism and anti-communism. Another minority was in various shades and degrees opposed to, or critical of, one or more of these concepts, and the group in the middle was largely indifferent and disinterested - not quite alienated from their own society, but too busy or too bored to fight against its enemies.

It is truly sad that some people can’t lay aside politics long enough to see that building democracy and bringing freedom to Iraq is a good thing. If it happens to make this country safer or put a brutal dictator out of power, then so much the better. And even if it doesn’t achieve these goals, it was still the right thing to do.

Dean Esmay has some thoughts of his own about this, too.

By Robby | Also posted in Politics | Comments Off

Stuffing the Ballot Box–Whatever the Means

December 5, 2004 – 9:22 pm

The blogosphere is in an uproar over a ballot stuffing scandal. A commenter on Daily Kos posted and ran some code for automagically inflating Kos’ vote total for Best Overall Blog in the 2004 Weblog Awards.

I haven’t mentioned the awards since I am not nominated in any of the categories, but still, how pathetic do you have to be to stuff an online poll in what is basically a vanity contest?

More thoughts on this from Power Line and The Shape of Days.

UPDATE: Jay Tea shares his thoughts on the matter.

UPDATE II: Hugh Hewitt comments on the implications of this scandal for the real world.

By Robby | Comments Off