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I am jumping the gun here, but today is my deadline, so I'm just going to do it. I've "launched" a new site: genevawebsites.com.

This is the culmination of many years work. There is still a lot more to do, but at a very basic level it is functional and so I want to start getting feedback as soon as possible.

I have a blog on the new site where I will post about the site as it matures: genevawebsites.com/blog/

And you can use it to build a website of your own by going to: genevawebsites.com/createsite/

There probably isn't enough documentation yet for you to get very far, but you never know. New sites created will initially exist at something.genevawebsites.com where "something" is a name you supply on the /checkitout/ page. You build your site at that URI, and then if someone decides to stick with it they can supply a "real" URI ("whateveryouwant.com") which I can map to your something.genevawebsites.com subdomain.

I'll have a lot more to say in the coming days, but I wanted to give myself a little birthday present by launching at least something today. Have fun.


- jim 5-03-2013 6:57 pm [link] [7 comments]

The image upload function (only from the new [post] page, not from [image upload] which is deprecated) now tries to deal with image orientation. As far as I know this is only an issue with the iPhone (and I think maybe only with older iPhones.) The problem is that when you take a portrait style (as opposed to landscape style) image the iPhone adds some exif data to the image file noting that it is rotated, but it doesn't actually rotate the image. When viewing the image some display programs know to look for the orientation data and rotate the image, but most do not (like, for instance, Apple's own Safari browser - wtf Apple?) So when you upload an image like this it will display as landscape even though it should be rotated 90 degrees. The upload script here now looks for the exif orientation data, and if present it actually rotates the image for you.

I'm only mentioning this so that people will speak up if this screws up and rotates an image that should not be rotated. Thanks.


- jim 4-24-2013 3:43 pm [link] [add a comment]

Fargo is a new browser based outliner that syncs with dropbox. Created by Dave Winer. Looks pretty cool. Very simple but I can see the power. 

Introduction on Dave Winer's blog.


- jim 4-17-2013 9:09 pm [link] [add a comment]

I tweaked the post/edit editor so that it preserves line breaks in the source code. Still not perfect, but better. The "feature" where it strips out lots of code you might enter by hand in Source view (classes, inline styles, etc...) still needs some work. I just have to decide how to handle things.

Also, since it's not necessarily clear, the enter key makes a new paragraph, wrapping the content in <p></p> tags and thus creating a double line break (although the size of this break can ultimately be determined through CSS on a page by page basis.) To get a regular single line break ( <br> ) you can use shift + enter.


- jim 4-16-2013 2:12 pm [link] [2 comments]

Bluepen visual CSS editor looks interesting.


- jim 4-12-2013 1:47 pm [link] [add a comment]

Finally made some progress integrating the Ace editor into my software. Unlike the new WYSIWYG editor on [post] and [edit] pages (based on CKEditor), Ace is for editing HTML (and CSS and Javascript.) So this will only be for end users who want to get their hands a little dirty. But my target market will hopefully include a lot of these sorts of people. For others it will be possible to just select templates and never have to edit HTML directly.


- jim 3-13-2013 11:23 pm [link] [add a comment]

This document defines a new request Client Hint header field, "CH", that allows the client to make available hints, both static and dynamic, to origin and intermediate servers about its preference and capabilities. "CH" allows server-side content adaption without imposing additional latency on the client, requiring the use of additional device databases, while allowing cache-friendly deployments.

This is such an obvious thing to do I've always wondered why it wasn't already implemented. At least it's being worked on. The idea here, if you can believe it, is when a URI is requested from a server, the server has very little information about the requesting client, and the information it does get (mainly, the "User-Agent" string), is difficult to convert into anything reliable or helpful. As URIs have transitioned away from being static documents towards more dynamic applications, our client browsers have multiplied along with device screen sizes and screen pixel densities. To serve an acceptable experience to the myriad of device types, we need to know more about the device which initiated the request. This is exactly what Client Hints hopes to accomplish. Good luck!


- jim 3-08-2013 5:12 pm [link] [add a comment]

Image uploads from post and edit pages are now a little more robust and can handle filenames with potentially illegal characters in them.


- jim 3-07-2013 4:25 pm [link] [add a comment]

Hook.js is a javascript library for mobile browser style "pull to refresh" on the desktop.


- jim 3-07-2013 1:47 pm [link] [add a comment]

Noticed this font, Lato, and want to remember to use it for something.


- jim 3-05-2013 1:17 pm [link] [5 comments]

older posts...