Some site design tweaking underway. I'm developing more knowledge of CSS the more I use it, and there are now a few things about the site that annoy me. I want to eliminate comment popups, prevent Netscape 4 from even seeing the CSS, and fix up some other template nastiness, but expect only superficial visual changes.
Perhaps you've noticed that the sidebar's recently grown a new icon, one that looks a lot like this:
That's because this site now has its own RSS 1.0 feed (click on the icon), which contains this site's content wrapped up in an XML format for easy syndication.
I was only peripherally aware of RSS until I found myself having to write about it in the RDF section of my dissertation. After checking it out, I was an instant convert, and wish I'd discovered it years ago.
If you don't know or couldn't care less about the multitude of acronyms in the previous paragraphs (you're not missing much), here's the practical upshot. There's a huge selection of RSS software for all platforms, software that monitors your favourite sites and shows you new stories as they update. Now I have a piece of software on my desktop that will show me the new and updated stories on slashdot.org, news.bbc.co.uk, wilwheaton.net and about 30 other sites I read, all at the click of a button. Even aside from all the other benefits, what a time-saving device this is!
Anyway, after discovering that RSS was really something quite cool, I got on the case and gave this site a feed too. I chose RSS1.0 because it seems to best embrace XML's extensibility; furthermore, it went through a proper standards process. I hope anyone who uses the feed finds it useful; I made sure it contains the full text of each article, rather than only the excerpts that some RSS feeds provide, so it ought to be possible to read my weblog using just the RSS, without opening any hyperlinks. If there are any problems or issues with it (quite probable), leave a comment in this entry and I'll see what I can do.
In a forthcoming entry, I'll talk about the Windows RSS aggregators that I tested, my opinions of each, and tell you which one I chose to use... maybe for once I'll actually write something that'll be useful to others.
Nah.
Getting rid of comment popups is a sinch - just remove the silly javascript from the template - I did that a while back and like it.
Also, I do have an RSS feed from my site, just no link to it - it's http://www.x3ja.co.uk/index.rdf predictably.
It's all underway... testing comments.
I prefered the pop-up comments but maybe I'm just insane.
You don't lose your place on the main thread then.
Just my 2p.
Two words for you.
Tabbed Browsing.
Oh, and x3ja... added your feed to my list.
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The new Zune browser is surprisingly good, but not as good as the iPod's. It works well, but isn't as fast as Safari, and has a clunkier interface. If you occasionally plan on using the web browser that's not an issue, but if you're planning to browse the web alot from your PMP then the iPod's larger screen and better browser may be important.