July 2007 Archives

I'm upgrading this blog software to Movable Type 4, probably breaking a few things around :p. A few thoughts while I'm working on it (this post will evolve as I dig in)...

N.B. I'm working behind the scenes first. And this is still a beta version (4.0-rc1), but my little finger tells me that those who are waiting for the production version won't have to wait too long now ;-).

Things I'm really happy with...

• The installation assistant is a breeze (with one quirk, see below)
• Pages, using the blog templates, yeah!
• Better file manager
• Much better user management (better granularity at rights, but more importantly one can really build a multi-blogs multi-authors farm with this)
• Better templates management, code, engine (gotta love MT tags!)
  
• Much better default templates, and choice of designs and layouts out of the box
• Long rebuilds seem broken down into several short perl processes, so they don't time out on hosts that impose CPU time limits on process execution (like TxD) [strike that, my first big rebuild got killed in the middle of rebuilding Category Monthly archives (what's that???) but I was able to resume by reloading the progress pop-up], they also display a nice progress bar
  

Things that show it's still a beta...

• The drop-down menus have an annoying habit of not disappearing automatically after they lose focus
• Some template tag mysteries in the header of the Main Index
  
• I get a server error 500 when trying to display the System Information
• Sometimes an unhelpful error message pops up, saying: "an error occurred"

Things I'm really unhappy with...

• The Rich Text editor is crap errr, weird... (see below)

I wonder why...

• The Learn more about installing Perl modules link is not shown on the first screen of the Requirements Check of the installation assistant. Currently it appears only after you have successfully passed the check for required modules, which means you won't get a chance to see it if you're missing a module, since it's not even listed on the error screen (too bad!) -- Remember: $ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install <module>' is your friend!
  
• There is a <$MTEntryTrackbackData$> tag on the default Main Index template for each entry. Apart from doubling the weight of the home page with useless junk and making spammers life easier in collecting TB links to hammer, why on earth do we need Trackback data in there? I recommend removing that tag from this template.
  
• Some functions of the Rich Text Editor do not work in Safari (like lists, link, quote). It appears to be working better in Firefox, although...
  
• The Rich Text Editor produces tons of ugly fucking code behind the screen, especially when using Safari. So it's an old-school editor such Midas, only a slight improvement over WYSIFUC in the sense that it hides it from you (unless you select "none" in the Format menu or "HTML Mode" and scream in horror at the FUC it generates, like <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">...</span> instead of <em>...</em>!). For example, on Safari it generates a DIV per paragraph, while on Firefox it just spits out <br> tags or cosmetic <i> or <b> tags (not even <br />, or <strong> or <em> tags, mind you). So, three years after my FUC rant, authoring pain has just cosmetically improved but at what cost (producing tons of cosmetic-ridden tag soup like it's 98 again)? Those who have carefully designed their blog to valid XHTML/CSS web standards will see it become invalid the second they use the Rich Text editor in MT 4, you've been warned! I'm losing hope to ever see a decent open source WYSIWYG editor for authoring web content that follows modern web standards (yes, I know that HTML4 is a standard, that's not the point at all)... Sigh! [Hold on, Laurent tells me that this behavior was present in earlier betas but he doesn't see it in 4.0-rc1, I guess I need further testing]
  

I wonder how...

• To remove or edit a link in the Rich Text editor? Looks like you have to delete the whole text with link and do it again, very annoying.
• To migrate the database from MySQL to PostgreSQL? I tried what looks the simplest path (export/import) but the MT text backup doesn't transport tags!
• To disable / prevent build of unnecessary category archives? It looks like the default install builds everything that's listed on the "First Widget Manager", including very time-consuming stuff like Date-based Category archives or Date-based Author archives (quite useless on a single-author blog like mine), although none of those are listed anywhere on the live blog and that widget is not active. In other words, where are the Archive Mapping preferences that allowed to define what archives get built in MT 3.x?
• To distinguish photos within images? In the default templates, MT4 displays as "Photos" any image file you upload, but you might upload images to illustrate posts that you don't want mixed and displayed along with other photos.
  

Thanks to Skype, now I know why each time I type my name (François) correctly at the end of an SMS, its length limit suddenly drops by 91 chars: because certain chars (like ç or €) cause the SMS character set to switch from GSM to Unicode. With the former set an SMS is limited to 160 chars, while it's only 70 with the later.

Six Apart just released Movable Type 4 Release Candidate. Time to start playing seriously with that beast... :-)

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, announces on his blog that Sun will disclose its financial results on the open and free internet (web and RSS) ten minutes before sending them to private and pay-for financial channels.

Nine years ago, when I joined a certain world company that's quoted on the Paris stock exchange, the general treasurer told me point-blank that he would make sure that I, as the corporate webmaster, would be the last person to know about the financial releases. When he left, I made sure we published them on our own web site at the same time as sending them to other wires.

Hide it in a Zune! Be sure to check the FAQ.

(Will their next product be a Hide-a-Wii that looks like an Xbox?)

[via John Gruber]

Thanks to Mandy Southgate, I discovered that my post on the stupid wifi business from T-Mobile and Starbucks is #1 on a Google search for Starbucks WiFi London. And it apparently cost both Starbucks and T-Mobile a customer:

So, not finding anything specifically pertaining to Wi-Fi on your website, I googled "Starbucks Wi-Fi London" and thank goodness I came across this blog: http://padawan.info/web/stupid_wifi_business_tmobile_hotspots_at_starbucks.html. On this blog, I learnt that a) the Starbucks service is exorbitantly expensive; b) it is unreliable and flawed and c) that there are free Wi-Fi spots all over London.

So in a way this is not a complaint but a letter of gratitude; because had I received decent service at any part of my transaction today, I would have signed up for Starbucks Wi-Fi at any cost you decided to charge me. Instead, I get to eat in decent restaurants, with decent service and fresh food, all the while enjoying free Wi-Fi.

Don't all marketers hooked on web 2.0 love User Generated Content? Well... may be not all of them after all.

I haven't got time to install Movable Type 4 yet^[1] but thanks to Six Apart I've been able to access a hosted version and play a little bit with it.

My first impression is excellent, I must say that I'm impressed by the progress, no the leap, made by the MT team. MT 4 isn't a cosmetic upgrade to MT3, as we've (unfortunately) been accustomed to by 6A in the past couple of years. The impressive list of new features, the fact that the MT team has stopped diverting (therefore wasting) their efforts into two different code bases for MT and MT Enterprise, and the announcement that MT is going open source, make me think that 1) the development strategy is simpler, clearer, makes more sense therefore is more perennial than the previous one and 2) MT is no longer the ugly black duck in 6A's portfolio of products and services.

Kudos to the MT development team, and to Six Apart for reviving the potential of their “Publishing Platform”. I'm really looking forward to the production version, as well as creating some interesting blogs with it in the near future.

Note:
[1] The beta still bites a lot, and the interface is rough and unfinished. I wouldn't advise you to install it to replace you existing blog, unless you have time on your hands and are happy with truly beta quality (not as in web 2.0!) software.