GMo Blog - IT

Back to this bookmarks thing ..

Guillaume Mouron — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:22:00 +0100

I've been thinking again of my bookmarks manager (see my previous post) and came to two different ideas ...

The first solution came during yesterday's night. Use a blogging platform and add a new blog entry for each bookmark, with tags associated ... That might seem a bit "overkill" but it has several advantages that I will detail further.

The second solution is, of course, the DIY solution. But I've been thinking of a specific one I would do. It's not necessarily the one best suited for this task but it would involve some technologies I'd like to work out.
It would be a quite simple xml file, one entry per bookmark, with a <taglist> containing the tags, a <state> tag to mark it as read or unread (very often I keep some bookmarks to read them later, and very often I forget to do so ), probably another one to know if it's a personal bookmark or a professional bookmark (to be able to keep both at the same place, but separated), a field to keep the date and probably one for a title and a last one for a description (which will mostly remain empty as I am to lazzy to fill it :).

Why use an xml file and not a database backend ?
Well, because there are several xml technologies I'd like to test or to reuse. The first one is the RelaxNG schema language. I've already used XSD schemas several times and I've read everywhere that RelaxNG is much simpler to use but does the task as well, so I want to give it a try.
The second one is xslt ... I've already used xslt but I want to continue using it and improve my skills. I would use xslt to build a complete set of pages from my xml bookmark files with corresponding queries when I select a set of tags, counts for each tags, etc etc ...
The third one, linked to the previous point, is I would like to minimize the use of a script language. And if possible, use python instead of php ... I'm not really fond of php but I'll use it if I have to. I would only use the script language to build a small interface for adding a new bookmark ... or maybe, why not, provide a webservice to do so ? With a nice WSDL file

Well, now, let's see the pros and the cons of each solution :

Blog Solution :
+ easy to set up and get it working
+ search integrated (by date, etc etc ...)
- is it possible to get the blog entries combining several tags ? (let's say I have a link tagged with java and "webservice", can I retrieve it by combining those two tags or do I need to browse through all links tagged as "java" or all links tagged as "webservice" ?). It mainly depends on the blog engine but does one with my requirements exist ?
- Need of a manual synchronization with your web browser (or maybe possible with an extension and the xmlrpc interface of the blog ? (I think dotclear and wordpress, at least, have one)

DIY XML Solution :
+ Will fit all my needs
+ Make me work different technologies
+ Possibility to make a firefox extension to synchronize with the firefox bookmark manager ? (maybe by tweaking some existing extension that let you upload on your ftp your bookmarks ?).
- Take time

So, it's still needs some thoughts and maybe some pieces of advice from friends ?

Web Bookmarks Manager

Guillaume Mouron — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:33:00 +0200

During the last few weeks, I've been thinking of a web application I liked to see ...

This would simply be a del.icio.us-like or blogmarks-like (choose the one you want) application BUT where you could host it on your own website.

First reason of self-hosting, not being "filed" by a company. You're also not sure it won't end its service and you'll lose your bookmarks.

The third reason is because of a feature I thought : imagine you install it on a company intranet. Every employee could put links related to his work so that first he could find it later and secondly it could benefit to other employees and/or another employee that would have to continue the work of the first one ...
So the employee finds a new link, he adds it to the portal and tags it correctly with keywords about what is in this link of course, but he could also add a tag giving a target (e.g. if it's interesting for every employee in the company or every employee in his service or just for people working on a specific project, ...).

On a more personal-use point of view, I would also see a public/private system so that you can publicly share links with people coming on your website (and why not a corresponding RSS feed ?) but also keep some personal bookmarks (like the one to this photo album of your nephew for instance ).
I would also add a "temp" system for keeping bookmarks that you know might be interesting but you don't have time to read (I said "system" and not "tag" as Nicolas is against the temp tag ).

Well, that's more or less all I had to say about it, maybe I'll do it in a coming future (maybe based on hariCow ? )

PS: the date you entered the bookmark would also be kept to find back bookmarks by date

Building a "web application" without a single line of html/javascript code ?

Guillaume Mouron — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:37:00 +0200

I've found today a possibly interesting java framework for building webapps without a single line of javascript/html code, named Echo2

I only ran the demo, but it seems quite impressive with a lot of pre-built widgets (panels, layout, components ...).
Instead of making your own html/javascript code, you build your interface in Java and it generates all the code for you.

The framework is opensource (MPL/LGPL) and they provide you with an EchoStudio built on the Eclipse Framework, though you have to pay for this piece of software.

I haven't tested it (yet ?) but appearantly you can built custom components and, of course, use your own stylesheets.

Maybe it is something to try ...

Echo2 website

PS: Thanks to Lionel for the corrections

Where are you in the hierarchy ? :D

Guillaume Mouron — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 21:02:00 +0200

Just a funny link found while browsing ... :)

Watch this diagram : The programmer Hierarchy
As a :

Java (mostly),
Ada (well, a long time ago, but I'd like to get back to it)
COBOL (hum, just during the period we had lectures :p)
Javascript
Ajax
PHP
Python (still have to learn a lot though)
C

programmer, it's hard to find my way ...
But it's even more complicated when I'm working on a J2EE project (it's currently the case) and I switch from java to javascript every 5 minutes ...

Schizophrenia ? :D

Does Internet Explorer really progress ?

Guillaume Mouron — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:29:00 +0200

As I am currently creating my homepage (not an easy task), I am running some tests on Internet Explorer 7 beta 3 and already having a bad feeling ...

So that was the big piece of news somewhere around 1 year and a half ago ...
Microsoft is working on a brand new version of Internet Explorer ...

So the purpose here is not to talk about the UI evolutions (TABS) but the CSS, Javascript and XHTML support (or standard compliance hum ...). Well, and also on the whole enhanced security thing with an "event" that occured yesterday ...

So, as already written in the excerpt, I am building my homepage, that will be available soon (at least I hope so :)).
And I wanted to put some transparency on my page ... Internet explorer has been handling html elements transparency for a long time with, of course, a proprietary instruction filter:alpha(opacity=number) or filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=number) where number is between 0 and 100.

But things have changed since that time ... Mozilla and firefox supported it through the -moz-opacity:number instruction with number between 0 and 1. And Konqueror and Safari through -khtml-opacity:number with number between 0 and 1.
Since then, it has been introduced into CSS 3 specifications (still working draft though) ... And now Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Safari support opacity:number, number between 0 and 1. Konqueror is supposed to but I can't make it work in the 3.5.1 version, even with the old -khtml-opacity property. See here for some other people being confronted to this problem ...

So as you could probably guess, IE7 beta 3 does not support the opacity property. You have to use their own filter property, which, of course, is not standard and gives you a validator error
So ok, I'm probably a bad programmer compared to those working on IE7, building a parser is not an easy thing (I still remember this compilation project ;)) but would it be THAT difficult to catch the opacity line, retrieve the number, multiply it by 100 and call the SAME function used with their filter thing ?

So that was the first point with this opacity thing ... But as we say in France un malheur n'arrive jamais seul (I don't know if there is a real translation but literally and poorly translated it would be a misfortune never happens alone hum ...). So Microsoft has enhanced the security within their browser (or at least, that's what they pretend) and you can't execute ActiveX applets or javascripts if you're not on a trusted site or you don't specifically allow the page to do so.
And that's the problem here. The filter property within the css is, appearantly, handled in a way or another by an ActiveX function. So when you include it in you css file, Internet Explorer prevents it from being executed (so no transparency) and displays a warning message if you want or don't want to execute ActiveX or script content !!

So, as you can see, I'm not convinced by IE7, at least with a ''web developper" point of view, who wants to make some cross-browser websites ... and there are still some differences in interpretation of "pure" xhtml, even if some progresses have been made ... The thing I really hope is that they won't release IE 7 and then do nothing for another 2 or 3 or 4 years ... They need to continue improving their browser because firefox, opera or safari are becoming more and more popular, and support more and more things ...

Some links :
the stylesheet (only the filter part)
the official IE7 blog

PS : Thanks to Nicolas for his corrections and YES I use the word "so" too much