LinuxFuture : Web Applications

February 18, 2008

PunBB: List of featurs.. for the future ;)

Couple of days ago I've posted a list of ideas and suggestions for next version of punbb, here's an optimized version of it :)

A Complete AJAX BB:
Ajax Menu: the whole site-map in 1 XML menu file.
Each topic should have a (posts.xml) file and a (members.xml) file.
A javascript calendar support: something like http://www.dynarch.com/projects/calendar/.
Visitors/Members statistics: in the status bar, and/or in additional artificial buttonface-color status bar.
Something like: Visitors: (# online/ # total) - Members: (# online / # total)
I've wrote a code like this in a scripts.js.php:
```
window.status = "Visitors: (<?php echo count($guests) ?> online/ # 
 total) - Members: (<?php echo count($users) ?> online / # total)";
```
but it didn't work :(
Imagine some kind of compatibility between punbb and mailman (GNU mailing list)
The idea is: providing two ways to send and receive posts/messages: web browser, and mail client.

Multilingual:

Encoding: utf-8, with Unicode font (Tahoma).
utf-8 and Tahoma are better for non-Latin characters.
Text Boxes <Input>: LTR attribute for filename, username & password fields.
It's is necessary to prevent inheriting RTL attribute in RTL pages, since filename, username & password are usually LTR texts.

Format:

Some of the fallowing ideas are here: http://www.upload-images.net/imagen/502a468edc.png

Header & Footer: width:100% across the whole page width.
Buttons: Flat borders, themes color.
Replacing "online/offline" texts in member-profile pane with a blink-maroon-gif for "online" and a gray-png for "offline".
Printing: client side (see RichStyle.org: hiding the header, menu, sidebar -if any-, and footer blocks)
Footer: text-align: center.
Title box: white lines up and down.
Menu blocks: links should be blocks, not simple underlined texts.
Font size: 10px
Colorizing Scroll bar (for IE5.5+ users) - I wish if it was w3c standard :/
OS Colors in The Control Panel/Administration pages (Buttonface..etc) and bigger padding.

Regarding CSS files I prefer coding like this:

DIV>DIV>DIV.postfootleft,
DIV>DIV>DIV.postfootright {
 PADDING-TOP: 1px;
 MARGIN-TOP: -1px
}

rather than:

DIV>DIV>DIV.postfootleft, DIV>DIV>DIV.postfootright {PADDING-TOP: 1px; MARGIN-TOP: -1px}

I think the first one is much readable.

Giga thanx..

Posted at 12:23 AM | Comments?
Edited on: June 22, 2008 12:02 PM
Categories: Web Applications

August 14, 2006

Thingmanablog.. Starting from the end line!

As lending credit, I decided to initiate with the software I've been working with, since the last few months, for this site itself: Thingamablog 1.0.5.

Thingamablog is a java-based open source blog editor, which means that you can write and set up your posts offline, and then posting them across FTP or SFTP using Thingamablog itself.

The most interesting thing in this software, is that it's a (Non-ControlPanel web application) , which means that you don't need a (Server-Side Management). And that makes me think that Blog revolution is going to change the web application themes.

Thingamablog, The real tangible web application!

But on the other hand, even you don't need to conduct any server-side operation; you have to use a virtual server for testing purposes, since its structure has been built on absolute paths. This was the most difficult thing I've ever faced in this software.

Fixing Attempts:

In order to make it relative-path based, I removed all <$BaseURL$> arguments from .template files and tried to add this line in the <head> tag:

<base href="../" />

The result was something like: http://../bath/to/file.html.

So I moved on another attempt: I replaced <$BaseURL$> in .template files with an appropriate number of (../) argument. But it failed also, since Thingamablog still generate an absolute path in some files.
So, I tried to delete the (Base URL) information and set (Archive URL) as archive/ and (Media URL) as media/, but I failed again.

The last attempt was doing this by modifying user.xml file manually like this:

<TBWeblog url="" arc_url="archives/" media_url="media/" base_path="C:\blog\/" ....>

And voila! I succeeded!

But, Ooh, wait a minute! I detected that I will not be able to change any thing in configure dialog box!

I concluded to save two different kinds of user.xml/.temlatte files, a relative version and an absolute version!

A suggested reliable solution

Using relative paths. How? So far I don't know, but I hope it's possible according to W3C specifications, maybe using <meta> tags...

Two kinds of destination:

Remotely:

<TBWeblog

 url="http://www.somesite.com/"
 arc_url="archives/" 
 media_url="media/"
 base_path="/www_files/"
 ....>

Locally

<TBWeblog
 url=""
 arc_url="archives/"
 media_url="media/"
  base_path="C:\blog\/" 
 ....>

As for the local publishing, url variable should have two possibilities: Null, and http://localhost/.

And by the way, it's very important to add a (preview button) in the Editor and the Navigator. This means publishing and opening locally, with/without http://localhost/.

A brief Wishlist:

Here is a brief Wishlist:

Valid XHTML: Currently, the editor inserts <br>, <hr>, and <img>, while it should be <br/> <img />... etc.
(Options dialog) should accept relative URLs.
Parsing variables even from non-template files (Regular HTML files).
Calendar: Option: using a client side calendar (http://www.dynarch.com/projects/calendar/)
Days on the calendar (on the head of the calender): two letters rather than three, it wastes space horizontally.
An ability to resort categories from time to time (from configure > categories).
Comments, directed to a given email, then user will forward it to the site optionally or automatically.
Search.php
Templates: Real folder structure, with a relative base URL, which I'm not sure; but I hope it's possible now according to w3c specifications originally!
Applying css template on the blog editor
An ability to add <code> tag within the editor
Remote deleting