Daryl’s Flock Blog

I enjoyed my stint as a non-developer, but it’s good to be back in the old developer-type saddle again. I’ve been reviewing my bug list this morning, something I haven’t done very thoroughly in a long time, in part because it was easy, when I was carrying my shepherd’s crook (instead of wearing my developer’s pocket protector) to more or less ignore the bug list and bug mail because those things are, after all, usually for developers. But this morning, I’m clearing aside some old bugs, reassigning some that no longer really apply now that we have a fulltime sysadmin (Yay!) and actually fixing some now that I feel a little more focused. Lloyd will be happy, no doubt.

technorati tags: flock, dev, bugzilla

Brushing up a little on some of the things available in PHP5. Here’s something that made me weep happy tears. Given the XML file:

<people>
    <person>
        <name>Daryl L. L. Houston></name>
        <coolness>100%></coolness>
    </person>
    <person>
        <name>Steve Urkel></name>
        <coolness>-100%></coolness>
    </person>
</people>

And the code:

<?php

$people = simplexml_load_file('test.xml');
foreach($people->person as $person){
        print $person->name . ' (' . $person->coolness . ')' . "\n";
}

?>

You get the output:

Daryl L. L. Houston (100%)
Steve Urkel (-100%)

No iterating over arrays, no finding the right PEAR class and making sure you’ve got the right versions of dependent PEAR classes installed. It Just Works™.

I’ve more or less avoided PHP5 to date, as much of the code I write wouldn’t benefit a great deal from many of the things I understand PHP5 to provide, but this alone makes it worth a second glance.

technorati tags: php

Test from Windows

Test post from Linux

Tested all the stuff I did in Linux.  Any notable differences appear here. (nsfw)

• Imported Firefox data successfully.
• Maps drag area does have UI indicating it’s droppable (I didn’t see this on Linux, though possibly it was an oversight.)

Daryl’s Flock Blog

Here is a test note.

Hey, wow, I can drag multiple things from the shelf at once! 

As with the Windows post, I’ll mostly add substantial differences I found from the original script.

• Shelf: I learned that you can drag multiple items from the shelf into the blog editor. Nifty!
• That’s it. The things works really well on the mac.

technorati tags: tagone, tagtwo

Tested all the stuff I did in Linux.  Any notable differences appear here. (nsfw)

• Imported Firefox data successfully.
• Maps drag area does have UI indicating it’s droppable (I didn’t see this on Linux, though possibly it was an oversight.)

• [BUG] I had several tabs open when I decided to share bookmarks on Shadows. I didn’t have an account, so I went to create one. It got rid of my tabs (including an unsaved blog editor tab; grrrr).

• Need some elaboration here.
• It did save my blog post but didn’t tell me (I discovered this later).
• I think the original window I had open died, but the one I was setting my Shadows account up in stayed open, and the impression I had was that I lost my tabs.
• Whereas on Linux, I don’t remember getting an alert to the effect that switching services would shut down my browser (I could be mistaken, but I sure don’t remember getting one), I did get such an alert on Windows.

• [BUG] After setting up a Shadows account (but not signing in), I went to properties for a link and tried to share it. The checkbox just wouldn’t let me click it (it would blink; it wasn’t grayed out). I finally remembered that I had only created a Shadows account and hadn’t logged in. When I did so, the functionality worked. The checkbox should probably prompt the favorites sharing dialog when clicked, though.
• [BUG?] Lost link! While using Shadows, I added a link to a collection. After I switched to Delicious, that Favorite disappeared. I had marked the favorite as a private favorite in Shadows. Maybe that accounts for why it’s not showing up in Delicious. Still, I would have expected it to remain a favorite on my local system.
• [BUG?] Indended bullets (ie, nested bulleted lists) render fine in the blog editor but appear all in one top-level list on wordpress.com. This may be a wordpress.com issue but merits investigation.

technorati tags: tagone, tagtwo

Test post nsfw

What you should know before using 0.5.11

Welcome to the 0.5.11 release of Flock. If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’re aware of the risks associated with software that’s somewhere between alpha and beta.

Flock 0.5.11 Release Notes

 Images

 This is a test note I’m adding to the shelf.

Is this red? If it’s being rendered at wordpress.com, probably not. It should appear red in the blog editor, though.

* Linux

   ** Blogging

        *** With an old profile (fresh yesterday, though), when I
opened the blog editor, I got an error
(http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=100797668&size=o)

        *** Also, the blog post wouldn’t publish.

        *** With a fresh profile, both errors disappear.

   ** Photos

        *** Uploaded photo without issue

        *** Browsed to my photos

        *** Browsed to friend’s photos

        *** Dragged photo into blog editor

   ** Shelf

        *** Dragged image, link, text onto shelf

        *** Added note to shelf

        *** Dragged each of these items off the shelf into a blog post.

        *** (Minor issue: If I right-click in the shelf when nothing’s selected, a small, empty menupopup thing appears.)

   ** Maps

        *** Added two locations, one manually and one by dragging an
address (incidentally, should we make it more clear that you can drag
addresses?)

        *** (Hey, there’s a little callout at my locations now. Nifty!)

        *** Opened link from callout. (It opened in a new window
[boooo] and didn’t open in a tab [or at all] when I CTRL-clicked.)

        *** Toggled size

        *** Zoomed

   ** History search: Seems to work as expected.

   ** Technorati Conversations: Seems to work (albeit still slow to load)

   ** RSS

        *** Seems to work as expected.

        *** (Did sorting by topic speed the heck up or what?)

   ** Favorites

        *** Sharing with Shadows seems to work.

        *** When switching from Shadows to Delicious, my browser shut
down. I think this is a known behavior. (The blog editor, in which I
had an open draft, *did* prompt me to save. Yay, Anthony.)

        *** Collections toggle fine (and continue to be one of my
favorite features), though I continue to have some focus weirdness on
the menupopup in Linux, which weirdness Robin blogged yesterday.

technorati tags: tagone, tagtwo

Robin posted a testing script for the latest tinderbox builds of Flock. I haven’t followed it exactly and haven’t noted things that have worked (except for one unexpected and delightful case), which is probably a useful thing to do, but I have identified a number of bugs (one sort of bad, but the rest very minor) and found myself wanting a few little features added. New features are of course not on the map for the release we’re hoping to spin today, and I suspect that most of these bugs won’t get touched yet, but here they go, for our QA folk to review if/as desired.

[BUG] Before I go any further, let me report that I was unable to post this to my wordpress.com blog using the blog editor. It could be a problem with my account (as Robin managed to post his), but in any case, the “Posting” dialog just sat there for several minutes until I dismissed it. I then went and posted this manually.

All in all, this release feels great to me. Some of our flockstars have been using Flock as their primary browser for weeks or months, and I have to really applaud those folk for sticking with it. Only in the last few weeks have I been dogfeeding it heavily because it hasn’t been generally usable to me until the last few weeks. I think it’s very usable now, though, and I’m as comfortable using it as Firefox. Some things, such as the ability to toggle collections in my link toolbar, make it even more comfortable. I can also see myself starting to actually use Flickr a little more now thanks to the uploader (I run Linux and haven’t found any other uploader that works, so getting photos into Flickr has been a painful process for me).

Without further ado, my findings:

• [BUG] When I add a location to a map and then click properties for the location, the location name has “Address” for a label. Screen cap.
• [BUG] Insert/edit link dialog for blog editor is too small on Linux. It has scrollbars, and I can just see the tops of the buttons.
• [FEATURE] Also in the insert/edit link dialog for the blog editor, I wish the link url field got focus. I have to click into it every time rather than just doing a quick paste and return.
• [BUG] In the blog topbar in Linux, there’s a slight doubling of the “Drag stuff to blog it” image. Probably just a no-repeat needs to be set on the background image.
• [FEATURE] I can’t drag from the photo topbar into regular textareas or text fields. I’m not always blogging when I want to drag my images around; we should really add a text/plain flavor for these images.
• [BUG] There’s still a pixel offset on the right-hand borders of buttons in the uploader photo properties dialog on Linux. Screen cap.
• [BUG] I renamed a text file with a .jpg extension and dragged into the photo uploader. It gave me a thumbnail placeholder with no preview. When I pressed the upload button, it acted as if the upload worked. If the file dragged into the upload toolbar isn’t in fact an image, we should probably toss an error. In any case, if flickr doesn’t allow the upload for whatever reason, we should display the error.
• [FEATURE] I wish I could right-click in the shelf to add notes rather than having to move my mouse all the way over to the unobtrusive “Add Note” button, which isn’t terribly discoverable.
• [FEATURE] It also occurs to me that it might be nice to be able to annotate a given shelf item to note why I dragged it there.
• [FEATURE] And also, what about reordering within the shelf? That was a nice feature.
• [BUG] Dragging into specific spots within the shelf seems flakey. Sometimes it drops below where the little drop indicator appears, and other times it seem to drop above. Other times it drops nowhere near the drop indicator.
• [BUG] There should be a confirm on the “Clear All” option for the shelf, especially as that button is right beside the “Add Note” button and could easily be pressed by accident.
• [FEATURE] I really wish some things were dockable as either sidebars or topbars. For example, it’d be great to be able to blog with the shelf on the side and my flickr photos up top so that I don’t constantly have to go toggling back and forth in the topbar.
• [FEATURE] I tend to expect the Technorati bar to automatically query when I load a new page.
• [BUG] In the Technorati topbar, there’s no hover state on the “Get conversations” and “Comment on your blog” buttons, and it’s kind of weird to click them.
• [FEATURE] If there’s already a favorites manager open when I click the favorites manager, can we just focus its tab rather than opening a whole new one?
• [QUESTION] In the faves manager search, it’s not clear to me what field I’m searching on.
• [QUESTION] I don’t understand the different icons in the faves manager. Sometimes there’s a little globe, and sometimes there’s a little gray ribbon-like thing. I don’t seen an obvious difference that these signify.
• [FEATURE] In faves, when I refresh a feed (context click in collection, for example), can there be some sort of indicator that something’s happening or has completed?
• [FEATURE] I wish I could reorder my collections in the faves manager so that I could have my most-used collections at the top of the collection chooser in the toolbar.
• [BUG] When adding a new collection (faves), validation won’t let me create a blank one but will let me create one that’s a single-space.
• [KUDOS] (Hey, CTRL-S saves in the blog editor! Woo hoo!)
• [BUG] In the feeds view, the “headlines only” checkbox should persist. Currently, if I check it and then change the sort, it unchecks the headlines box.
• [QUESTION] Does the feeds view’s topics feature tap into my tags at all? It’d be neat if it’d look especially for things relevant to my tags and maybe group those near the top.
• [BUG] When I right-click the star and try to add to the default collection, it doesn’t get added to the collection.

Chris blogged a new job opening today. Earlier this week, I blogged something sort of cryptic about my role in the community. Have you ever played with one of those tile puzzles whose solution involves the sliding around of tiles until a coherent picture appears? The board is divided into, say, 15 squares, and there are 14 tiles that you slide around until they click just properly into place and make a complete picture. I looked around for a picture of one of these to include but couldn’t find one. Anyway, illustration or no, this seems to be sort of what’s going on with some Flock staff roles. Chris has done very cool things fostering community generally in the open source world by helping create and nurture the various camps (Bar, Wine, Moose, etc.) and mashpits. He’s a natural at this stuff and has a proven track record at making things happen. Let’s not forget that he (along with me and others) was one of the driving forces behind the early spreadfirefox effort. Since our job opening for an interaction designer frees up some of Chris’s time, it makes perfect sense for him to shift into a community role.

This, of course, frees up a good bit of my time. Things have come sort of full circle for me. I’ve been with the group that became Flock for over a year. In December a year ago, Bart contracted me to do some work for a company he was starting up. I was going to help develop some web services to support what the then-company was going to be doing. Sometime in January or early February a year ago, I signed on full-time as a web developer. As our needs changed, I started doing client development, and it was certainly a departure for me. I wrote the original shelf, which Erwan has revamped of late into a nifty topbar. As time marched on, I figured out that client development really wasn’t my strength or something I especially enjoyed, so I volunteered to head up community so that I could make way for more willing and capable client developers while retaining a role with the company. Now that Chris is freed up, it makes sense for me to shift back into a web development role to support community and other initiatives.

At times, I feel as if I’ve done some good things for community at Flock. I think I’ve helped build a culture of openness and friendliness, for example. But I’ve probably also missed a bunch of opportunities for one reason or another. I think and hope Chris may be stronger on this front than I’ve been to date, and I look forward to playing a supporting role in community in addition to contributing to other initiatives coming down the pipeline. Chances are that I’ll post fewer blog entries, and you may see less of me in irc (though maybe not; I enjoy hanging out in there). I expect to be more of a behind-the-scenes type than a figurehead (though I’ve hardly been a figurehead to date), and this is the sort of role I’m most comfortable in, so I count this as a good thing.

One last thing before I unofficially bow out as Community Shepherd: I did another podcast. Rather, a friend of mine, who was also a part of Flock before it was Flock, volunteered to produce a podcast I had kicked off. And I must say he did a fine job, a much better production job than my first effort. As I said to him in an email, the podcast sounds great except for that redneck (ahem) in a tin can in the middle segment. Many thanks to Mike Neel for the production effort. If you’d like to give it a listen, check out the Flock podcast I set up a few weeks ago or jump straight to this edition. This is something I hope Chris will find a way to run with. What would be really cool, I think, is if there was some way for community members to interview developers or some way for us to feature Flock-related podcasts from the community.

In the coming weeks, Chris and I will be working together to pass the torch on community stuff. With my web dev chops and Chris’s proven ability to make great things happen in open source software communities, I think we can accomplish good things.

Hey, did you hear that? It sounded to me like the snick of a last tile sliding into place to complete a picture that wasn’t quite coherent yet. Stay tuned, folks. It only gets better from here.

Spent last week out at Flock HQ focusing almost exclusively on a web site revamp, which (cross your fingers) will land this week or next. Flock HQ is very crowded right now. Chris’s much-talked-about bloody hand post from a few weeks ago was the result of tearing down a wall, and even with that wall torn down and tables lining what walls tables can line in the garage, the place is filled to the brim when we out-of-towners descend upon Palo Alto. Robin, Zbigniew, and I were all in town.
Community stuff (including the podcast ball I got rolling) is still a little up in the air as far as I can tell. One of my tasks for the next couple of days is to try to understand my role on that front going forward. I had hoped to get clarification while I was in town, but the stars didn’t align correctly, and it didn’t happen.