Category: Technology

Categories
SVG

Comments line graph

I had promised a WordPress pluggable version of the comments line graph and here it is. The line graph application is in two pieces: one to place in your theme directory and include in your page template; and a plug-in that will create the cached comment count file.

File one is graphcomments.php, which is installed in your theme. You’ll include the following in your web page template where you want the graph positioned:

<object style="width: 810px" data="/wp/theme/graphcomments.php" type="image/svg+xml" ></object>

Change the location for your environment. The element needs to be styled to fit the preferred width. The number of comments remains the same, but the graph resizes based on this width. The following is the same graph, but the containing element is set to 500 pixels wide.

[object removed]

In addition, the graphcomments.php has a style section with three values that you can change: line width (stroke-width), color (stroke), and opacity (stroke-opacity, a value between 0 and 1, with 0 being transparent, 1 being fully opaque).

The second piece is the plug-in, store_comments.php, which needs to be added to your plug-in directory. Both of the files require access to a single file, called comments.csv. This is a file that must be writable by the world, stored wherever you want. You can make it by creating an empty text file, and then use “chmod 766” to make it writable. If you don’t make this file, the application will attempt to create the file, which means the whole directory has to be world writable.

Both store_comments.php and graphcomments.php have a constant, FILENAME, which needs to be altered to fit the location of where the comments.csv file is stored.

How the comment graph line works is that whenever a new comment is saved, the comments.csv is updated to reflect the comment counts from the most recent 100 posts. The application that generates the SVG reads this file for the comma-separated values, and then creates the line graph.

At this time, the comments line graph is restricted to 100 comments or less, so, be forewarned if you get those 130+ comment days, the peak will be truncated.

The graphcomments.php application can be used on any data that is located in the file, each value separated by a comma. You can use it for category counts, unique visitor counts, anything that has simple totals over time.

Version 1.0 beta:

graphcomments.php store_comments.php

Steps:

  • Click the links and save the files, changing the extension to php from phps.
  • Place the graphcomments.php in your theme.
  • Place the store_comments.php in your plug-ins directory.
  • Create an empty text file named comments.csv, and place it in a directory. The directory does not have to be web accessible.
  • Change the file permissions to world writable, chmod 766.
  • Change the FILENAME value in both graphcomments.php and store_comments.php to the location of comments.csv file.
  • Add the line graph object element, example given above, to wherever your want the line graph to display.
  • Style the object element and the line graph.

The line graph is created using SVG. You don’t have to serve your pages as XHTML when you include SVG via an object element, as this application does. The line graph should work in IE if the person has the Adobe SVG plug-in installed, but no promises. Or you can set a container DIV element in which the object is installed to not display for IE. Check my header to see how to create IE specific style sheets.

I tried to center the line graph so that the tips aren’t truncated until after the 100 comment mark. There is white space at the top and bottom, but using negative margins for the top and bottom should eliminate most of it.

NOTE:

Safari fills in the background with white, by default, for the object container. I’m exploring how to change this, but I don’t expect to have a lot of luck. It looks like this behavior is a bug (or as planned, but not wanted). Feel free to use, but the graph won’t have a transparent background like the graph in my header, which is inline SVG. Of course, you can also copy my inline SVG, but then you’ll have to serve your pages as XHTML.

Categories
Standards SVG XHTML/HTML

Even the mistakes are fun

Anne Van Kesteren:

A new survey reveals that at least Microsoft and IBM think the HTML charter does not cover the canvas element.

I have to wonder, when reading the survey results, how much the people who voted actually used either SVG or the Canvas element. I covered both SVG and the Canvas Element in the book, but I focused more on SVG. Comparing the two–SVG and Canvas–is like comparing the old FONT element with CSS.

The Canvas element requires scripting. The SVG element doesn’t, even for animation if you use the animate elements. In addition, mistakes in SVG can be fun, as I found when I missed a parameter value in mistaken animation. A couple lines of markup. No script. Both Opera and Safari do an excellent job with the animation elements. I’m expecting Firefox to join this group in the next year.

If you use scripting, you can access each element in the SVG document as a separate element. You can’t do that with Canvas.

I still don’t think the Canvas element should be part of a new HTML 5, whatever the grand plans. However, since all but IE supports the Canvas element, it would be foolish to drop it. A better option would be to consider the Canvas element a bitmapped version of SVG and create a separate group to ensure it grows in a standard manner.

I did like what David Dailey wrote in the survey results:

I have considerable ambivalence about <canvas> as I have noted previously. If we were designing HTML 5 from the ground up , SVG and canvas ought to share syntax and ought not to duplicate so much functionality. <canvas> brings a few needed things with it, though it seems rather a bit of poor planning on the part of the advocates of <canvas> that has gotten us to this point. Those historically frustrated with W3C chose to ignore SVG and now seem to want W3C to ignore SVG in favor of a lesser technology. At the same time, <canvas> does enable client-side image analysis by giving the developer access to pixel values, and that alone allows for some tolerance of what otherwise seems to be a curious decoupling of reason from politics. Does it re-invent the wheel? — only about 95% of it is redundant with 20% of SVG.

As for all the discussion about semantic API…years ago I, and others, made a fight for a model and associated XML vocabulary, RDF, we said would stand the test of time and hold up under use. The road’s been rough, and few people are going to defend reification, but RDF fuels the only truly open social graph in existence. Five years ago. That was about the time when everyone believed that all we’d need for semantics was RSS. Including Microsoft.

Categories
Technology Web

Apple meet orange

Speaking of email, how absolutely idiotic to pronounce the death of email because today’s teens aren’t using their email accounts.

Today’s teens are also wearing their pants around their ankles–does this mean, then, that civilization will eventually lose its waist? I’m sorry, dear people, but frankly I’d rather not see most of your underwear clad butts.

We seem to be desperate to be the first to ‘spot trends’ that we take an audience that is known to have certain behavioral characteristics, and extrapolate what this means into the future. This is silly, as history shows us that teen behavior does not a forecast for the future make.

For instance, from my own youth, extrapolating our behavior into the future, one would assume the phone would be dead by now, because we spent all of our time in each other’s ‘pads’: smoking weed, dropping acid, and painting flowers on our bell bottoms, as we contemplated revolution and free love with equal passion. The phone was The Man.

From what I can see of drivers wherever I go, not only is the telephone not dead, it’s used more now than at any time in the past.

Focusing on what teens want has already ruined television. You can’t watch a show now without some blurb showing up obscuring half the screen with instructions about how the person watching can make the experience more ‘interactive’. Why add these to shows? Because marketing has deemed that today’s youth insist on such a barrage of noise in order to grasp and hold their attention.

Now, we’re ready to hold requiem on email, and other longer, thoughtful communications, because kids have the attention span of gnats. Welcome to the brave new world. Oh, excuse me: BRV NW WRLD. LOL.

update

An anonymous response in another weblog to the “email is for old people” pronouncement:

To be fair, what is a more efficient method for communicating “I AM WATCHING TELEVISION” or “I JUST TOOK A POOP AND IT STANK UP THE BATHROOM” than through something like twitter? It’s too frivolous for an email.

But likewise, am I going to communicate an action plan or discuss something with a customer via AIM or twitter or myspace? Fuck no. IM is for instant communication. Twitter is for pointless, self-involved drivel. Myspace is for idiots who want to consoladate their entire internet experience into a single website (and a single point of failure) just like the good old BBS days, before they were born —- and email is for people who need to convey important information, delicate information, detailed information or otherwise engage in an actual conversation.

I use IM constantly in my line of work. I’m a developer and our entire company of 45,000 people globally requires that everyone use our own developed commercial messenger (uses XMPP, much like jabber and is for all intents and purposes — jabber). Most of my colleagues are not even within driving distance. And even if they were, a lot of us telecommute full time. So IM is absolutely a necessity.

But for every IM message, there are a few dozen email messages. Whether it’s discussions on an internal list or another. Whether it’s communicating with customers or field engineers or team discussions and management discussions to touch base or regarding staffing or action plans.

So yes, young people may just use twitter, IM and myspace today . . . but if they plan to ever have discussions that go beyond what color their crap was and what they’re doing at that very instant (OH MY GOD, WE’RE ALL EAGERLY AWAITING YOUR NEXT TWITTER!) and beyond self-involved attention-whoring on myspace or trying to get off with some loser on instant messaging, they’ll eventually find themselves forced to gravitate toward email. And if they don’t – they’ll be shark food for the rest of us in the workforce.

Categories
JavaScript

We can’t afford another browser war

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It was with a sense of foreboding that I read the posts that swam past on Planet Intertwingly today. First came Mozilla’s Brendan Eich’s chastisement of Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, followed in a short while by commentary by Sam Ruby, where he wrote:

It is interesting how the don’t-break-the-web meme means different things to different organizations: Mozilla, Microsoft.

I’m not a language designer. My only stipulation with a new scripting language is that whatever constructs are added to ECMAScript4 need to be backward compatible. We can’t afford to re-write a couple of billion web pages because the ECMAScript group got clever. From what I’ve read in the past and in these new writings, Eich concurs, as does several other members of the team.

In regards to the new items added to the language: I share other concerns that ECMAScript–no let’s call it JavaScript because that’s how it’s known in the world–may become bloated and over large. I can understand about making it into a ‘real’ language, but I’m less concerned with posterity than I am getting a job done, quickly and efficiently. In other words: I don’t have any ego involved with the fact that I work with a programming language many folks consider somehow less worthy. If the extensions make a better language enabling me to do a better job, that’s great. Otherwise, leave the esoteric for ACM papers.

The future perfect ECMAScript is currently not my concern. My concern on this interchange between Mozilla’s Eich and Microsoft’s Wilson is that we’re seeing the seeds being planted for another round of browser wars, similar to what we had a decade ago. However, today’s web isn’t like the web of a decade ago, because today’s web pages are much too complex to attempt to cover every nuance and difference in implementation with if statements and conditional tests. It was especially disquieting to read comments to the effect that, it’s OK if the companies don’t agree: we can use Flash. Flash is not an alternative to open standards. We don’t need any more Flash dependency as a way of ‘soothing over’ corporate intransigence. Neither do we need more SVG plug-ins, or Google cross-browser libraries. Workarounds are no longer acceptable.

Any company is going to want to implement a version of any specification that favors what they currently have, as much as possible. Of course, this is understandable. Accept the fact that this is understandable. What keeps this behavior in line is there is enough push from other forces that everyone eventually has to compromise, and no one is a clear winner. When no organization is a clear winner, this typically means that everyone, eventually, ends up being a winner.

There’s no denying that Internet Explorer continues to be a problem. I found it unacceptable that Microsoft would put in time to create its own 2D graphics system with Silverlight, when one already exists with both SVG and Canvas (the Canvas object, not markup element). There was absolutely no good reason for this, and no amount of plushy blue monster or outreach effort is going to hide the fact that Microsoft basically did it’s own selfish thing with Silverlight.

There is no denying, however, that Microsoft’s browser continues to dominate (though every year, it dominates less). There is also no denying that Eich has considerable ego invested in ECMAScript–to the point where I have to wonder if this may make him overly aggressive, leading to confrontations that could injure the likelihood of pulling together a new version of JavaScript all browser makers are willing to endorse. We need a consistent platform: no matter how good the language, if a sizable number of people are using a browser that doesn’t implement it, the language is screwed, the browsers are screwed, we’re screwed.

“So I’ll expect to see no more of these lies spread by you.” No matter how angry you get, or frustrated, or peeved, if you want to work in an open standards group, particularly if you want to lead an open standards effect, you can’t write statements like this! Period. End of story. Along with the authority of leadership comes responsibility, and such statements are irresponsible. Where is Mitchell Baker? Time for her to step in and exert a calming influence. At a minimum, act as referee.

The same could be said for the Microsoft representation. No matter how subtly worded, we’re picking up our marbles and going home, neener, neener is not ‘working together as a team’; nor is it considering the true best interests of the web, in general, and of those loyal to Microsoft products, specifically.

Sam mentions that this issue is one based on culture. Frankly, from these exchanges, it seems more like a pissing contest to me.

Disappointing.

update

Could have done with a little less Scoble fandom, but a good overview of the players. I’m a little concerned about references to offline discussions.

Money quote in comments, by Douglas Crockford: “Simplicity is underrated.” Amen.

Categories
JavaScript Technology

We can’t afford another browser war

It was with a sense of foreboding that I read the posts that swam past on Planet Intertwingly today. First came Mozilla’s Brendan Eich’s chastisement of Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, followed in a short while by commentary by Sam Ruby, where he wrote:

It is interesting how the don’t-break-the-web meme means different things to different organizations: Mozilla, Microsoft.

I’m not a language designer. My only stipulation with a new scripting language is that whatever constructs are added to ECMAScript4 need to be backward compatible. We can’t afford to re-write a couple of billion web pages because the ECMAScript group got clever. From what I’ve read in the past and in these new writings, Eich concurs, as do several other members of the team.

In regards to the new items added to the language: I share other concerns that ECMAScript–no let’s call it JavaScript because that’s how it’s known in the world–may become bloated and over large. I can understand about making it into a ‘real’ language, but I’m less concerned with posterity than I am getting a job done, quickly and efficiently. In other words: I don’t have any ego involved with the fact that I work with a programming language many folks consider somehow less worthy. If the extensions make a better language enabling me to do a better job, that’s great. Otherwise, leave the esoteric for ACM papers.

The future perfect ECMAScript is currently not my concern. My concern on this interchange between Mozilla’s Eich and Microsoft’s Wilson is that we’re seeing the seeds being planted for another round of browser wars, similar to what we had a decade ago. However, today’s web isn’t like the web of a decade ago, because today’s web pages are much too complex to attempt to cover every nuance and difference in implementation with if statements and conditional tests. It was especially disquieting to read comments to the effect that, it’s OK if the companies don’t agree: we can use Flash. Flash is not an alternative to open standards. We don’t need any more Flash dependency as a way of ‘soothing over’ corporate intransigence. Neither do we need more SVG plug-ins or Google cross-browser libraries. Workarounds are no longer acceptable.

Any company is going to want to implement a version of any specification that favors what they currently have, as much as possible. Of course, this is understandable. Accept the fact that this is understandable. What keeps this behavior in line is there is enough push from other forces that everyone eventually has to compromise, and no one is a clear winner. When no organization is a clear winner, this typically means that everyone, eventually, ends up being a winner.

There’s no denying that Internet Explorer continues to be a problem. I found it unacceptable that Microsoft would put in the time to create its own 2D graphics system with Silverlight, when one already exists with both SVG and Canvas (the Canvas object, not markup element). There was absolutely no good reason for this, and no amount of plushy blue monster or outreach effort is going to hide the fact that Microsoft basically did its own selfish thing with Silverlight.

There is no denying, however, that Microsoft’s browser continues to dominate (though every year, it dominates less). There is also no denying that Eich has considerable ego invested in ECMAScript–to the point where I have to wonder if this may make him overly aggressive, leading to confrontations that could injure the likelihood of pulling together a new version of JavaScript all browser makers are willing to endorse. We need a consistent platform: no matter how good the language, if a sizable number of people are using a browser that doesn’t implement it, the language is screwed, the browsers are screwed, we’re screwed.

“So I’ll expect to see no more of these lies spread by you.” No matter how angry you get, or frustrated, or peeved, if you want to work in an open standards group, particularly if you want to lead an open standards effect, you can’t write statements like this! Period. End of story. Along with the authority of leadership comes responsibility, and such statements are irresponsible. Where is Mitchell Baker? Time for her to step in and exert a calming influence. At a minimum, act as referee.

The same could be said for the Microsoft representation. No matter how subtly worded, we’re picking up our marbles and going home, neener, neener is not ‘working together as a team’; nor is it considering the true best interests of the web, in general, and of those loyal to Microsoft products, specifically.

Sam mentions that this issue is one based on culture. Frankly, from these exchanges, it seems more like a pissing contest to me.

Disappointing.