iSpecies.org

Posted on January 12, 2006 by mfagan

iSpecies.org is a mashup for a specific discipline, which is where it’s at ;-). Not too much to speak of yet, but it’s a good start. How about adding Wikipedia data? Via Tara.

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Tim Bray on XML Languages

Posted on January 10, 2006 by mfagan

Tim’s two recent pieces are just fantastic: On XML Language Design and Don’t Invent XML Languages. I was originally going to take out some points, and comment that I agree with them and why, but Tim makes a lot of points, and I didn’t see any that I didn’t agree with. A lot of them are things that I considered very important when I was working on OpenSearch.

I will make some specific comments about OpenSearch though.

Tim suggests to generally avoid making new versions, but to be extensible instead. Absolutely. OpenSearch 1.0 was nice, but it was still relatively new, and not all parts were extensible, although some of it certainly was. OpenSearch 1.1 is very extensible; i.e. everything is. While I would be the first to agree that improvements could be made, I don’t think they should be, not for a while.

As Tim points out, developers don’t want a moving target. I really believe the 1.0 to 1.1 changes were necessary, and there wasn’t a huge amount of 1.0 software made. As much as can be added or improved, I would say not to do any of this until developers start to actually take advantage of the existing features. Few people realize how cool 1.1 is ;-), and like RSS, I think it will take years for people to fully realize it.

Tim says that XML languages should all have a validator, and I agree. I’m hoping Sam Ruby and/or the other Feed Validator developers will add OpenSearch, once 1.1 draft 2 is declared the final version.

On a related note, Tim links to this list of XML languages and I don’t see vCard there – is this just because we normally think of vCard in its pre-XML form?

I’m hoping Tim Bray and others will catch on – there’s some really neat stuff going on in the OpenSearch format, which is, of course, RSS/Atom. Except for the Description file 😉

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pc4media: Compiled 2006 Predictions

Posted on December 30, 2005 by mfagan

pc4media: Compiled 2006 Predictions – I haven’t even finished reading it – but Peter’s “predictions” beat everyone else’s a thousand times over.

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Windows Search Guide

Posted on December 29, 2005 by mfagan

Windows Search Guide – a (very beta) page is up for adding search engines to the search box in Internet Explorer 7. Note that at the time of this writing the OpenSearch Description files they’re using are in v1.1 draft 1, which they’ll hopefully upgrade appropriately. Also they’re declaring that the results are in RSS, when they are actually in HTML.

Anyhow, now that there are two browsers (okay, so IE7 hasn’t been released yet…) that support adding search engines via javascript, here’s a single javascript function that handles both of them. It assumes you have three files – .src plugin file and a 16×16 icon, and an OpenSearch Description file. There’s a .src to OpenSearch Description file converter I wrote on A9.com.

function addEngine() {
  try {
    window.sidebar.addSearchEngine('http://example.com/plugin.src',
      'http://example.com/plugin.png', 'Example Search Engine', 'Category Name');
  }
  catch (e) {
    try {
      window.external.AddSearchProvider('http://example.com/opensearch.xml');
    }
    catch (e) {
      alert('Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape 6 or higher,
        or Camino is needed to install a search engine.');
    }
  }
}

personal notes for later:

Opera:
Manually Editing Opera Searches using search.ini
Opera Search.ini Editor 1.25

Safari
Add Mozilla-like keyword functionality to Safari’s search bar (a hack)
AcidSearch 0.61

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Can I Crash ?

Posted on December 25, 2005 by mfagan

Can I Crash? – a service that lets you lend your sofa to travelling bloggers! – a great idea. Via Jeremy Zawodny.

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The Story of Feedster: A Word From Feedster’s Co-Founder

Posted on December 19, 2005 by mfagan

Scott Johnson, Feedster’s recently-departed co-founder, lets us know that François, Feedster’s other co-founder has posted on the Feedster blog: The Story of Feedster: A Word From Feedster’s Co-Founder. He hasn’t maintained his own blog in quite a long time, so it’s nice to hear some public words from him.

It even includes a photo of the Feedster team – my it’s changed (and grown) since my internship there ended in April of this year. François is the one front and centre.

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Why is the Google Homepage API not HTML?

Posted on December 14, 2005 by mfagan

Someone please explain to me why the Google Homepage API is a small XML format that includes an HTML bit, instead of just HTML itself?

Okay, so they introduce a few bits of meta data. The links, such as screenshot can be handled by <link /> with rel=”screenshot” and such. The other bits of data can be handled by <meta />, except for the title… there’s already one of those in HTML 😉

Note that I haven’t taken a good look at any of the Microsoft Live Gadgets, Google Sidebar API, Yahoo! Widgets (Konfabulator), or Dashboard.

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FeedBurner is cool, but…

Posted on December 14, 2005 by mfagan

FeedBurner offers a very attractive service, and their new FeedFlare is just one part of that. But please, FeedBurner… when a user changes some settings, record the time of that change and only allow that change to affect new items. Not that it isn’t fun to see a whole lot of my subscriptions suddenly all marked as unread.

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Major OpenSearch upgrade

Posted on December 12, 2005 by mfagan

I’ve been hard at work at A9.com, working on the OpenSearch website.

Here’s some of what’s new:

OpenSearch 1.1 Draft 2
The first draft went up in September – hopefully the second draft will become final within a few weeks. A9.com already supports it. The biggest change since the first draft? A fourth component to the specification: OpenSearch Query which allows you to reference a query. It may not sound like a big deal, but I think it is. Right now you can use it to provide spelling suggestions, related searches, etc. to A9. While not yet supported by A9, it allows for any of search parameters to be used – so it can establish a dialog between an opensearch producer and consumer using extended search parameters, even if the consumer doesn’t know anything about them. Another change is the addition of autodiscovery – imagine doing that with search tools!
Improved documentation and developer resources
New and/or improved: General FAQ, Developer FAQ, Developer How-to, specification changelog, guide to upgrading from 1.0 to 1.1, an index of elements and attributes, general tips. There are also listings of tools/software for producing and consuming OpenSearch feeds. This includes an OpenSearch-to-XHTML stylesheet (XSLT – very comprehensive), a converter for any XML into OpenSearch, and a converter from Sherlock plugins (used in Firefox).
Mailing List
OpenSearch isn’t called “open” for no reason. And to further that cause there is now a mailing list for discussing the specification, software for reading and writing it, etc.

That’s the gist of it. Although it isn’t yet, I think OpenSearch is very much on the road to become ubiquitous, just as RSS/Atom is becoming so. The support by Internet Explorer 7 gives that a huge push.

It’s amazing that I’ve been given the opportunity to put so much work into an open format, that benefits the entire industry, not just A9.com. You can be sure I’ll be saying more about OpenSearch in the future – if not in this blog, then on the mailing list, on other blogs, etc.

And for those who have no idea what I’m talking about – the homepage of the OpenSearch website is hopefully much clearer now at explaining it 🙂
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canadian political parties converge

Posted on December 5, 2005 by mfagan

NDP talking about tax cuts… Conservatives talking about child care….

so all the parties are going to win over voters from the other parties by being more like them… that’s a good plan, right?

since there are three main parties… and the leftmost is moving right and the rightmost moving left… everyone’s a Liberal? Seems like a good way to defeat the Liberal party, uh, right?

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