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Content Type: Advisory
Copyright Stephen W. Cote, 2002 - 2004.
Do not reproduce or distribute without the written consent of the author.
Summary
New additions and changes to the site are summarized in this document.
- (11/17/2004): Site Updates
ReferenceAdded the calendar control reference.
MonitoringI added a new document, IMNMotion Behavior Monitor, based on a disabled version of the one added on 2004/04/02
BrochureUpdated the style sheet for the calendar and added a graphic link to the IMNMotion Behavior Monitor page.
- (10/30/2004): Site Updates
StyleRevised the style. The yellow seemed okay in spring, but now seems a little too flowery for winter.
New PoemNew poems, Saturday Coffee and Peace at Home.
- (06/30/2004): Site Updates
User Rating SystemI added a user rating system to the various content on this site. At the moment, the IP address is used to track individual ratings. While this will later be made to use a session ID, I didn't want someone coming along and slamming the rating in a particular direction.
- (06/27/2004): Site Updates
New TransformerNothing to see yet, but I made some improvements to the document transformer, particularly to auto-generate a readable document id for use with a content rating system.
New StyleSome style changes to improve readability.
New StoriesMore old stories is more like it. A Lesson in Morality and Phone Calls from God.
- (07/11/2003): New Content
PoetryAdded Reversal.
- (04/02/2003): New Engine Release
New PoemAdded Exaltation.
New ProjectI've done some work on the IMNMotion Project, though I've kept this one pretty much under the covers as I've been preserving it for corporate use.
- (01/15/2003): New Engine Release
Version 0.7With the latest bug fixes, I've promoted the Engine for Web Applications version to 0.7. I don't have a milestone document in hand, but the two features I want for a 1.0 release is a web services package and a WSDL/SOAP based replacement for the current engine configuration syntax. I think that what is there now is really pretty cool, though.
New DemonstrationsI created a new demonstrations section that provides basic to intermediate implementation details, beginning with the Engine Service.
Bug FixesMade some critical fixes to the XML library caused by behavioral problems with MSXML in conjunction with the connection pool for synchronous operations.
- (12/30/2002): Brochure Updates
New StyleI modified the style of the brochure page to use a new image and to add better separation between the content and cards (left nav).
BlogI was quite pleased with how this turned out. While it still needs a lot of work on public access, such as the ability to access older items and add reader comments, I was very happy with how nicely it went together. Part of the reason it went well was the administration UI was very simple to do using the Engine project, and the backend work had already been done for the Simple Network Transfer component.
- (12/28/2002): New Engine Features
XML UtilitySupport for pooling request objects and caching XML DOMs for given requests was added to the XML Utility package in the Engine for Web Applications project. These features so far seem to offer some performance gains to both IE and Mozilla. I added an example that demonstrates these features.
Server UpdatesAdd new features to the AccountManager and SNTService on the server for managing public requests to account-specific data groups.
- (12/04/2002): Engine Developments and Content Updates
Fix to pastelDocumentTemplate.xslThe pastelDocumentTemplate.xsl, currently used for all content transformations, was not correctly outputting rated content. This corrected Fairy Bunking Chapter 4.
Engine Implementation #3: GriffinI've been concentrating development effort on Engine Implementation #3: Griffin (counting prototypes SNT #3 and #4 as implementations #1 and #2). A lot of improvements were made to the configuration support. Given the existing design within the EngineService to handle a fairly generic object declaration syntax, very little code motion resulted in implementing more of the WireService.
Dropped UI Support (for now)I dropped all UI code from the Engine for Web Applications project as it really distracted users from the core features, and also distracted me from working on those features. The positive side of this is the framework should be more usable by projects with either no custom UI, or their own UI implementations (eg: DHTML, Flash, etc). I left a build of the project code with UI support for previous prototypes, so those should still work.
- (11/25/2002): More Updates
PoetryAdded Desperate Times.
Engine Prototype #4
I've refined recent changes in Simple Network Transfer Prototype #4.
Big wins include corrections made to the engine service code, and example implementations of the wires feature to control menu item accessibility. Ironically, use of the feature in its present form makes menu items inaccessible and user experience is lessened until the revised UI framework code is finished
- (06/17/2002): Database Work
Connection PoolImplemented a connection pool for the content service.
Replicator
Recent security restrictions imposed by this site's host broke a local database that linked to the online MySQL database.
The solution, a replicator over HTTP, came together very quickly and, beyond being expediant, seems to work pretty well.
- (05/30/2002): Updated Backend
QueuedByteBufferI created a new queued buffer to store the top [(n) count] requested files in memory. The queue keeps track of requests and promotes files into the buffer when they are requested more than other files already held by the buffer. When the maximum size is reached, the file with the matching are lesser request count is displaced in favor of the new one.
Cache ReloadingCompressed files are cached to limit the number of times the server must compress the data. However, the entire cache was blown away everytime the servlet was restarting, which was about every 12 hours. Since many of these files won't change unless I rebuild the entire site, that was a waste of server cycles to compress them again. The ContentService is now a wee bit smarter in rebuilding its internal metric data for the cached and compressed files without recompressing them.
Content ServiceSeveral bug fixes to the ContentService class, as well as more configuration options.
Legal InformationI added a Legal Information document after considering email harvesters used by spambots. I thought a part of the acceptible usage of any site should at least include a statement as to whether or not email addresses, links, or subsets of data could be extracted from any particular document or content.
Email Address ObfuscatorIn thinking about the aforementioned Legal Information document, I created a basic email address encoder. The purpose is to allow users the benefit of clicking on a mailto: link, while at the same time preventing email harvesters from extracting the address. If anyone is interested in the approach I used, contact me for more information (or just look at the source of this page).
- (05/02/2002): Updated Servlet
Content ServiceMoved much of the content delivery code into a content service package, and cleaned much of it up. Also added additional options for controlling how the content is delivered.
Additional ConfigurationAdded more configuration options to the servlet, and increased its ability to reset various conditions via the config.
- (04/30/2002): Bug Fixes and Template Updates
Bug fixFound a rather nasty bug in the compressor when copying the response stream. This would screw up any non-compressed request.
Document TemplateUpdated template to include summary at the top of the page.
OtherOther minor content
- (04/11/2002): Servlet Fix
Application LogWhile working on a volunteer project, I discovered a rather unfortunate bug that has been the cause of much grief. It turns out the implementation of a static stream for the logger was really bad. I'm a bit miffed because I knew this was a bad idea, but another developer argued incessantly that a static stream must be used. I had left this stream as static and forgot all about it until tonight. Anyway, I removed moved the scope out of a static context and all is well in the world again.
- (04/11/2002): Brochure Updates
Ad CardsUpdated script and brochure HTML to not use absolute positioning for the ad cards. Some work remains, but I like the formatting much better.
IE FixIE has a problem with compressed content loaded from a page that is not compressed itself. The fix was to force a redirection through the compresser if the compressed script fails to load. Still, the time to download is still faster.
- (03/30/2002): Assorted
Content UpdatesToying around with front-page adverts for recent content.
Content UpdatesA couple formatting updates to some of the articles.
Updated CompressorMinor updates to how the server-side compressor logs usage information.
- (03/10/2002): Content and UI
Logo WorkAdded a branding option to dynamically inject the logo onto the background for most pages.
Content BordersAdded a content border. I went with a 3D-ish image to add more texture to the otherwise dry page templates.
ContentAdded a bunch of new poems. These were mostly transcribed from my poetry journals, though some were already in Word and WordPerfect documents.
- (03/05/2002): Changes to Summary XSL
Increase AwarenessThe log files indicate that some viewers are going back and forth in the summary/index pages, and I thought this may be due to links not being clearly defined. So, I added icons next to the index links, and adjusted the font color.
- (02/22/2002): Build Process
Updated Build OrderChanged the build order to create document index, summarize document data and build indices, transform documents, transform indices. There is a bug now with the content type on embedded docs. I'll write an article on the XML build process since I've learned some good things about it.
Moved What's NewMoved What's New to its own document.
- (02/21/2002): Logo
Updated LogoFor some reason, changing the logo around makes me think of Digital Goo.
Intro Page/What's NewStill deciding if What's New should be a separate page, or the content of the intro page. Since I'm sure there are all of two people reading this (me at home and me at work), I guess it doesn't matter right now.
- (02/20/2002): Build and Content Updates
Content SummaryAdded content summary for Fairy Bunking.
Content IndexerUpdated the code for generating the indices, and the XSL for transforming the auto-generated XML.
- (02/19/2002): Build Updates
Build ProcessNumerous updates were made to the build process. At present, it currently does the following: 1) builds a document index and creates a brief summary; 2) transforms non-generated and non-index documents; 3) summarizes information from the transformed documents; 4) creates the indices.
Link CompressorInstead of hard-coding the link compressor references (/servlet/CompressedRequest?file=blahblah), this process was moved into the intialization script.
- (02/18/2002): XSL and Content Updates
Update indicesUpdated the XSL that generates the indices. At present, the build process creates a master index of files and summary data. The indices draw upon that data, in addition to several external XML data files.
Content SummaryAdded content summaries to the science fiction documents.