News Blog - Browsing Website
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Alter an Individual Collection’s Layout and Appearance
I've received multiple questions on how to alter the appearance of one collection from another if they both use the blog plugin. The blog plugin provides multiple views on a collection such as:
- Blog Entry (with expanded approval and commenting features)
- Blog Listing (which supports view by year, month, day, category, author, contributor, etc.)
- Blog Home
- Windows Live Writer Manifest
- Site Map
So, for example, when both the blog collection and page collection use the same plugin, they also use the same view. This means that they ultimately use the same core markup for display in the browser. However, through composition and the usage of YUI Grids, you can make one collection look very different from the other collection even if they are using the same views.
Let's take this very site, http://atomsite.net and dissect how it makes the info pages look different from the blog pages without changing the core markup.
- First, within the service.config file, change the YUI Grid Template for the page as seen in the picture to the right. The default value is yui-t6 but for the BlogEntry and BlogListing pages in the info collection, I've changed it to yui-t2. This makes the side bar show up on the left side and makes it smaller.
- Next, change the widgets that show up in the sidebar. For the Info Collection, I've put a table of contents index entry in the sidebar for easy navigation of the documentation. I've also moved the search widget to below the content.
- Finally, tweak the CSS to get the perfect look by using the yui-t2 class selector.
If you need even further control over the markup, AtomSite supports having different themes across collections.
In a future release (hopefully AtomSite 1.3), we'll add the doc and template settings to AtomSite Manager so they are easy to change.
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AtomSite Now Available on Web Platform Installer
I'm pleased to announce that AtomSite is now available in the Windows Web App Gallery and can easily be installed using the Web Platform Installer.
The installer can put AtomSite directly on your server and configure it with the required permissions to get the application up and running quickly. We've built and tested the application to work on IIS7 in integrated mode. However, we are looking for testers and developers to help modify the application to run under Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with older versions of IIS. Please contact us if you interested in helping us support those platforms.
To the right is a picture of the Web Platform Installer running within IIS7. Installing is as easy as clicking a button and choosing the file and web locations.
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Script-Sharing Site PoshCode is Based on AtomSite
The poshcode.org site has been redesigned on top of AtomSite. The guys behind this site have done an outstanding job:
The site is currently in use for the 2009 Summer Scripting Games.
I'm looking forward to working with them in the near future to pull in some new features and updates they've made to AtomSite.
For example,
- OpenSearch
- Profile page (mainly for Google users)
- Better author/contributor listings
- Improved FileRepository performance for large collections
The source code is available on CodePlex.
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New Admin Area Coming Soon
Thus far, AtomSite has relied on the built-in AtomPub support to allow LiveWriter to manage posts. This has worked out great so far and allowed us to focus on other area's of the system. However, a CMS/Blog Engine isn't complete until it has a built-in, easily accessible administration area.
You can expect AtomSite's administration area to be heavily influenced from WordPress. They've done such a great job on their administration that we are borrowing their best ideas.
WordPress 2.8 Edit Post Screenshot
AtomSite 1.0 Edit Entry Prototype ScreenshotThe WordPress screenshot is from 2.8 beta and our screenshot is from an alpha. Obviously the icons, menu, and layout need work. We are hoping that for the 1.0 release, we'll have:
- Dashboard (no drag drop yet)
- Right Now
- Recent Comments
- Incoming Links (next release)
- Quick Publish (next release)
- Recent Drafts
- AtomSite News (next release)
- Entries
- Filtering (next release)
- Paging
Inline editingBulk
- Annotations
- Filtering (next release)
- Paging
- Plug-ins
- Enable/Disable
- Settings
- Workspaces (next release)
- Collections (next release)
Please add a comment if there is anything you like/dislike about WordPress Administration.
- Dashboard (no drag drop yet)
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Extended Entries Support
I added extended content support for people who like to only show part of the post on their feed and listing pages.
There is a new setting on each collection called "ExtendedEntriesOn" which will alter the wlwmanifest.xml depending on the setting. Please note that setting this value to false will not disallow the <!--more--> tag. However, a theme designer may alter the display/layout of the theme based on this setting.
The collection page and simple entry partial were modified to have a "Read More" link whenever there is extended content.
For feeds, if ExtendedEntriesOn=True then each entry in the feed will not show the extended content (it will only show the content before the split).
Live Writer has built in support for splitting entries as seen in the picture to the right.
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New Theme Hibiscus
This theme has not yet been updated for Release 0.9.
Release 0.7 has a new theme called Hibiscus. You can see this theme applied to the latest release on our test server: http://atomsite.net. To save time, the theme is built on top of the default theme using an import.
@import url('../default/default.css');This theme consists of only a CSS stylesheet and eight new images. The rest of the theme is inherited from the default theme. The theme can be applied to either a single collection or a whole workspace by setting the theme property in the Service.config document.
<workspace svc:default="true" svc:theme="hibiscus">I created this theme for my wife Kristin. It is based on a clipart found at the open clip art library called Hibiscus Remixed. Kristin altered the colors and I created the CSS and other images.
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New Global Date and Time Support
With .Net 3.5 there is great new support for working with dates across time zones. Check out Dan Rigsby's blog for some great posts about the new classes.
Working with Dates and Times in .Net 3.5 Series:
Part 1: DateTime vs. DateTimeOffset in .Net
Part 2: TimeZone vs. TimeZoneInfo in .NetBlogSvc directly benefits from these enhancements in two ways:
- Configure all dates to show in preferred timezone
- Show time relative to the user (via jQuery)
Two new configuration settings allow you to control which timezone your website uses. The TimeZoneInfoId sets the timezone based on the timezones loaded on the server. The TimeZoneDisplay sets a shorthand value that can be shown next to the times on your site.
BlogSvc utilizes the <abbr> to allow a concise view of the date. By hovering over the date you can see an unambiguous view of the time. BlogSvc also uses the jQuery Time Ago plugin to show relative times that make sense to viewers.
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Theme Scenarios
The development team is discussing themes in BlogSvc. I'm really interested in pushing towards using stylesheets as the primary method of altering a theme. As demonstrated by the success of the CSS Zen Garden, designers are comfortable working with CSS. I also believe it is safe to say that as browser technology continues to mature, designers will gain additional flexibility through CSS improvements.
The end-user scenario is very important to me and I want to target the whole range of users. Lets start with a non-technical user like my lovely wife. After talking with her, the ideal workflow for her would be:
- Click a link on her blog that takes her to a website like http://www.freewpthemes.net/
- Click a link on her blog that takes her to a website like http://www.freewpthemes.net/
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BlogSvc Now Supports Comments
The WCF annotation support in BlogSvc has been updated with the standardized Atom Threading Extensions. The website has also been updated with a very unique method of creating new comments. Lets just say, classic forms + jquery + ajax + rest = awesome. Most of the new code is in the Annotate.ascx. And most of that code is javascript/jquery code.
Currently, BlogSvc only supports anonymous comments. I do plan to support OpenID. In the meantime, all commentators are required to supply an email and website. Commentators can use html in their comments. I am using some anti-xss code to sanitize the html.
Thanks to jquery there is some pretty validation going on. I must say, I really like jquery. However, there are some quarks when working with jquery and calling a service that returns xml with a custom content-type such as application/xml+atom. However, I found workarounds to get things working.
Finally, BlogSvc does support threading comments. However, the website does not yet support annotating an annotation. It should be very easy to add using jquery.
I've also added some technical information to the Documentation.
Feel free to leave a comment to test things out.
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From Urn to Tag URIs
I'm migrating the usage of the urn scheme for IDs to the tag scheme. Only registered types are allowed to use the urn scheme. The tag scheme actually fits in very close to how I was using the urn scheme so the migration should be pretty painless. I've posted a new entry about URIs and URLs in BlogSvc that give plenty of examples of how BlogService will ID and locate resources.
