My First WWDC Above: Apple’s live App Store wall at WWDC. It showed icons of 20,000 iPhone apps,…
Tense Log 2.0 beta and Tense Index 3.0 beta available April 1st!
No jokes. The first beta versions of Tense Log 2.0 and Tense Index 3.0 will be available soon. I’ve made some major changes since my last update and at this point I’m down to just minor tweaks, bug fixing, and writing the documentation. This very journal is running on Tense Log 2.0 now, so can see some of the new features in action. I’m also working on an update to the Tense Code site—that’s the work-in-progress version above.
Here’s a list of some of the latest additions to Tense Log:
- Saves entries as you type. As I write this, the entry is being saved to a Drafts folder with every key stroke. If the power goes out, my browser crashes, or I accidentally hit that close box, no problem—it’ll be there when I come back.
- Live comment previews. You can check this out in the comments area of this entry. Just start typing and your text will appear below. Try out the Add Markup link to put in some bold text or a link—it’ll all appear formatted in the preview.
- Template tags aren’t just for templates anymore. You can now use them inside entries. Want to insert a few images, with automatically resized thumbnails? Sure thing. A list of your latest Last.fm tracks? No problem. A list of entries from another category? Yep.
- Grouped categories. You can have a page that displays entries from two or three of your other categories… Whatever you like. You can even group them together in the navigation, and nest directories inside of each other. It’s hard to explain, but the important bit is that it lets you create a complex site really easily. In the future this entire site will be managed with Tense Log—not just the journal.
- Page names for entries. Instead of an ugly link like
junecloud.com/entries/3723/you can have nice pretty ones likejunecloud.com/journal/design/tense-log-update.html - Put uploads wherever you want. There are now very few restrictions on where you can create folders and upload files. You can even have entries and files that appear in the same directory.
- Hidden categories and templates. Say you want to make something publicly available, but you don’t want it linked to directly? Easy.
- Further improvements to the template system. Before a single template was basically split into 2-4 different parts. Now each layout can be stored in one complete template file. I’ve also added some other cool stuff like “if” blocks… In case you want a section to only appear if a certain field has been filled in, for example.
- In my last update I mentioned that “RSS feeds now use last-modified headers to send the feed only when it has been updated.” Well, this now applies to the entire public area. It saves bandwidth and server resources. In addition I’ve made some database optimizations, and things feel noticeably snappier now.
- Just added: automatic curly quotes, ellipses, and em-dashes!
Here’s are some of the latest additions to Tense Index:
- I’ve completely overhauled it with the same template system that Tense Log 2.0 uses. That means it’s simpler and more flexible to use, with XML style tags and a ton of new options. It really opens up a lot of new possibilities.
- You can now mix galleries and regular lists in a single template. It’s hard to explain, so here’s an example!
- Images now show in a nice little popup window, like Tense Log, so you can browse through galleries more easily.
Interested in trying this stuff out? Stop by Tense Code in two weeks!
Update: The new Tense Code site is up, stop by and take a look! The site was created entirely with Tense Log 2.0, using a single, simple template. The Tense Log 2.0 manual is available for download now as well, if you’d like to take a look at the complete feature list or read about the installation process.
View more
Design
Getting creative with transparent PNGs for Delivery Status The old Delivery Status graphics system When I started the Delivery Status widget it…
Business Cards My new business cards finally showed up today, and they look awesome. Same as with…
Welcome to Junecloud! When I first started running my own business full time a few years back, I really…
Comments
This entry has 2 comments.
fens wrote on August 6, 2006:
$_SERVER[‘document_root’] is not a good idea.
example: include($_SERVER[‘document_root’].’/library/modules/login.php’);
Use :
include_once( realpath( dirname( __FILE__ ) . ’/library/modules/login.php’ ) );
Mike Piontek wrote on August 6, 2006:
Thanks for the feedback. I know $_SERVER[‘document_root’] won’t work on some servers, but I’ve yet to find a better solution.
I afraid your suggestion will not always give the correct path. $_SERVER[‘document_root’] gives the document root of the server, not necessarily the same directory the script is in. Unless the script is in the same directory as the library folder, your suggestion would fail.