Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
scriptingNews outline for 12/14/2000
Author: Dave Winer Posted: 12/14/2000; 6:45:31 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 12/14/2000 Msg #: 22018 Prev/Next: 22017 / 22019
Salon: "He tends to be bipartisan when you agree with him."
James Snell: US Ballot Markup Language.
Wired: Building a better ballot box.
News.Com: FTC approves AOL-Time-Warner merger.
Linking to XML
I have a design problem this morning.
I need a very small icon, probably 12-by-12, that says "Click on this to get the XML version of this content." I want to make it easy to go from the HTML rendering of a directory to the OPML source. I have the information at-hand in the directory renderer.
Since the icon has to be small it probably should be an X on an orange background, kind of like the Qbullet icon we're using for help. I don't want to spell out XML because it's been so hyped, and it's hard for an average reader to know why they should care. (Of course we'll put a title attribute on the link so if they want to know what it is there's a chance they can.)
I can see this convention being useful in other places, linking from a story box to the RSS source for that box.
The philosophy: XML should be tucked out of the way of the reader, but easy to find for system developers and power users.
Postscript: Steve Ivy designed an icon that looks pretty good. He points out that it could be mistaken for a close-box on a window. I'm going to try linking it in and let's give it a whirl and see if it can be improved on.
PS2: I think we need to spell it out.
PS3: I punted on the icon, falling back to plain text. Too much trouble to get it to look good. It'll be in the directories template on each Manila site, so if you want to play with graphics, you can.
RPC for Blogger?
Looks like they're doing some kind of RPC at Evhead.
(Evan Williams is the top guy at Pyra, the company that makes the world-famous kickass weblog editor, Blogger.)
This morning I love my country
Tons of kickass mail this morning.
To my call for a citizen program to add integrity to the electoral process, David Lloyd-Jones said "We have exactly such a program in place already: it's called politics." Amen.
Editorials: Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Houston Chronicle, Japan Times, LA Times, Miami Herald, NY Times, SF Chronicle, South China Morning Post, Times of India, Toronto Globe and Mail, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.
My heart swells with pride that we haven't forgotten that we're a country of winners!
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