Dev Dawn

Have been tightening up various aspects of the site.

 

Did some work on getting Recent Posts to actually show the Recent Posts (not Comic category, and not the First Post). Also, changed the background color of the Recent Comments div. Much better than the pink .. heh heh.

 

Tags are another aspect that desperately need some attention. So the purpose of this post is to check that they are working.

 

EDIT:

Well .. there’s some issues. I’ve got to read up on UTW to get my tags url working properly. Can’t do it now, gotsta get the next comic done.

Sometimes I get sad about the Clarion Community.

 

I’ve had a couple of mIRC channels running lately, apart from #cw-talk .. #gamedev (Game Dev) is a gaming channel, but a lot of the talk is about general programming.

 

And it’s sad, because even though there’s plenty of people jumping on with hairbrained ideas, they’re new people. Life. Wonky life, sure, but _life_. And the Clarion channel doesn’t have that.

 

The Clarion Community does have life. But not in terms of newbs coming in. I was a newb (i still am in a lot of ways) .. but that was 5 years ago. I think i’m one of the youngest clarion devs out there, and this year was the big 30 for me.

 

This isn’t a rant, nor does it have a solution. It’s just a _pondering_. Clarion is such an awesome development tool. It deserves to have a better life. And it will, I’m sure. Clarion 7 will bring at least a few more new people, even if it’s just because you can now .NET stuff.

 

If Dev Dawn ever makes it into the big league of blogs (the Reboot really does need some tightening before that’s gonna happen) .. then I’ll be pimping Clarion. I pimp Clarion now. But with readership .. I could have a lot more influence.

 

‘Nuff Said for the moment ..

Just uploaded the first comic after the Reboot.

 

There’s still a fair bit of work todo.

 

If you click on the comic, it takes you to the post, where I might have put stuff .. but now, i think i might change how that works. Perhaps i’ll try and hide comic posts altogether within the normal post viewing pages. Naturally, they suck when seen, specially if of width>500 pixels.

 

And I’m still yet to do the stuff I talked about in the previous post.

 

Cheers,

Well .. the face has changed, as has the underbelly.

 

The frontpage of Dev Dawn now looks substantially different. This is mostly to accomodate my comic fetish. Some of the new design might not stay the same. The single post, the blocks, no sidebar.

 

Of course, underneath things are similar to previous. The K2 theme has been upgraded to it’s latest incarnation. And this puppy is good. I’ve heard of problems, but as of yet, nothing I’ve experienced yet has brought grief.

 

Saying that .. there is something I’ll have to look into.

 

• Refreshing the page (F5) causes a major long load, and then the Rolling Archives control to sit there loading indefinately. Not sure why this is. Perhaps it’s my own code. Perhaps not. I’ll investigate on the forums etc tomorrow.  
• Also on the list of things todo is an Ajax Loader .. I’ve got the gif, just need to implement. And from a quick ferret around, it looks like i’ll need one of those library/framework thing-a-me-jigs. Prototype most like.
• Need to work on the css for the K2 Sidebar
• IE and it’s png no-read transparency requires that I fiddle with the pngs.
• … 

For now, I’m going to bed.

So, Firefox 2.0 is out .. and the people did cheer.

 

My five seconds with it reveals ..

 

Changes

 

• great new look
• Memory baby! Pages on closing, Plugins
• changed the interface for extensions/themes, bundled them together into one window
• shortcut for extensions/themes now doesn’t work
• shortcuts for some individual extensions don’t work (reported by Dan)

 

My Extensions Not Compatible

I know this is pretty crazy, Firefox 2.0 is just out, but i thought it might be of interest.

 

• Download Manager Tweak
• Inline Autocomplete
• Live Writerfox
• Tab Mix Plus

 

I wasn’t using Inline Autocomplete anyway. Live Writerfox was just sitting there. Not sure about the other two .. perhaps  the new features of Firefox 2.0 have squeezed them out? Not sure.

 

Anyway, here’s some piccies.

 

- You can see that the Menu links for Extensions and Themes are now merged into “Add-ons”

 

- Here’s the Add-ons window. Extensions and Themes are now tabs (well, not normal looking tabs .. nice pretty ones)

 

- Sexy Tabs! (vanilla, right outta the box)

 

- Some more pretties .. buttons have had a makeover.

 

 

I haven’t got any news on actual grunt, processes, how it handles load. This is just a two-second overview. Time will give us the other things.

 

Cheers,

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I wrote this late last week, but shelved it because i don’t really like being critical. It doesn’t help, and who am i to say people do things wrong?

Nevertheless, because i’m strapped for something substantial to put up at the moment, while i’m working on the Reboot .. thought it would make an okay post.

More than likely it will just show how i didn’t research the subject well enough. I actually did read up afterwards, and Telstra is just doing what any other comm. compmany does and wants to do. Hyping their Service/Product. And here in Australia, Telstra can do it bigtime.

 

Friday 13th October 2006

 

Obviously someone at telstra missed out on a few strategic moves.

 

Searching Technorati for “Telstra NextG” (without the quotes), reveals ..

 

 

Now, I realise we’re backwater yokels down here on the bottom of the earth, but come on. Seriously, this is worrying. Not a single blog (Telstra pimp or otherwise) generating noise about this .. well .. here’s a quote from the webpage (before actually getting to the content .. another wonderful decision from the web head honcho) ..

Next G is the next generation mobile network, bringing high-speed, wireless broadband internet to mobile phones and laptops across Australia. At launch, Telstra’s Next G Network will be more than 100 times bigger than any other 3G network in Australia!

Telstra’s Next G Network - delivering a host of personal and business services straight to the palm of your hand.

Okay, here’s a shot of the site.

 

 

Apart from the fact that I don’t like, and shouldn’t have to, select what kind of site I want to enter into (I understand why they make this decision, but don’t like it) .. I’ve got a pressing question.

 

 

“Faster, Simpler, Everywhere you need it.”

 

What is IT?

 

Clicking into the cool direction button .. we get this,

 

 

With a little song snippet looping in the background.

 

You say goodbye, and I say hello.

You say Yes, I say No,

You say Stop, and I say Go Go Go,

 

You say goodbye, and I say hello,

Hello, hello,

I dunno why you say goodbye,

I say hello

Hello, hello,

I dunno why you say goodbye,

I say hello.

 

You say goodbye, and I say hello,

Hello, hello,

I dunno why you say goodbye,

I say hello

Hello, hello,

I dunno why you say goodbye,

I say hello.

Riiiight. Apart from the fact that this repeating while right a review-ish blog post is totally fun. TOTALLY. My ears are bleeding.

 

“Hullo” is bearing into my skull.

 

Perhaps I’m missing some important points (don’t know if the song is actually a mainstream one, not up on that) .. but why have a line “You say Yes, I say No” .. that just seems wierd to me.

 

Why would NextG say No to me? Maybe they’re putting in a disclaimer for their porn filtering or something :).

 

Anyway, onto the site.

 

 

Down the bottom are the three links I was immediately interested in.

 

Each of the three links jumps you to their (the link name) specific page in the normal-looking Telstra website .. with some images and text letting you know NextG is .. roxor awesome.

 

Enterprise (link):

 

 

Business (link):

 

 

Wireless Broadband (link):

 

 

—

 

You know what .. I’m gonna call it how it is .. A great steaming pile of cow dung.

 

And if it’s not, then show me something more than ..

 

 

 

It’s not available for our wireless broadband mobile plans, but it will be soon.

 

Pardon me sir, but why then is it on your Awesomely Awesome NextG webpage?

 

I think they were pressured to released this NextG thing early. Way early. And so, they had to come up with a way of generating interest without actually telling us what it was.

 

Sure, it’s going to give us nationwide connectivity to web and foxtel and .. people. Well duh. Isn’t that what most phone/internet providers do and/or want to do?

 

Back to my initial point, which is validated partially (I think at least) by the premise it was a rushed launch.

 

There is little to no noise being generated in the web blogging world. Why is that? It’s like they completely forgot that part of the equation. Maybe they didn’t think it was part of the equation. That’s fair enough. Blogging isn’t that important.

 

Mad cakes.

 

What would I have done? Simple. Start generating interest through a well-established blog (which should have been in place for Telstra a long time ago). Actually, more than one blog .. has to be. Contact some important blog’s and ask them if they’d like to come and talk about NextG in interviews.

 

(Man that song is driving me nuts. Perhaps I should close the window ..)

The DevDawn Reboot is going nicely .. after a couple of hours this evening. My mind has cracked open the CSS mystery .. so now i’ve got divs and classes and ids out the wazoo.

 

Have got a bunch of comics fleshed out .. and some other stuff too. I guess it’s good to be doing something that isn’t coding development on the off time. Although it’s still as demanding.

 

In other news, Gary James has released Clarion Desktop, a very tidy little application that tells you what third-party clarion software you have on your pc. Actually, it does far more than that .. but go have a look for yourself.

 

Cheers,

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