Category: Software

Visualising search relevance with Google charts

Some search engines, particularly on content management systems, give a percentage figure for the relevance of a result to your search term. When viewing a lot of results on a page, the figures can tend to run into one another and be hard to quickly distinguish.

This was the case with a client site I’m building using CMS Made Simple at the moment, and the results page suffered from a lack of clarity. Thinking of a way to simplify the page, I remembered the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” and hit upon the idea of using Google’s Chart API to replace the figures:

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The Ideal Website for Textpattern

As I wanted to learn about Textpattern which many people speak so highly of, I decided the best thing to do would be to create a theme for it. My first effort is an adaptation of The Ideal Website WordPress theme; anyone so inclined can download a copy of it from textpattern.org.

Unfortunately, what I learned is that Textpattern is not suitable for most of the projects I work on. It’s easy to work with, but doesn’t have the flexiblity I require.


CushyCMS Review

CushyCMS is a very simple, nice idea for allowing users to edit content on their website without giving them access to the templates. It doesn’t allow changes to mark-up or style sheets, only titles, images and blocks of copy.

It requires that the site admin marks up the blocks that will be editable by adding class="cushycms" to their containing elements; the web-based application will then automatically find each marked element in the pages you assign to it and open a text area (with or without WYSIWYG editor) allowing the user to edit.

In its current state it wouldn’t be suitable for sites with a lot of pages, but if you run a small, brochure-type site for a customer who wanted to make occasional updates, this could be a better solution in some cases than installing a full database-powered CMS.

I’d prefer it to have a better WYSIWYG editor, and it would be more useful if the interface could be branded and hosted on your own server. However, the creators are open to feedback and these ideas and many others have been suggested already.

While it may not (yet?) be the answer to all your content management requirements, CushyCMS is a neat, clever little app that would be useful for small businesses or for small clients. It’s currently in Private Beta only, but if you watch the introductory video closely, that won’t be a barrier to entry.


Who can hook me up with twine?

Does anybody have a spare invitation to twine they’d be willing to send my way? I’m very curious to see what it’s all about.


Mozilla Prism: Am I missing something?

Although they didn’t create the concept, Mozilla popularised tabbed browsing with the release of Firefox. Tabbed browsing is, of course, a very good thing; the old IE model of having a separate window for every instance of a site you open became unmanageable when computers got more powerful and websites no longer slowed down the whole machine. Now all of the major browsers feature the tabbed interface.

Which makes Mozilla’s latest invention, Prism, seem a bit of a weird step backwards;

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Bringing out the GIMP

As an Ubuntu user at home, I don’t have the option of installing imaging software such as Photoshop. Luckily, the best free and open-source alternative, GIMP, has just released a new version – and it’s fantastic.

While it doesn’t perhaps have quite the myriad of features that Adobe’s product does, it does have every tool I’ve ever needed (and a few more besides). Like Photoshop it’s equally good for photo manipulation and web graphics creation; this introduction gives a good overview of its functions, and there are more detail in the features and release notes pages.

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Aside

I’ve updated my Speaking page to include more conferences, more videos, and a little on my speaking requirements and preferences. I’m planning to cut down on the number of talks I give in 2014 (twelve is too many), but am always open to interesting offers and opportunities, so please get in touch if you’re organising an event.

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