Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

One, two, three.....

Hamish: hi Dee.

I would really like to see a "GEEK'S CORNER" for comments relating to ideas about how to improve WD. There's a wealth of info "out there" amongst the users - not all of it would be relevant, but many comments from me would be about nice tips about software updates eg of Movebable Type, page layout on different platforms, as seen by different users and on various monitors, and about graphics issues. An Idea?

The Webdiary archive is now here:
http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/margo_kingston/

Good luck and best wishes,

Ed Kerri: There'll be a few new paths to make and track during this move. This archive link posted by David features:
*all threads dating back to July 2004, and
*all comments on those threads.
Sometime in the not-too-distant we will have all five years of Webdiary archived on our permenent home.

Hi guys, I got a whole lot of e-mails as well, it was a hoot, great way to meet people. Loved the comment from someone who said words to the effect; "I only made one right wing post to that looney lefty sight and look what happened."

Anyway good to hear all is well and best wishes for a great future.

Good luck with the new Digs !

There seems to be a nasty virus getting out and about from this website that is sending out infected files to all the subscriber base, I have had approx 40 - 50 within the last 30 minutes. Can you get the propellor heads to get onto it?

ed Kerri: the blood has already flowed... the account has been disabled.

Caz Hart, I am late in replying to your post because I wanted the site to settle a bit before I made any technical comments. I agree with you totally about the navigation and wasted screen space - even on the laptop I regularly use wasted space is about half the screen and basically looks silly. That is usually corrected by tweaking the size attributes in the stylesheets.

I ran the URL through the W3C Markup Validation Service to check for W3C compliance and the page falls short on a number of factors, including the XML it uses. This is not an issue normally for page viewing if you are using Windows XP but it could become an issue on older systems and for cross-browser compatibility. Not everyone uses IE: many have switched to the far superior Firefox or other Mozilla browsers.

Lean and clean code also helps prevent page and site crashes especially if you are using tables generated from style sheets.

There are 39 errors on the page I tested including non-XML compliant tags, some scripting problems and missing "alt" tags for images. These may be design problems associated with the TypePad software. Alt tags are necessary for text-only browsers and for accessibility for screen readers for visually impaired users.

I realise this sounds very nitpicky and anal but web design is nitpicky and anal.

The comment boxes and preview function are vast improvements on what went before.

I assume all archived material will be available at some stage. As far as site content a useful function would be not only a search window for topic and keyword searches but a search function which would enable people to search all posts by a particular poster, a very useful function which anyone who has ever used bulletin boards appreciates.

Caz I was wondering about that spam business though the Viagra spam has eased off somewhat, possibly related to the arrests of many prolific spammers.

I think it is linked in my case to dear old Telstra being very stingy at maintaining its servers because it seems to be associated with the number of emails I receive in one day. For every ten or so emails I seem to get one spam one. Since I use a virus-proof open source mail client rather than the evil Outlook then the spam must be coming from the server. Wonder if Sol will get that fixed?

Ed Hamish: Dee, I've moved your post to this thread, and linked back to Caz's, in the hope to move the technical discussion - which is very important to us, away from general discussion. Thankyou for your thoughtful suggestions and criticisms. We welcome more.

Margo, I really find the fact that the recent comments disappear, annoying.

I don't understand why the last say 10 comments can't be left showing.

Is there a reason for it?

Ed Hamish: Sorry Jolanda. There's a few tech problems with this site, but we're concentrating most efforts on the permanent site. I have looked at the very problem you speak of and have put it in the 'too odd' basket.

If anyone with experience with Typepad has encountered this problem and has a solution please let us know. The code looks right and often it works!

Dear Margo, a personally signed copy of your book,Not Happy John! literally jumped out at me from the shelf of The Yellow Book Store in Yeppoon recently and I had the pleasure of reading it while on Great Keppel Island. I could not put it down!

It has heightened my political awareness totally-I now have gone from a position of whining about the future of this fantastic country to getting off my backside to read more and to become INVOLVED for my future grandchildren's sake, who will deserve to live in a country of educational, social and work opportunities and freedom, as I have done.

Hi, I'd read more if you'd publish full stories in your RSS feed.

I maintain a folder for partial-content-feeds, and every now and then I check it to see if they've gone full-story. If they havent done so by the time I stop missing the content, they get deleted.

I'm now moving Webdiary in there.

Maybe you just didnt realise how annoying partial-feeds can be, maybe it's a typepad restriction, but either way, please rectify this.

ed Hamish: I've changed the configuration to full-feeds, because I could see no reason why not.

Hi there, this has probably been covered before but is it really necessary for the comments to be in the reverse order?

It goes against the standard practice on forums, blogs etc and I find it really irritating.

All the best.

Ed Hamish Alcorn: yep, it's been mentioned before. Please be patient while we build our permanent home on Drupal. Also, next time please provide a full name, or no post. See Webdiary's Ethics.

Hi Margo, heard you on Phillip Adams a little while ago and heard you mention you were going out on your own weblog. Hadn't visited the SMH weblog with you before however had quite often picked you up on Phillip Adams radio program "Late Night Live" - and thoroughly enjoyed what I heard! Now I've located you via Crikey.com. I'll be back! Good luck.

Hopefully you are smarter than the AGE/SMH.

I'm so close to dumping the SMH forever, a paper I read since I was eight. But as I can no longer read their print edition, I require their web edition be readable.

When are you technical @#$%^ going to go from first response at top to last at bottom. It's like the disability discrimination of the SMH has carried over here.

Why do you think it is smart to make people scroll down and up constantly.

This is so basic. I did complain to the Age's IT expert (who does the SMH web site - well I emailed SMH and the Age replied) but as SMH had demonstrated spin on making the site unavailable to people THAT CAN'T SEE TINY LETTERS it went nowhere.

You had the opportunity for a new SMART start and bought over this ridculous last to first.

YOU ARE NO LONGER THE SMH with it's technically incompetent staff.

Even MS gets this right.

ed Hamish: David, I moved your post to this thread so as not to distract the discussion. As you can see, you're not the first to raise this issue and it is not over. My only request really is, please be nice.

I normally access Webdiary from another machine but am stuck tonight on the kids' PC and can't see the side bars that I normally use to check latest comments etc.

Does access to these normal functions require a very current setup of browser version, plug ins etc?

I would hope a forum like this would target a minimalist PC/browser set up.

I am using MSIE 5.

ed Hamish: thanks for the feedback Jenny. We are building a site on Drupal and wish to cater for as many as practicable. GM David adds: being technical for a second, the HTML for the temporary site is almost completely out of our control, being constrained within the limited design parameters of Typepad and what little we can specify. With the new site it's all up to us, so can a) blame us if it doesn't work, but b) we can actually do something about it!

When the new site comes, could you consider a "printer friendly" version of the articles? There's many items I'd rather read with a cup of tea in a comfortable chair - especially when the content is uncomfortable!

I probably wouldn't want to include the comments in this: they could go on for half a tree at times.

Will do, Anthony. Good idea.

Dear Margo, this is not a comment on anything in your web pages but a problem with the site itself.

It seems that the right hand side of the web page is no longer accessible despite my trying all sorts of things to be able to see it all. Letters and words are just not visible any more and the page is just too wide.

I hope you can rectify it because it is becoming more difficult to read the articles.

Otherwise, keep up the good work.

ed Hamish: Thanks Mannie. There is an ongoing discussion around here about to what extent we should cater for smaller screens and older software at the expense, perhaps, of state-of-the-art possibilities for the new site under construction. Yours is a powerful argument for the former. We do want everyone to be able to view the material.

Wow - all this time you have spent trying to bring down John Howard - he has outlasted you...

Another left wing journo bites the dust.

Margo, when I tested the bits and bobs page I mirrored it here so it can sit there temporarily until your new site is up and running.

ed Hamish: thanks Dee - very concise and helpful.