Subtext.

Subtext 2.0: Bugs, Features, and Patches

Steven Harman — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:54:31 GMT

Plenty of other folks have already announced that the Subtext 2.0 bits finally dropped this past Sunday afternoon, hot off the CI server. And by finally, I mean – over a year after the last official release, and four months after we said it was just around the corner.

Good things come to those who wait

At least that’s what the Heinz company says. Or maybe they just had a brilliant marketing department.

Anyhow, Simone Chiaretta and several other folks have already hit the release highlights, so I’ll just steal their summaries:

Top notch support for Windows Live Writer thanks to some patches and check-ins from Tim Heuer

New CSS-based admin design that makes better use of apace

Support for mobile skins (and a default mobile skin if your favorite skin doesn’t have mobile support built in)

Streamlined installation Process

Support for Enclosures

CSS and JS optimizations

Setting a date in the future for publishing posts

Login to your blog using OpenID, as well as use your blog as an OpenID Delegate

Ch-ch-cha-changes!

As you can see, the new bits are packed with a metric crap-load of bug fixes, new features, and patches. And yes, metric-crap load is a technical term and a real unit of measure… or not, whatever.

But hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can get a full list of the changes here:

Bug Fixes

Delivered Feature Requests

Accepted Patches

Go get you some

Oh yeah, and I should probably link to the new bits: DOWNLOAD

Technorati Tags: subtext, open source, openid

Subtext v1.9.6 'Parley' Is On The Way, Finally!

Steven Harman — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 05:30:48 GMT

Despite my hope for a quick turnaround on the Parley release things just didn’t go that way... they rarely do.

I’ve got all kinds of excuses as to why it’s taken so long. Phil, Simone, and I each taking new jobs at Microsoft, Avande, and Quick, respectively, would be one. Carli and I buying a house and getting totally wrapped up in Buckeye Football would be a couple more.

But in the end, who care because no one like excuses. Isn’t there even some old cliché about how.

excuses are like... something... and they all stink...

Well something like that anyhow. (I cleaned it up for the kids) :)

We’re making progress

At any rate we’ve been making some good progress lately. Phil has been closing bugs and applying patches like it’s his job - which it’s not, getting the mvc.net bits ready is. And I just checked in the code for a new Customization piece that will allow a blog owner to set custom meta tags for their blog.

In building out the new Customization UX I made heavy use of jQuery and JSON web services, via JayRock, both of which were new to myself and the Subtext code base. The UX on the page is fairly complex and involved, but it serves as a proof of concept and example for myself and the other Subtext developers.

A rough release date

Phil has set a rough release date of December 8th, which is a little over a week away. To make sure we can hit that date, or at least something near it, we’re going to need your help.

Over the next week we’d really like to make a big push to get as many bugs closed as we can. If you’d like to lend a hand, please head over to the bug tracker, pick yourself a tasty bug, get it assigned to you, and go to town on it!

If you’re not much for bug-smashin', we also need help with testing. If you need help getting started, the Subtext Developer’s Mailing List or the Forums are both a great place to start.

Technorati Tags: subtext, open source

MySpace China Blogs are now Subtexting!

Steven Harman — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:36:12 GMT

Phil officially broke the news early this morning... but for those few of you that don’t read his blog - MySpace China is using a modified version of Subtext for it’s blogging engine. Flippin' Sweet!

Does this mean we’ve finally made it and we can start making insanely frivolous purchases like our own data center, ping-pong tables, and a yacht?

Nope, not even close.

That’s the beauty of the OSI license under which Subtext is released - others are free to do pretty much whatever the heck they want with Subtext. And that’s cool by us... where us is the collective community of Subtext’s developers, contributors, and users.

The plan is in motion

Now that MySpace China blogs, and their 1 million page views per day are running on Subtext I think it’s safe to say that our plan for world domination is finally under way. :)

Technorati Tags: subtext, open source

Subtext Origami Skin - Hotfix!

Steven Harman — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:44:24 GMT

Not too long ago a user sent us an email informing us that Subtext’s Origami skin didn’t have a #feedback tag, meaning it was missing a named anchor that would allow you to jump directly to the feedback portion of the page. I took a look and sure enough it didn’t.

This kind of bug is typically referred to as low hanging fruit - easy to spot, quick and easy to fix. So naturally I went ahead and added the named anchor tag, checked it into the Subtext SVN repository and called it fixed.

But it’s not fixed.

Today I was reading through some comments on my Life blog and noticed that the Gravatar image and comment title for the first comment of an individual post was not aligned correctly. A little inspection with Firebug and I found the issue.

Mea Culpa!

Apparently even low hanging fruit is sometimes too difficult for me to handle correctly. When I added the anchor tag I incorrectly made it a self-closing tag... which Firefox then misinterpreted and the mess pictured above resulted.

<div id="comments" class="section">
    <a name="feedback" />
    <h2 class="section-title">Your Comments.</h2>

Lucky for me the fix was a simple one. Where have I heard that before?

Like I was saying, the fix was pretty easy - I opened the skin’s Comments.ascx control and changed the anchor tag like so (notice the changes in bold):

<div id="comments" class="section">
    <a name="feedback"></a>
    <h2 class="section-title">Your Comments.</h2>

It’s magic, you know.

And just like that all is once again right with ~~the World~~ Subtext’s Origami skin. To all of the Subtexters out there, I would like to apologize for leading you astray... I’ll try my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Hopefully this blog post will get me back in your good graces. :)

Oh, and I should mention that this updated fix has been checked into SVN and will be in the forthcoming Subtext 1.9.6 release.

Again, Mea Culpa!

Technorati Tags: subtext, xhtml

Subtext v1.9.6 'Parley' Is In the Works

Steven Harman — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:32:58 GMT

After a very hectic month or so things are starting to slow down around here. They are slowly getting back to normal, or at least as normal as things ever were. And since Phil is utterly overwhelmed with Cody "O.G." Haack he’s been hounding me to give up my day job and spend more time Subtexting. Unfortunatly we’ve not found a rich benefactor to pay our salaries while we do what we love - build Subtext and evangelize the goodness of open source software.

But I digress...

The point of this rant?

The point is - we were not planning to do another Subtext 1.9.x release after the 1.9.5 Artificial Horizon release but rather focus full-force on getting 2.0 Poseidon out the door. However, as tends to happen we’ve all been really busy and haven’t had the time.

To tide you over and buy us a little more time on the 2.0 release I’m going to get busy and try to knock the 1.9.6 release out soon.

I’ve decided to codename this release Parley - as made famous by the Pirates movies. I think the name fits as I’m asking you, dear community, to give us safe passage and a little more time to get you the 2.0 release. And as payment for that generosity, we offer you Subtext 1.9.6 "Parley".

When are we gonna' get it?

No promises on an exact release date - but I’m shooting for mid to late August at the latest. And remember, that release date will get here sooner if you contribute too. :)

As always we welcome any and all contributions - even if it’s just to tell us how great we are and that you’d love to buy us a beer some time! Mmmm... free beer...

[Get Subtext]

Update: I just realized I spelled Parley wrong - so it has now been fixed through out the post. But fear not, my stupidity is now forever etched into the tubes of the Internet as the URL of this post won’t change.

Technorati Tags: subtext, parley, open source

Subtext Nominated for Two 2007 Community Choice Awards

Steven Harman — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:14:13 GMT

As several of my comrades have already announced, Subtext has been nominated for two, count 'em two Community Choice Awards! Apparently my pleading worked!

Nominations

Best Project for Communications: The best project for talking to your friends or sharing information. Other nominees include - Miranda, Pidgin, and FileZilla.
Most Collaborative Project: The project most likely to accept your patches and value your input. Other nominees include - Azureus, XOOPS, and Zimbra.

This is a really big achievement for the project and we're proud to be one of only two .NET projects to be nominated. The other project is VMukti, a corporate sponsored project.

Now go vote!

The winning project for each category is determined by popular vote... so we need you all to GO VOTE Subtext!

As far as I can tell, you'll need to have a SourceForge.net account in order to cast your vote, and you only get to vote once... so make it count!

Technorati tags: subtext, sourceforge, open source, community choice awards, asp.net

Lightbox and Subtext Galleries Integration

Steven Harman — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:25:47 GMT

Recently several Subtext users have asked how to integrate Lightbox JS into Subtext's photo galleries. My standard answer has been

Right now it's not possible because the control that renders the galleries emits links with relative URLs rather than fully qualified URLs. We'll look into making a change to the data binding mechanism for a future release - so hold tight!

I finally had a few spare cycles so I looked into the existing data binding logic and realized that it is possible to get the control to emit fully qualified URLs right now! Notice, I said it's possible, but I didn't say it's elegant.

How it works now

You'll need to edit your skin's GalleryThumbNail.ascx control. This control renders the thumbnail images for a given gallery using a simple asp:DataList control. The controller (code) that handles the GalleryThumbNail.ascx control looks for an asp:HyperLink control inside the DataList. It then populates the HyperLink with an ImageUrl, NavigationUrl, and ToolTip for each image in the gallery.

So your skin control probably looks like this:

<asp:DataList id="ThumbNails" runat="server" OnItemCreated="ImageCreated"
  RepeatColumns="4" RepeatDirection="Horizontal">
  <ItemTemplate>
    <asp:HyperLink Runat="server" ID="ThumbNailImage" CssClass="ThumbNail" />
  </ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>

Hack it to work now

<asp:DataList id="ThumbNails" runat="server"
  RepeatColumns="4" RepeatDirection="Horizontal">
    <ItemTemplate>
      <div class="thumbnail">
        <a href="<%# BaseImagePath + 
        ((Image) Container.DataItem).ResizedFile %>" 
        title="<%# ((Image) Container.DataItem).Title %>" 
        rel="lightbox[<%# ((Image) Container.DataItem).CategoryID %>]">
          <img src="<%# BaseImagePath + 
          ((Image) Container.DataItem).ThumbNailFile %>" 
          alt="<%# ((Image) Container.DataItem).Title %>" />    
      </a>
    </div>
  </ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>

NOTE: For brevity and to make it fit on the page, I've shortened the above code. You'll need to expand each of the five Image casts to use the fully qualified class name, Subtext.Framework.Components.Image.

Coming to a Subtext Installation Near You

I've made some changes for the next version of Subtext (the recently announced v1.9.6) that will make the data binding expressions a bit more concise and easier to read. So starting with the next release you'll be able to do this

<asp:DataList id="ThumbNails" runat="server"
  RepeatColumns="4" RepeatDirection="Horizontal">
    <ItemTemplate>
      <div class="thumbnail">
        <a href="<%# BaseImagePath + 
        EvalImage(Container.DataItem).ResizedFile %>" 
        title="<%# EvalImage(Container.DataItem).Title %>" 
        rel="lightbox[<%# EvalImage(Container.DataItem).CategoryID %>]">
          <img src="<%# BaseImagePath + 
          EvalImage(Container.DataItem).ThumbNailFile %>" 
          alt="<%# EvalImage(Container.DataItem).Title %>" />    
      </a>
    </div>
  </ItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>

I'll play around with the controller some more to see if we can make the code even more expressive - but no promises!

See it in action!

You can see the Lightbox2 and Subtext Galleries integration in action in my galleries. Check this one out: On the Town...

Technorati tags: subtext, javascript, lightbox, asp.net, open source

Nominate Subtext For a 2007 Community Choice Award

Steven Harman — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:55:28 GMT

The SourceForge.net team is proud to present our second annual Community Choice Awards. Winners are selected by community members like you, and it's that time again! Cast a ballot for your favorite projects now and make your voice heard.

That short blurb pretty much says it all.

The Community Choice Awards are a chance for you, the community of open source software users, to nominate and then vote on the projects that you find most useful, best designed, most collaborative, etc... Actually, there are eleven different categories that a project can be nominated for - though some may not be applicable to all projects.

How it works

Each project is eligible for nomination in any of the eleven categories. The projects with the most nominations in each category will become finalists in that category.

NOTE: You can nominate a project for any number of categories, but only once per category.

Next a voting period will open up during which community members, that's you, will cast votes to determine the winners.

When?

Nomination Period: June 4^th - June 29^th.
Voting Period: July 9^th - July 26^th.

What to do

If the nomination period is still open, go submit your nominations for Subtext.

If nominations are closed but there's still time to vote... Go VOTE!

Technorati tags: subtext, sourceforge, community choice awards, open source

Tip: Put Connection Strings in Their Own Configuration File

Steven Harman — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:46:29 GMT

asp.net 2.0 introduced a new section in the web.config file -ConnectionStrings. This new configuration section allows you to add connection strings in your web.config, like we always have, or in a different data source.

In Subtext 2.0 we're using this new feature to split the connection string out into a new configuration file, user.config. Doing this should make day to day development easier for our development team by reducing the number of merge conflicts in web.config. Since most every developer has a different database configuration, it makes sense to keep this information in its own file and away from the other more static configuration settings.

Show me how!

I'm a visual type of guy and typically get more out of a demo or code sample than from some author's rambling writing...

Subtext's web.config

<configuration>
  ...
  <connectionStrings configSource="user.config">
    <!-- you can still add connection strings here -->
  </connectionStrings>
  ...

As John pointed out in the comments, when using a configSource you must move all values under the configuration section into the external file. Which is why I've crossed out the comment in the above code sample.

The user.config

<connectionStrings>
  <add name="subtextData"
    connectionString="Server=.;Database=myData;Trusted_Connection=True;" />
</connectionStrings>

Then each developer modifies their user.config file for their setup. No more merging nor conflict issues with that sucker in web.config.

I realize you could still run into some issues where another developer accidentally checks in their user.config and then SVN tries to merge the changes into your file. But since the only thing in that file is the connection string settings, you can just revert the other developer's changes without the worry of losing other, intended, changes.

Connection string resources

In the above code you might have noticed that I set my Server equal to . (dot). I believe that is just shorthand for localhost, but I don't remember where I picked that up. Does anyone out there know?

In trying to find out where I first learned that syntax, I used the following resources that might help you get your connection string just right:

ConnectionStrings.com - an easy reference for connection strings
localhost vs. (local) in SQL Server connection strings
Force the protocol in your connection string - TCP, Named Pipes, etc...

Technorati tags: asp.net, programming, tip/trick, database, connectionstring, subtext

Does Web Software Need a 'Check Engine' Light?

Steven Harman — Fri, 25 May 2007 15:20:29 GMT

A recent post by security analyst David Kierznowske reports that 49 out of 50 WordPress blogs that he checked out were running an exploitable version of the WordPress blogging engine. According to the post, David looked at blogs running on versions as far back as WordPress v1.2 (with v2.2 being the most recent release, as of this writing).

So does this mean that WordPress is buggy software that is to be avoided? No, not at all. It just means that those users need to do a better job of dealing with the bugs.

The sky is blue and software has bugs

All software has bugs, it's just the nature of the game. And until some magic-voodoo methodology comes along, finally allowing us to write bug-free software, we're just going to have to deal with bugs the best we can.

And what is the best way to handle a bug? Step on it of course! When talking about software bugs that means keeping your application patched and up to date.

Jeff Atwood wants his software to diagnose and fix itself. I think that's a great idea for software systems like your OS or any other software running directly on your desktop/server - like your web browsers, media players, office applications, IM clients, etc... But what about your web-based applications?

The web is different

Do we really want our blog engines, wikis, forums, portals, etc... updating themselves whenever they see fit? I doubt it!

The image editing application running on your laptop suddenly restarting after updating itself is one thing. But having your entire web portal go offline at some random time because it just updated itself is another story entirely.

Keep users updated

Short of the fully automated patching and upgrading utopia that only exists in Jeff's dreams, I believe one of the best ways to encourage users to keep their web applications patched and up to date is to keep them informed. They need to know when a new version is available, or a new high-priority bug has been found, new skins or plugins are available, etc...

In the case of WordPress blogs, you can't blame the guys (and gals) who are building the application for having users that don't keep their blogs patched. There is even a disclaimer on the WordPress Download Archive site stating that

None of these [WordPress Versions] are safe to use, except the latest in the 2.0 or 2.1 series, which are both actively maintained.

Now, I know they have a mailing list that announces when new versions are available along with some other news, and that's a good start. But we as software builders need to do more.

Bring back the ID-10-T light

Perhaps a check engine light wouldn't be such a bad idea for web applications. Of course, I'm not talking about showing that light to the front-end user. I would build it into the applications dashboard - just like in a car - where the application administrator/owner/manager can see it.

In implementation this warning light may just be a built-in RSS reader that shows a short list of the most recent project news items... along with some UI goodness that will warn the user of important news, of course!

You know, I think I might just add that to my to-do list for the next version of Subtext.

Tell me about it

What am I missing? There have got to be some better ways to inform the users of web-based applications that they need to take action to protect themselves. Or is it more than just information that they are missing?

Is it just too hard to manage this stuff? Maybe. That certainly would help explain why so many of the WordPress blogs that David looked at were still running such old and outdated versions of the code.

Do we, the web application builders, need to figure out more seamless way to upgrade our applications? Probably yes... but that is a topic for a whole other blog post. :)

Technorati tags: software development, programming, security, blogging, open source, subtext, wordpress