Thursday, December 02, 1999

There's an XML-RPC implementation underway for Apache. This is excellent news. We run Apache at UserLand. It's the one machine on our LAN that we can't XML-RPC into.

MetaFilter has one of the neatest tools I've ever seen. A floating window of links. I want one of these!

I just started a news site at VelociNews. What do you all think? I like Pitas better. Hmmm.

I love getting email like this. The Frontier installation wizard is an innovative piece of software that not too many people have seen. It's a server app, running on a UserLand.Com server. The machine that's being configured sends XML-RPC messages to the server every few seconds saying "Are they done yet?" When the user clicks on Finish in the last wizard panel, the server responds "Yes, and here's the info." The copy of Frontier that's being configured then does what it was told to do. We used the browser to configure a desktop app, alleviating the need to write custom dialogs and installer scripts for different OSes.

Mike Murry is fusing Manila and Cold Fusion.

New sample: serverMonitor.root: "If you operate more than one server, as we do at UserLand.Com, wouldn't it be great if there was one page you could go to to quickly find out if all your servers are running and how they are performing?"

MacWEEK: "Two vector-animation packages enter; one vector-animation package leaves."

Michael Wolff in New York: The E Decade. (Cover story.)

Ken Dow, the new Managing Editor for the Manila-Newbies site posted a survey asking what the favorite feature is. A great use of new technology. (I voted for Edit this Page, so did everyone else, so far.)

InfoWorld changed their template again. Every non-subtle change in a website I frequent is as jarring as re-arranging the commands in a piece of software I use frequently. It's a risky proposition for the site, every time they pull a major switch, they might lose users. Sometimes it takes months before I re-learn how to use a site after a re-design.

One of the things you hear a lot on the InfoWorld discussion boards is that they should try out a redesign with a few users before flipping the switch. I totally agree. Well, in that spirit, we're working on a new design for Scripting News. What do you think?

A reminder to the gullible. Scripting News started on 4/1/97. If you still don't get it, look at the URL.