I have a couple of gripes with the current crop of blogging apps. Movable Type makes blogging easy, but could it be easier?
I’ve been looking for a small project to test out the Rails framework, so I’ve decided to combine that with exploring ways to reduce the time and complexity involved in creating a blog entry. This will be an ongoing series of articles, but this is a low-priority project, so each edition may take a while.
As with any user-centric project, we’ll start with the user interface.
For this installment of This Old Blog, we'll be looking at the only kind of Modeling that anyone will ever ask me to do: Object Modeling with UML.
You may have already seen something on TiddlyWiki floating around the blogosphere. If you thought, "Blech, yet another Wiki", without checking it out, adjust your attitude and go check again, because you're missing out on one of the most original concepts to hit the web in some time. A…
Wow. Some nice ideas here, and some nice code. I think it's perfect for a blog where the authors are technically minded. However, for my regular clients, I can just imagine the confusion that would set in. Maybe I'm underestimating my clients, but I can imagine them struggling with the concept of a different page for them compared to regular visitors. It would also be nice if logged-in authors could still preview the regular page without logging out first -- some sort of "show/hide admin tools" button would be more than enough, and might help the non-techy clients "get it" a little more.
Wow. I had just the opposite reaction from Justin... I want it now! I'm planning a collaborative blog that will be authored mostly by non-technical people. If they could just go to the site and start typing, rather than going through the MT interface, I think it would be a lot less confusing and frustrating for them. And the authors being able to see each other's draft posts would be a great boon for collaboration. Hope you'll keep us up to date on your progress with this.