Improved Journal

Well, after a few more hours of hacking, I think my modifications to Ciaran's blogging code are complete (for now at least). Thanks to him, I fixed a number of bugs, including the “Remember Me” function on comments. But, wait, there's more!

Yes, I've done some more minor adjustments. Nothing terribly noticable mostly - a few design tweaks that probably no one will notice. However, while I was at it, I added XML/RSS headline support to the code too.

Now, if you aren't familar with RSS, its a format pioneered by Netscape and Userland (yes, the same Userland of Radio Userland fame). Awhile back, Netscape wanted a convenient way to include syndicated headlines in their My Netscape site. Well, the predecessor to RSS (RDF) was the creation, and soon lots of sites adopted it. In fact, for a time, any site could be included in My Netscape because of this. My Userland sprung up later on, and they ended up pioneering much of what would become the RSS standard.

Alas, My Netscape moved back to a proprietary system - so now only a select few sites are included in its catalog - and My Userland bit the dust in an effort to move everyone over to Radio Userland. All is not lost though, some sites, such as my company's FaithTree.com still offer portals that use RSS, and places such as Slashdot use RSS headlines too. Finally, many desktop news aggregators such as KNewsTicker (included with KDE) and Radio Userland offer RSS support.

The great thing about RSS is, even though some of the major support is gone, literally thousands of sites still offer channels. In fact, every PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, or Slashcode powered site automatically comes with RSS output support. That includes sites such as Open for Business and LinuxDailyNews.net (bias alert: the first site is owned by my company, the latter is sponsored by it).

Anyway, now Tim's Journal can enter the arena as a proud supporter of this wonderful open format. You can find my RSS file at http://uninetsolutions.com/tbutler/journal/journal.rss.