Sat, 17 Mar 2007

Mar 17, 2007, 15:04 [home/perl_scripts/blog]
Post Blog Script Modified

I've finally done some major modifications on the blogpost script… LONG overdue.

I cleaned up the code, helped it to handle memory a bit better, added some overwrite protection which should have been there all along, added more comments to the code, and put more explanation for the user as well.

~Jason

Update: Today I completely rewrote much of the code as well— it was way too complicated. I hope people like the changes I've made. It should be easier to use and understand.

Another update: Last night and this morning I rewrote some of the code again so that the script communicates with the web server and presents error messages, alerts, and confirmations without loading another page. Instead the alerts appear in an "iframe" and go away when the user resumes editing. I'm beginning to develop a new system to program Perl scripts which are more asynchronous… in other words, not only can the script communicate with the server, but hopefully the server can communicate with the browser independently. At the most simplistic level, error messages and alerts will appear from the web server without the user leaving the page. A real-world example of this style of web interface would be Gmail or Flickr. It's about time I started programming in this manner, considering how easy it is. Stay tuned!!

And More: I finally replaced the HTMLAREA WYSIWYG interface, (which only worked on Windows using Internet Explorer) with a new WYSIWYG interface called TinyMCE. This HTML interface uses JavaScript and works on all platforms and many browsers including Opera, Firefox and IE. The HTMLAREA interface was very lite, didn't use much server space, and was super easy to configure. The TinyMCE interface is more complicated— but the cross platform benefits are obvious. Soon I will be replacing HTMLAREA in AutoFollowup and other scripts which require WYSIWYG.