Categories
Software and Programming

Subscribing to RSS bookmarklet

If a site has an RSS feed, it’s becoming standard to stick a link to it in the <head> section of the webpage, using markup like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://corky.net/dotan/log/index.rdf" />

Apparently, I deleted that markup when I re-did my site. Oops. I should fix this sometime.

It’s easy to find that link if you’re using Mozilla and have set it to show the Site Navigation Bar (look under View > Show/Hide). It’s easy to get at with Javascript on Mozilla (and probably on IE6 too), the only question is, what to do with it?

Well, Radio Userland has a feature which let’s you subscribe (in Radio) to an RSS feed by clicking a link (the standard icon for that is an “XML Coffee Cup”. XML Coffee Cup Other aggregators (like SharpReader, which I’m using now) support this feature, or similar methods. There’s an online service that acts as an adaptor, letting you subscribe with a click through any of the methods it knows.

Here’s a bookmarklet (favlet? nah.) that can find the link markup and subscribe to the RSS feed. There are two versions, one for the XML Coffee Cup protocol, and another for the adaptor service.

RSS Radio subscribe XML Coffee Cup

subscribe RSS subscribe to syndication

Update: apparently, Marp Pilgrim already wrote pretty much the same thing, except his code is a bit more anal. It’s not as if this is hard. If my stuff doesn’t work, try his.

Categories
Software and Programming

Thanks, Phil

In response to my previous entry, Phil Ringnalda posted a comment here explaining that there’s an undocumented Movable Type option that does what I want (print your timezone in the format required by RFC822).

Phil says he prefers to use the 3 letter code for a timezone (i.e, PDT), and talks about the problem of daylight savings time and your server being in another timezone. However, I’m in Israel, and I think 3 letter codes only cover the USA; my server is in the same timezone as I am, so no problem there, but daylight savings time is determined by government fiat and coalition-wrangling (the religious parties traditionally want to early, apparently to make life easier for those observing the early morning rituals related to the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, or something like that). So my timezone here isn’t really scientific, it’s political. Oy.

Also, using trackback takes some getting used to. I hit Phil’s site with multiple pings while copyediting this entry.

Categories
Software and Programming

Eric Sink, CornSharp, Mosaic

Lots of interesting reading on Eric Sink’s weblog (well, interesting if you’re a programming geek). Just two examples – he’s put up a nice little client-side weblog-management tool he wrote in C# for managing his site (CornSharp), and he’s got a nice piece on his Memoirs From the Browser Wars.

Categories
Software and Programming

CSS: More Than Ketchup

Dave Winer got flamed and parodied when he complained about CSS in the mildest of terms, blaming CSS designers for smearing ketchup on his tie. But when JWZ complains in a more blunt fashion that Web designers, and especially blogging web designers, are self-important fuckheads, all he gets is help and good advice.

Why? Perhaps because of the blogging/LiveJournal divide, perhaps because people are just much happier to dump on Dave.

Categories
short Software and Programming

Unix Funnies

Unix funnies