Entries tagged with tech:coding

Several weeks ago, I posted asking for something to post Delicious bookmarks to Dreamwidth, and while murklins gave me several solutions, none of them satisfied my exact needs. I decided to post the links manually, but that only lasted one week. Way too much work :D

So I coded my own script, and I've been using it for the last couple of weeks.

Delicious to Dreamwidth allows one to post their public bookmarks, either all of them or selected by tag. Frequency can be set anyway one likes (and cron allows).

I spent some time finding a decent list of countries that I could feed into a MySQL database, but that turned out to be more difficult than I thought, so I made my own and thought I'd share (and leave it in an easy to access place for future use, too).

You can turn the navigation strip on and off on the Viewing Options page. By default, there are only colours offered, but you can modify this with a little CSS.

For S2 layouts, you need to go to the Custom CSS box and add the appropriate code in it. Save changes and reload your journal. You may have to clear your cache.

ETA 2007-08-12 15:14 GMT+02: Addition of the S1 tutorial.

ETA 2007-08-12 18:00 GMT+02: Correction of a bug for the NS fixed at the bottom of the window.

Epiphany users

1. Enable GreaseMonkey by going to Tools/Extensions.
2. Install the GM LJ Skins script: Go to the page of the script and right click on the button "Install this script". Choose "Install a user script".
3. Go to the Userstyles.org page of the style you want to install. Click on "Load as user script" and copy the address of the page that opens; it should end in .user.js.
4. Create a simple link pointing to this page, for example by using the preview function of the LJ updating interface:

   <a href="http://userstyles.org/styles/userjs/userstyle_id/userstyle_name.user.js">

5. Right-click on this link, and choose "Install a user script".
6. Reload the LiveJournal page.

There might be errors due to escaped characters in the CSS-generated content. In that case:

1. Locate the Epiphany GM folder. On Ubuntu, this is under ~/.gnome2/epiphany/extensions/data/greasemonkey.
2. Open the userscript in your favourite text editor.
3. Look for escaped characters:

   content: \"\00bb\00a0\"

4. Replace them by the unescaped characters:

   content: \"» \"

   Make sure not to delete the backslash before the last quotation mark!
5. Save.

You might want to have fun with fonts and Photoshop, and create images to include in your fic that are important to the plot. Indeed, without the images, a part of the plot is lost.

One problem is that images cannot be read by text browsers or speech readers, thus making it impossible for vision-impaired readers to get the info conveyed by the pictures.

Thankfully, there are a number of solutions.

Any questions? :)

painless_j and tryfanstone have added a SafeSurf label to their LJs, and it's a rather good idea. The SafeSurf label is used by some net-nanny softwares to block access to sites. Here's a tutorial for getting one and inserting it into your LJ. This tutorial is for paid users who use a S2 style only. People who use a S1 style can do it very easily (see PJ's post). Free users with a S2 style can't do it.

You should be all set.

If there are problems (and there will be), comment here and I'll try to help you. Before commenting, make sure to do the following:

I spent two days recoding my website, but it's now shiny and improved :) Okay, so you won't see any visual difference, because it's all in the bowels of the HTML.

The whole site, every single file of it — and there are 33 of them — has been re-encoded and validated in XHTML 1.0 Strict. Which means that hopefully, it should look the same on every browser, and there shouldn't be any weird behaviour. It also mean that I'll be able to make different CSS files, so that readers will be able to change the look of the site to whatever they want. If you have a preference for a particular set of colours, like white text on black background, please say so!

Now, I'm curious about one thing. Is there someone on my flist who uses a non-visual browser? I'd like to know how navigable my site is.

I've also added an update page, with its very own RSS feed. I admit that the RSS feed is more for fun than anything else, but I was curious about RSS, and it was an occasion to learn it :)