Robot.Floss

My coworker Larry sat down earlier this week and made a chart of HTML5 support across a bunch of browsers, or as he put it…

There  are several sites out there that can test a browsers compatibility with  HTML5 and CSS3, but nothing that really shows what’s supported across a  number of browsers. So I took the liberty of testing a number of  browsers on Windows and Mac and compiled a matrix. The test results were taken from http://www.findmebyip.com.

Thought you might be interested.

Download the PDF.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I love Google, and I am always excited by the products the release. However, I am never impressed with what they release. They create interesting tools and products, but the execution is always sub-par. And their product launches make it apparent that they’re a large collection of engineers with too few designers. But at times they miss the boat completely. For instance, the Google API presumes you will only turn your phone counter-clock wise and never clockwise. I am impressed with the Android platform. But there is no excuse for an idiotic oversight like this. This is an arbitrary restriction that hinders user experience.

If you turn the phone clockwise, Android’s native menus and text will appear upside down. I’ve seen a few applications that do a good decent job of letting you turn the phone clockwise, such as the game Bebbled (a good game by the way), but call up a menu in this position and you’ll see upside-down menus.

I am beta testing Super GNES application for the Android platform. Before I continue, let me say the developers are doing a great job with the project. Now on to the part where Google failed to have foresight. You can play Super GNES in portrait mode or landscape. On the G1 I prefer landscape as it puts the trackball under your right thumb, and your left hand is free to mash the keyboard. But every video game controller since the NES has put the direction pad under your left thumb.

A more natural setup for playing the emulator would be a rotating the phone in to landscape mode clockwise. It would put the trackball under the left thumb, place the volume buttons on the top side of the phone to become the left and right shoulder buttons easily accessible by the index finger of your right hand, and your right thumb could use the onscreen A,B,X,Y buttons.

I asked the SuperGNES dev team about exploring this orientation, and here is the teams:

“There doesn’t appear to be a good way to orient the screen landscape with the track ball on the left. I even took a tour through the android framework source code to see if I could hack something together but wasn’t able to find anything. I can manually orient the screen but stuff like the menu and settings have the wrong orientation which is frustrating to use.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

Update (Feb 26th, 2009): The current version of the Xanga Importer is version 3. The code and instructions have been updated for WordPress 2.9.2. If you experience problems please let me know and be sure to indicate which version of WordPress you’re using!

Note: For those of you looking for a way to import Xanga posts in to WordPress without reading techno mumbo-jumbo, then scroll down until you see the heading “Downloading and Using”.

Fixing the Xanga Archive Importer

I’ve used Xanga since April 2003, so when I started up www.popeonabomb.com as a mirror to the blog, I of course wanted to import Xanga posts in to wordpress. I looked around for solutions, and eventually I discovered the Xanga Archives Importer (list at the WordPress).

I imported my posts, and I noticed that the Importer failed to properly handle some comments. Specifically, it decided that the majority of comments were Anonymous. I started poking around, and I discovered the problem only existed for posts from mid-June of 2005 and newer. The import code determines the author of a comment by the URL embedded in the comment. During June of 2005, Xanga changed the way they linked to a commenter’s blog.

Prior to mid-June of 2005, the URL had the format: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=the_users_name

After mid-June of 2005, the URL has the format: http://www.xanga.com/the_users_name

The import code hasn’t been maintained in a while, and when it encounters a comment with the new URL format, it fails to distinguish the name of the commenter. The name isn’t found so the import decides the comment is anonymous.

I am not sure why this bug had never been addressed. I found 5 versions of the original code (with the last update occurring to the original on May 13th, 2007) and each contains this error. And the error has been around since 2005.

Either way, I updated the code. Now if a comment is found to be anonymous, the code will attempt to process the author’s code using the post-June of 2005 URL format. Since Xanga does allow anonymous comment, if the author is still found to be anonymous, it is presumed to be an accurate result.

Downloading and Using:

Note: The importer requires that you have a premium Xanga account. If you do, then download an archive of your blog. (When logged in to Xanga, go to the private view of your site, and from the settings menu choose “Webblog Archives”)

1. Download my latest version of the importer here (Verison 3).
   If you need, you can download my original update to the importer here.)
2. Extract the PHP file, and upload it in to the /wp-admin/import directory.
3. Your Xanga archive comes in a zip file, extract the contents to a folder on your desktop
   Note: You cannot upload the zip file itself, so be sure to extract the contents!
4. In WordPress go to Tools -> Import -> and from the list choose “Xanga”
   Earlier versions of WordPress may find the option under Manage -> Import -> and select “Xanga”.
5. Click the “Browse…” button and select a Xanga archive .HTML file to upload
6. Click “Upload and Import”
7. The posts will be imported and you’ll be told how many posts and comments were imported.
   Note 1: If you accidentally upload the same file twice, don’t worry – it won’t upload duplicates
   Note 2: It does not currently upload the title of the post – the post will be titled with the date. I hope to update this soon.

Viola.

Popularity: 72% [?]