Site Info: Grail Blogs and Video Embeds

Posted by Greg at 12:58, 09 Mar 2010

Just a quick note bringing a couple of things to your attention. First, I've been slowly (as time allows) redesigning the blogs here on TDG, to try and make them a little more personal. Work is continuing, but things are starting to shape up - you'll notice now (see Katya's blog for example) that every member's blog now has a personal info box with avatar, bio and website. If you do not have these details but wish to, you can add them by going to 'My Account' in the right-hand navigation menu, clicking edit, and using the appropriate tabs for adding an avatar as well as biographical information.

Beneath the 'blogger info' block there is also now a block showing the ten most recent blog entries from that person, making it easier to browse through their writings.

Lastly, I have added functionality for members to embed videos from the major sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Blip etc) into their blogs. This has always been difficult to do, as it required opening up the accepted input to possibly dangerous code. However, using a specialist module, you should now be able to embed videos simply by pasting in the URL of the desired video. I have tested it and it worked okay for me, but please let me know if you experience any problems doing this. The good thing about this is that the fallback from any failure in embedding still gives readers the original link to the video in question.

I still have things on my to-do list (such as moving the navigation menu beneath the blogger info blocks), and there's a real bonus at the end of it all, but I'll let you know more as I get these things implemented.

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Cool, thanks!
#1
symmym's picture
Member since:
15 January 2010
Last activity:
25 weeks 2 days
Posted by symmym on 09 Mar 2010 at about 21:41.

Cool, thanks!

This might be a silly
#2
daydreamer's picture
Member since:
21 February 2009
Last activity:
16 min 55 sec
Posted by daydreamer on 09 Mar 2010 at about 22:14.

This might be a silly question. Is there any way to embed images? It would be pretty useful sometimes.

space issues
#3
earthling's picture
Member since:
22 November 2004
Last activity:
1 day 20 hours
Posted by earthling on 09 Mar 2010 at about 23:03.

Used to be space issues in most sites. Now that Obama has cancelled Constellation Maybe it's not any more.

But perhaps a link to an image which is served from someplace else?

—

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We are the cat.

Images
#4
Greg's picture
Member since:
30 April 2004
Last activity:
1 hour 22 min
Posted by Greg on 10 Mar 2010 at about 00:04.
daydreamer wrote:

This might be a silly question. Is there any way to embed images? It would be pretty useful sometimes.

That's on the agenda. I just have to work through some future planning on the best way to implement it to allow ease of upgrades in future.

—

Kind regards,
Greg
-------------------------------------------
You monkeys only think you're running things
@DailyGrail

Text entry app
#5
kamarling's picture
Member since:
26 June 2005
Last activity:
20 hours 27 min
Posted by kamarling on 10 Mar 2010 at about 06:55.

Regular respondents might be interested in a little utility called Write Monkey:

http://writemonkey.com/

This a kind of Notepad replacement that includes a spell check. One nice feature is that it can be integrated with a Firefox add-on called "It's All Text":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox...

This will add a small "edit" tab to any online text box so that you can use the external editor (Write Monkey, in this case). When you are done and click "Save", it will fill the online text area.

Dave.

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Website: David's Muse