Monday, August 20, 2007

Starting work on Subscribomatic

Since the AJAXification of Subscribable, I've switched gears and am now working on reviving the site that bloggers can use to make their own blogs subscribable, formerly known as Subscribomatic. Subscribomatic was kind of a proof-of-concept, and I'll be spending the next few weeks spiffing it up, renaming it, and adding some new features (no hints!). Hopefully, when I'm done, the-site-formerly-known-as-Subscribomatic will make it easy for bloggers to track who visits their blog, display their subscriber community on a blog's side panel, and allow subscribers to share the site with their friends.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Ajaxified!

The subscriptions page has been ajaxified! You can now move subscriptions, display more or fewer subscriptions, create folders, rename folders, delete folders, unsubscribe, and check for updates without an annoying page refresh. And it looks great. Thank you, ajax! Perhaps most importantly, this little exercise has taught me, after several years of merely tolerating JavaScript, that the language actually does have some redeeming qualities. I've learned to appreciate the wild, wild west that is JavaScript development. I will probably add some other minor ajax features to other pages as well in the near future.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Still working on AJAX

Still working on the AJAX stuff! Whew, learning new stuff takes a little longer than I expected. I'd say I'm about half-way done. This stuff is hairy too--there are portions that I have rewritten 5 times, just from discovering better and more efficient ways to do the same thing. The only thing I can really complain about is the lack of a good development environment for JavaScript. Browser error messages like IE's "Unknown Runtime Error" can test your patience!