Tag Archives: ajax

Painless upgrade: Cybercafe Experiments now runs WordPress 2.0

I have just upgraded my blog to use the just-released WordPress 2.0 version. The upgrade was painless and trouble-free. For someone who lost close to 50 posts in a reckless, ill-advised and ill-prepared upgrade to an alpha version of a previous blog, the first few minutes after the upgrade was akin to feeling your hand whether you still have all your fingers after a firecracker explodes in it (believe me, I’ve been there and done that).

The upgrade was done half an hour ago and it seemed everything is working flawlessly save for the what-you-see-is-what-you-get-editor (WYSIWYG), which I never planned to use anyway. I went to the Write interface expecting to see the WYSIWYG editor enabled but it wasn’t, even if it was enabled in the options field.

Curiously, the WordPress 2.0 beta version running in my demo blog displays the WYSIWYG editor. But it is just a minor irritant. For WYSIWYG editing, I recommend that you use the Xinha Here! plugin in this site.

What’s great about the new version is the improved blog administration interface. Since it uses Ajax, you can add things without having to reload the entire page. While writing a post, for example, you can add categories without having to leave the Write interface.

Trying out another web 2.0 personal portal

I’m trying out Netvibes.com, a personal homepage solution driven by Ajax, the current darling of the web. Netvibes allows you to create a personalized home page containing news feeds (RSS, Atom). Since GMail serves RSS feeds of you e-mail, Netvibes can also display a listing of your messages (by subjects). It’s not really in the league of full-fledged feed readers like Google Reader or Bloglines but it offers a different (and beautiful) presentation of feeds and it might be useful for people who only monitor less than 15 feeds – otherwise the page would get too crowded and you’d have to scroll down repeatedly.

Google Reader is great but I’m sticking with Bloglines, for now

If you talk of features, there is no doubt Google Reader is superior to Bloglines. Not only does Google Reader have a better interface (done with Ajax) it also allows you the choice of either going through all the feeds you’ve subscribed to or browsing feeds by topic or by website. Bloglines, on the other hand, only allows you to view feeds one website at a time.

Google Reader allows you to label site feeds and individual items. You can also put a star on items that catch your interest, a system similar to the one being implemented in Gmail.

googlereader
Google Reader: When it’s working, it’s the best news feed reader around. In the past few days since its launch, however, the service is either too slow or unavailable.

Continue reading “Google Reader is great but I’m sticking with Bloglines, for now”

Protopage vs. serverside TiddlyWiki – which works best for you?

I stumbled upon a link to www.protopage.com in del.icio.us. The description and the fact that a lot of people had bookmarked it intrigued me. Protopage is an online, personal start page powered by Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).

With protopage, you can have an online list of the sites that you frequent as well as a to-do listing of tasks similar to sticky notes. Many people write their own HTML page containing links to frequently visited sites to serve as their browsers’ start page. Protopage would be an excellent replacement for this.

Continue reading “Protopage vs. serverside TiddlyWiki – which works best for you?”