As I discussed last time, the WordPress app for Windows Phone was recently updated for compatibility with the 7.5 (“Mango”) OS update. With that out of the way, I’d like to see the app undergo some UI/UX improvements to make it feel less like a ported Android app and more like a native Metro-style WP7 app.
The rollout of Windows Phone 7.5, codename “Mango”, began today. Over the next month, all owners of Windows Phone 7 devices should receive the upgrade to Mango, which brings a ton of new consumer-facing functionality. It also brings a healthy amount of new developer capabilities, including background agents, multiple live tiles, and more. Read More…
As a supporter of both WordPress and the Windows Phone platform, I was of course drawn to the WordPress for Windows Phone app. Since getting involved in the app’s development in May, I’ve explored the codebase and done plenty of brainstorming about the app’s future. What follows is a brief history of the app and initial thoughts on what it’s like working on its development.
It’s been almost six months since my last blog post, but I hope less than six days until my next one. I’ve put off several blog post topics until I finished a site redesign that I’ve been struggling with since July, but decided to stop waiting and just start writing again. Maybe one of the upcoming posts will be about the redesign, but I’m going to start with a recap of what I’ve been up to lately.
Over the past few weekends, I’ve been working with my friend Robert on a fun side project. Tonight we’re proud to be releasing ShoeVox, a Windows applications that allows you to control media applications with your voice. Please check our Rob’s announcement post for full details, including a download link.
On Wednesday, Martin Moore, one of the creators of the hNews microformat, posted on Idea Lab about how hNews is in use at 577 U.S. news sites. As someone who has long been interested in standardized markup and interchange formats for news content, I found this interesting and set out to investigate for myself.
C.M.S., an acronym for “Content Management System,” is a term that has become ubiquitous in the open source web software world. Ranging from systems that manage a small set of static pages to full-fledged “enterprise” content management solutions (ECMS) like Typo3 or Alfresco, the term “CMS” has become a catch-all term for any web software package that can produce a website. Read More…
Today Rob and I did a Courant News code sprint to get momentum building again. I did some YDN work first and then worked on finishing search functionality, while Rob focused on a new “headers” app that we’ve been brainstorming for the past week.
I’ve been working all day on making the installation script for Courant, and am now writing the documentation files. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to summarize the process in anticipation of release in the coming week.
As I’ve discussed before, one of the core design tenets of Courant News was the ability for news orgs to customize and add on to our core platform without having to modify the code of the platform itself. While it is possible to create a cohesive platform, it is more difficult to allow outside code to hook into it without actually modifying the platform itself.
One common way, adopted by the Django built-in admin app, as well as a number of common Django reusable apps like django-tagging and django-mptt, is that of a registry system. I’ve been joking with one of my Courant cohorts, Robert Baskin (@rsbaskin), on twitter about registries, and I thought it was time to let everyone else in on the discussion.
