April 18, 2005, 21:50 EST
blogScream Mini Released.- After a number of requests for a smaller version of the blogScream viewer, release 1.0.1 of blogScream includes miniature versions that will fit in sidebars as narrow as 150 pixels. Some screen graphics suffer minor degradation in this smaller version, but individuals who were asked to compare the full-size and miniature versions side-by-side reported that the degradation was either "not noticeable" or was not significant. If problems persist with trying to install the screen in the miniature version, the difficulty might be resolved by trapping Snippet #3 between <ul> and </ul> tags. This might also resolve why sidebars that should have been large enough to handle to full-size version were causing problems with sidebars where bloggers tried to install them.
April 14, 2005, 14:10 EST
blogScream release 1.0.1 is issued.- This is largely an technical fix at the server level. There was a slight misalignment of characters that caused, among other things, an annoying shift to occur when a mouse hovered over a link. A very slight improvement was also achieved in the centering of the image in the screen, although there is still a slight but noticeably rightward skew to the image in Firefox. Firefox also has a known issue with pushing images down from the top by about 5 pixels, and corrections to this are challenging to implement in a service like blogScream, which works within a tight frame, anyway.
Release 1.0.1 also includes the introduction of a cream-colored version of the viewer, which has cinnamon and orange lettering.
March 19, 2005, 18:00 EST
Suggestion for bloggers in general and blogScream subscribers in particular.- Many Internet surfers have browsers that automatically cache Webpages and graphics on those sites that they visit. This speeds up load time for Internet surfers, but it's a problem for Webmasters who frequently update site content because someone might return to a Webpage and not see changes that have been made because the browser is pulling up from computer memory what was there the last time. To some extent, you as a Webmaster can keep your site from being cached by a visitor's browser by putting the following three lines in the META tags section of your template's code.
- <META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="0">
- <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
- <META HTTP-EQUIV="Cache-Control" CONTENT="no-cache">
- The reason for three tags instead of one is that different browsers need a different command not to cache a site. Understand that these META tags are not foolproof, but they do help, and they have shown the ability to keep visitors' browsers from caching the blogScream content, something some browser setting seem to want to do. These tags will also help, but not entirely overcome, visitors coming to a site and seeing, for example no new posts even though new posts have shown up. It's your call as to whether or not you want to install these META tags or not, though. As always, test them. If they cause problems for you or your visitors, get rid of them.
March 19, 2005, 13:00 EST
blogScream release 1.0 is officially published.-
Users who have an earlier version installed should download the published version because of a change in the location of the site feed. To avoid the full reinstallation process, a user who put in the original code can go in and change IFRAME line as follows:
-
If you installed the black screen viewer, find the string
<iframe name="ifrm" id="ifrm" src="http://dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreambr1.html" width="195px" height="210px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">Your browser doesn't support iframes to see the newswire.</iframe>
and change it to
<iframe name="ifrm" id="ifrm" src="http://blogscream.dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreambr1.html" width="195px" height="210px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">Your browser doesn't support iframes to see the newswire.</iframe>
-
If you installed the white screen viewer, find the string
<iframe name="ifrm" id="ifrm" src="http://dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreamwr1.html" width="195px" height="210px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">Your browser doesn't support iframes to see the newswire.</iframe>
and change it to
<iframe name="ifrm" id="ifrm" src="http://blogscream.dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreamwr1.html" width="195px" height="210px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">Your browser doesn't support iframes to see the newswire.</iframe>
-
In other words, all you're doing is changing
dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreambr1.html
to
blogscream.dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreambr1.html
for the black version, or you're changing
dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreamwr1.html
to
blogscream.dark-wraith.com/docs/blogscreamwr1.html
for the white version.