Moving (filler art) - Wednesday 30 August 2006

[CodeCat]

Well, if you look at the pic I posted a certain wauy, it looks like DCS is plotting something. Maybe an easten seaboard takeover, but I htink at that time DCS devised a way to create the bastard love child of Paul Wellstone and FDR.

Yeah he looks a bit like Blofeld!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blofeld

[Steve the Pocket]

http://www.ozyandmillie.org/photos/me-james2-small.jpg

I would sugest DCS consider updating the O&M site, and maybe, even go back and change the watermark on older comics, so that they say D.C. Simpson, instead of David Craig Simpson or whatever.

I know she's planning to sooner or later; she went to the trouble of redrawing the pictures for the cast page not too long ago. As for changing that watermark, though, yikes. That's a buttload of work right there. I suspect it was hard enough redoing all their pages for the site redesign back in '04, although I'm betting that was done with an auto page generation thingy.

[Tavis]

It was. The ZIP archives present enough data for such a generation scheme to produce the individual pages, so it'd only require one file change for the dailies, and maybe another for the monthly and yearly archive pages.

[Steve the Pocket]

Is there, by chance, an easy way to implement such a thing? Because I'm planning to redesign my site too and rewriting even 75 pages is too much work if I can help it.

[baloki]

Is there, by chance, an easy way to implement such a thing? Because I'm planning to redesign my site too and rewriting even 75 pages is too much work if I can help it.

On webpages? Just use a php include or server side include to include the copywrite from a .txt file?

[Richard K Niner]

Is there, by chance, an easy way to implement such a thing? Because I'm planning to redesign my site too and rewriting even 75 pages is too much work if I can help it.

Well, installing a local copy of PHP, writing up a template of how you want the new pages, and telling it to grab the current target and inputs from $argv or $argc, so you can run it from the command line (see http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php).
If you're using a *NIX OS or Cygwin (a *NIX emulator for Windows), you can then write up a script for Bash (or, if you don't have those around, another PHP script) to iterate over each target file/set of inputs, and execute the first script, passing them as command line arguments.

Yeah, it may sound like a lot of work, but in some cases, it's easier than rewriting 75 pages of stuff.

[The MAZZTer]

I prefer dynamically compiling a page based on a requested URL. Then you get all the pure data (dates, comic names, image urls) all together in one database, and you have exactly ONE HTML page for a comic strip.

http://nes.sorrowind.net/comic.php

An example of a script I made for just that purpose. However it is not my best coding work (if I did it now I'd completely redo it using classes and HTML templates, I eventually plan to someday) but it should be sufficient enough to prove that if I could finish a PHP comic script, then anyone can.

[Richard K Niner]

I prefer dynamically compiling a page based on a requested URL.

Of course, the catch is, you need a host that supports it. And last I checked, Octan's host didn't. Hence, I'm suggesting a workaround.

[Steve the Pocket]

If you mean a single PHP page whose parameters decide which comic, date, and title to display, then yes my host should be able to handle that. Creating a "database" might be a bit much though; more likely making an array and then making a few changes to the code every week seems a more viable solution in my case. Okay, so every date, image URL, and title would have to be contained within the same PHP file, but it would still be easier than learning SQL.

[Richard K Niner]

Okay, so every date, image URL, and title would have to be contained within the same PHP file, but it would still be easier than learning SQL.

C'mon, SQL's not that hard.

[Tavis]

I prefer dynamically compiling a page based on a requested URL.

Of course, the catch is, you need a host that supports it. And last I checked, Octan's host didn't. Hence, I'm suggesting a workaround.

Not necessarily. I used to play with Javascript enough to parse the given URL and write stuff accordingly. One product of that was the image viewer page I threw on Geocities, and another was used to write form-submitted text in a code language. I think Javascript is probably too depreciated to continue using it for very long, especially when you have better tools available, but it has been useful.

[Richard K Niner]

I prefer dynamically compiling a page based on a requested URL.

Of course, the catch is, you need a host that supports it. And last I checked, Octan's host didn't. Hence, I'm suggesting a workaround.

Not necessarily. I used to play with Javascript enough to parse the given URL and write stuff accordingly. One product of that was the image viewer page I threw on Geocities, and another was used to write form-submitted text in a code language. I think Javascript is probably too depreciated to continue using it for very long, especially when you have better tools available, but it has been useful.

Oh, JavaScript is available on all modern browsers. It's problems, though, are as follows:

• Lower webpage accessibility, due to the requirement of an ECMAScript engine
• Compatibility issues, due to the different ways you have to do things in different browsers (though it's improving)
• ECMAScript is a weak language, due to the complete lack of type control, the fact that error handling makes some older browsers choke, the lack of a consistent DOM for more advanced stuff (and the performance hit from using the more generalized DOM 0), and the lack of any standardized way to analyze the capabilities of the web browser.

[Gizensha]

I prefer dynamically compiling a page based on a requested URL.

Of course, the catch is, you need a host that supports it. And last I checked, Octan's host didn't. Hence, I'm suggesting a workaround.

Not necessarily. I used to play with Javascript enough to parse the given URL and write stuff accordingly. One product of that was the image viewer page I threw on Geocities, and another was used to write form-submitted text in a code language. I think Javascript is probably too depreciated to continue using it for very long, especially when you have better tools available, but it has been useful.

Oh, JavaScript is available on all modern browsers. It's problems, though, are as follows:

• Lower webpage accessibility, due to the requirement of an ECMAScript engine
• Compatibility issues, due to the different ways you have to do things in different browsers (though it's improving)
• ECMAScript is a weak language, due to the complete lack of type control, the fact that error handling makes some older browsers choke, the lack of a consistent DOM for more advanced stuff (and the performance hit from using the more generalized DOM 0), and the lack of any standardized way to analyze the capabilities of the web browser.

Not to mention any browser worth even considering has a way of disabling javascript...

[The MAZZTer]

Eww JavaScript is NOT for that. IMO it should only be used for doing stuff that CAN'T be done server-side and NEEDS to be done client-side. Even then I would expect it to not execute and the website should still be 100% functional (the JavaScript would add extra functionality, but it would be hidden without the JavaScript).

For generating dynamic pages I was thinking about PHP myself. Best documented language in existence. If you're not sure how to do something related to one of the PHP functions, you can look up the function in the docs and it's an EXTREMELY likely chance there's user contributed notes that will give you what you need.

[Tavis]

Before you go turning up your nose in your PHP-waving indignation and twisting my words, I am not saying Javascript is an ideal solution to making dynamically available content, I said it was possible. If you can get the server side to handle a task while keeping the implementation simple and hidden from the client, I would encourage it, but when that option is not available, you can still attempt something that will work in the meantime.