The Code Style site has evolved by gradual refinement and accumulation of features and content. This review is part of a fully backdated site log and archive that sheds light on when, why and how particular features were implemented.
This log is sometimes updated several times per week, sometimes with a long overdue backlog of items. Many log entries refer to the Code Style Java package that delivers the servlet services and utilities used to manage this site.
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Reverse chronology
29th July 2002
Finished the acknowledgement and privileged pages for the new redirection question in the Javascript FAQ. Also produced a revised draft of the new FAQ: Java & servlets page.
Javascript "how to"
Added #Content TD OL selector to the grouped selector in CSStdLayoutCommon.css to override the wide right margin:
/*
Don't compound the margins for nested
elements!
*/
#Content OL OL, #Content UL UL,
#Content OL P, #Content UL P,
#Content DD P, #Content DD OL,
#Content DD UL, #Content DD PRE,
#Content DD DL,
#Content .MenuBox UL,
#Content .MenuBox OL,
#Content TD UL, #Content TD OL,
#Content .SQL P{
margin-right: 0;
}
28th July 2002
Created a first draft ViewSource servlet class to support the new questions in the Javascript FAQ. Many of the scripts include long lines which are difficult to include in the standard FAQ format page and to maintain going forward. Internet Explorer attempts to execute any direct source file references, so the ViewSource class serves the text with the HTTP Content-Type header text/plain.
27th July 2002
Completed a set of server side includes for generic extensions to the site FAQ pages, with a new FAQ: Java & servlets page, new questions answered for the main Javascript FAQ page and a new DOM1 visibility menu FAQ to replace the Anchor Points: DOM & CSS links on the page. Created multiple new script files with ViewSource servlet links and supporting pages.
Also created new includes for top book referrals for the site statistics page and added Java I/O by Elliotte Rusty Harold to the Anchor Points: Java books section.
Added a note to the Anchor Points: Font foundries and sources page to point out that Apple fonts are not currently available for retail and created a test page for Arial Rounded MT to test font name matching for Mac.
Finished a generic metadata keywords include file for the forthcoming Site Manager section and a new section of links for Anchor Points: Web page design.
26th July 2002
Changed all font references in the site subject index to "see" terms to minimise repetition and trim the page length.
24th July 2002
Amended the summary results description for the all media browser conformance article to clarify the default status of screen media in HTML, rather than "all" media.
21st July 2002
Created a new draft Java & servlets FAQ from submitted help requests.
20th July 2002
Finished the modifications to the 1.7 version of the FontSampler servlet class by enclosing the small caps and oblique comparison texts in a div element with a class attribute of Equivalent. An @import rule in Sampler.css hides the background grid and border styles that are problematic for Netscape 4.x in SamplerImport.css, and a selector on the new div class applies the styles:
DIV.Equivalent P{
border: solid 1px #CCC;
background: url(/images/grid-20px.gif)
#EEE;
color: #333;
}
Split the Code Style site log contents into three sections by year and introduced a new menu box for direct access to each fragment identifier.
Added further terms to the site subject index based on frequent search terms and re-issued the site logo image, CodeStyle.gif, from a sharper source.
19th July 2002
Further work to refine the fontFrequencyTable(int survey_id) method of the DBResults utility class.
15th July 2002
Extended the range of validation matches for submissions to the Windows font survey for a previously un-seen Windows NT case.
14th July 2002
Added a new section to the FontSampler servlet class to compare font-variant: small-caps; and font-style: oblique; with normal and italic text respectively. The combination of border and background styles initially produced grossly oversized text in Netscape 4.7. Completed the SpaceCodec class and added JavaDoc comments.
Also created a draft WindowsFontStats class to generate finished XHTML pages from a codestyle_fonts database query using an adapted version of the DBResults utility class from Core Servlets & Java Server Pages with the SpaceCodec class. However, the temporary status table used for font statistics to date cannot be accessed by the separate Java database session and a permanent table will be required.
First, added a submissions column to the surveyline table:
ALTER TABLE surveyline ADD COLUMN submissions INTEGER;
Then created a trigger procedure upon INSERT to the submission table that updates the enddate field of the surveyline table with the current date for rows where the current value is true:
-- First, CREATE the trigger procedure
CREATE FUNCTION trigger_enddate_update() RETURNS OPAQUE AS '
begin
UPDATE surveyline SET enddate = NEW.date
WHERE current = true
AND survey_id = NEW.survey_id;
RETURN NULL;
end;
' language 'plpgsql';
-- Second, CREATE the trigger
CREATE TRIGGER trigger_enddate_update
AFTER INSERT ON submission
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE trigger_enddate_update();
Next created a trigger procedure upon UPDATE to the submission table (e.g. on isvalid = true/false) that updates the submissions count in the surveyline table for the relevant survey:
-- First, CREATE the trigger procedure
-- Updates may occur on 'old' submissions where some fonts
-- are not current, so must check dates
CREATE FUNCTION trigger_submission_count() RETURNS OPAQUE AS '
begin;
UPDATE surveyline SET submissions =
(
SELECT COUNT(submission.submission_id)
WHERE submission.isvalid = true
AND surveyline.survey_id = submission.survey_id
AND submission.date >= surveyline.startdate
AND submission.date <= surveyline.enddate
)
WHERE survey_id = NEW.survey_id;
RETURN NULL;
end;
' language 'plpgsql';
-- Second, CREATE the trigger
CREATE TRIGGER trigger_submissions
AFTER UPDATE ON submission
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE trigger_submission_count()
Finally adjusted the current text output queries for font statistics to operate on the surveyline table rather than the temporary status table.
13th July 2002
Added further notes on Roman fonts to the Font family glossary and a link to the Cascading Style Sheets level 3 (CSS3) Media Queries W3C Candidate Recommendation to the CSS media monitor section.
Produced some graph paper style background grids for a new draft section on the CSS font-variant: property to compare small-caps with normal text, and font-style: oblique; with italic.
Started work on a new SpaceCodec Java class primarily to encode spaces in strings with replacement substrings, particularly %20 for URL encoding font names, and entities for generated markup. The java.net.URLEncoder class' encode(String inString, String replacement) method encodes spaces as "+" according to the HTML form URL encoding scheme, rather than by hexadecimal reference, "%20". SpaceCodec also includes an equivalent decode(String inString, String replacement) method to convert all specified replacement substrings back to spaces.
7th July 2002
Updated the site subject index with further frequent search terms.
Previously on Code Style
These backdated pages record detailed changes to the Code Style Web site since July 2000, when development first got underway. Some pages may refer to documents or features that have since changed or are no longer part of the site, but the archive is checked to ensure there are no dead links.
Site log, origins to present
For a summary overview, see the annotated site log contents.
