Code Style: Site log, January 2007

In this section

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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FAQ cross-reference menus, 27^th January 2007

Adapted the FaqMenuGenerator to create top questions menus for common question subject terms. Added a prepared statement to select questions with a common subject and create a customised top questions menu include file via a new printCommonBySubject(File, Connection, String) method. Also overloaded the printTopQuestions() method with a String title argument to set the heading before the menu list.

Updated the Apache custom error pages documents to include the new FAQ menus and created two cross-reference index pages for Operating system FAQs and Web browser FAQs linked from the FAQ index page.

Created a new site manager index page, but left un-linked from the main menu for the time being. Also created a section contents page, with new site manager and site design table of contents include files. Updated the RSS news feeds index to include the new contents monitor in the low frequency update category.

Added a new collapse(String) method to the SpaceCodec class to collapse all white space in a string to make continuous text suitable for fragment anchors and id attributes.

Link corrections, 23^th January 2007

Changed all JUnit links to http://junit.sourceforge.net/. (The site at http://www.junit.org/ was down for an extended period.) Also removed a bad link to an Internet Explorer 6 DOCTYPE switching article on MSDN, which seems to have been removed without replacement.

Updated FAQ includes, 20^th January 2007

Updated the FAQ menu include file references in the Apache JServ on Windows 95 and Tomcat 3 on Windows articles to the Servlet container FAQ menu. Also updated the Custom error 500 article to include the Servlet exceptions question menu (since replaced with the HTTP status 500 questions).

Standardised links to the CSS 2 recommendations in the Projecting your style article. Updated copyright dates on RSS header include file.

Surveyed fonts update, 16^th January 2007

Replaced many of the lower ranking fonts in the font survey with more recent typefaces for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS and the Bigelow and Holmes Luxi fonts for Linux listed below. Updated the font database records and survey form configuration script to include the new fonts.

Linux fonts

Luxi Serif
Luxi Sans
Luxi Mono

Windows Vista fonts

Calibri
Cambria
Candara
Consolas
Constantia
Corbel
Segoe UI

Windows 2000 fonts

Goudy Old Style
Monotype Corsiva
Palatino Linotype

Mac OS X fonts

American Typewriter
Baskerville
Didot
Gill Sans
Helvetica Neue
Marker Felt
Zapfino

Introduced a new extended server side include (XSSI) format to the local navigation bars in the CSS style guide section to show a random item from a selection of Amazon book links. The include file uses the number of seconds from the page request time to show one of 9 titles by setting a number of other variables used for the final output.

<!--#config timefmt="%S" -->
<!--#set var="seconds" value="${DATE_LOCAL}" -->
<!--#if expr="'${seconds}' = '/0$/'" -->
<!--#set var="title" value="The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks" -->
<!--#set var="asin"; value="0957921888" -->
<!--#set var="width" value="70" -->
<!--#set var="height" value="90" -->
<!--#set var="src" value="CSSAnthology.jpg" -->
<!--#elif expr="'${seconds}' = '/1$/'" -->
...

These variables are then inserted into the page markup using the echo command.

<!--#echo var='title' -->

Updated all pages that include the local navigation and uploaded the relevant book cover illustrations.

Statistics and text ad cross links, 11^th January 2007

Added a link from the text ad service page to the site statistics page and vice versa. Updated copyright dates on the general purpose header and footer include files.

2006 site statistics, 9^th January 2007

Updated the Code Style site statistics page with figures for 2006. Split the top requests listing into high- and low-traffic pages to correspond with page sponsorship ratings.

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

Month: Year:

For a summary overview, see the annotated site log contents.

January 2007 on Code Style