Sunday, September 26, 2004

g-metrics gets a face-lift and much more...

[27/9/2004 11:51 UTC, Update: you can now see the top-10 results returned by google.]

After many experiments, the new and improved g-metrics.com is alive!

* UI improvements.
- The user interface has been redesigned from scratch, and I think that is is much more usable than the old one.
- This comes with a new logo.

* New features.
- There are separet RSS feeds for each "query".
- If you are a registered user, you can have an agregated RSS feed for all the queries included in your watchlist. When you add or remove queries from your watchlist, the RSS feed is automaticaly updated.
- Much like the agregated feed described above, you can use a link that goes directly to your watchlist.
- A prefiled google search box is displayed with every report, so "going to the results" is one click away.
- Users can change their personal details (username, email)
- when a new query is added to the database, google is imediately polled, so you don't miss todays results.

* More to come. During the whole redesign thing I changed the backend a lot. There are some new features comming..
- "normalized results" (percent of the total pages indexed by google). -many thanks to Matthew Hurst for the idea.
- a preview of the top 10 results per query returned by google,
- "tags" much like gmail does that will hepl you organize a long watchlist much better.

* BUGS + COMPATIBILITY
I tried a lot to make the "transition" transparent, however there may be some external links that are now broken as the page names have changed.
I also noticed that sometimes, if you had already checked the "remember me" button at the old version, you may have problems logging in to the new. I'm working on it, but you may try to delete the old cookies stored by g-metrics, login and logout once. Then everything should work fine.

As always, I'm eager to hear from you!
Panayotis.

posted by Παναγιώτης Βρυώνης @ 9/26/2004 07:52:00 PM   3 comments

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Web Services You Wish Yahoo Offered?

Jeremy asks what we would like to see in a Yahoo! API, sould Yahoo! decides to publish one....

Please, everything! The nice thing with Yahoo! is that they are much more than a search engine. They are a complete application platform (mail, calendar, stocks, contacts,...) Give us access to it and we'll make aps!

posted by Παναγιώτης Βρυώνης @ 9/23/2004 01:05:00 PM   0 comments

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Creating custom HTML checkboxes

During the g-metrics redesign (it will soon be ready!), I faced a common problem in HTML design: while most elements on a HTML page can be easily an nicely customized using CSS, checkboxes and radio button keep their original, browser-specific look.

I looked arround the Internet, but the alternatives I found were based on creating a little "checked" and the related "unchecked" image and swapping them using javascript. This approach has many problems, and the most important one is that you have to create a different set of images for every size, color, etc. you want to use.

So I came up with a solution that I consider more elegant and easy to use. It is based on displaying a "webdings" (font containing special images) "check" inside an area with border. Javascript is used to dynamicaly change the font color so that the check becomes visible/invisible every time you click. It is easy to acheve other effects (like garying-out when unchecked) just by changing the colors.

Here is a sample code (you can view it here):

<html>
<!--
How to create a custom checkbox.

2004-09-22, Panayotis Vryonis
http://g-metrics.blogspot.com/

-->
<head>

<style type="text/css" media="screen">
.customCheckboxON { color: #0000aa ; }
.customCheckboxOFF { color: #ffffff ; }
.customCheckbox {
color: #ffffff ;

border: 2px #0000aa solid ;
background: #ffffff ;
font-weight: bold ;
font-family: webdings;
}
</style>

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!--
function chkHandler(id) {
var obj = document.getElementById(id) ;
c = obj.className ;
if (c == 'customCheckboxON') {
obj.className = 'customCheckboxOFF' ;
document.myform.my_checkbox.value = 0 ; //update a form field
}
else {
obj.className = 'customCheckboxON' ;
document.myform.my_checkbox.value = 1 ; //update a form field
}
}
//-->
</script>

</head>
<body>
<form name="myform">
<p>
Check this: <span class="customCheckbox"><span id="box1" onClick="chkHandler('box1');" >a</span></span>
&nbsp;<input type="text" name="my_checkbox" id="my_checkbox" size="1" value="0">

</p>
</form>
</body>
</html>

posted by Παναγιώτης Βρυώνης @ 9/22/2004 02:52:00 AM   2 comments

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Help Make Blogs More Visible!

There are by some estimates more than 3 million weblogs. But most of them get no visibility in search engines. Only a few "A-List" blogs get into the top search engine results for a given topic, while the majority of blogs just don't get noticed. But this posting could solve that. Let's help the smaller blogs get more visibility!

This posting is GoMeme 4.0. So far we have tried 3 earlier variations. Our first test, GoMeme 1.0, spread to nearly 740 blogs in 2.5 days. This new version 4.0 is shorter, simpler, and fits more easily into your blog.

Why are we doing this? We want to help thousands of blogs get more visibility. How does it work? Just follow the instructions below to re-post this meme in your blog and add your URL to the end of the Path List below. As the meme spreads onwards from your blog, so will your URL. Your blog will be part of the pat for everyone downstream from you. That way they can see where they got this message from. Everyone in the Path List below benefits in a similar way as this meme spreads. Try it!

Instructions: Just copy this entire post and paste it into your blog. Then add your URL to the end of the path list below, and pass it on! (Make sure you add your URLs as live links or HTML code to the Path List below.)

Path List
1. Minding the Planet
2. g-metrics blog
3. (your URL goes here! But first, please copy this line and move it down to the next line for the next person).


(NOTE: Be sure you paste live links for the Path List or use HTML code.)

--
PS.
I have also added a g-metrics query for "GoMeme 4.0"

Panayotis.

posted by Παναγιώτης Βρυώνης @ 9/14/2004 01:33:00 AM   0 comments