I’ve just updated my microformat plugin for the textpattern CMS and blogging tool. This update is a maintenance fix to add support for Textpattern v1.0.4 and some changes made in the way tag helpers are built. Users of older versions of TXP should stick with the 1.0 version of the plugin.
Future updates to the plugin are planned to add additional microformats support, expand the flexibility of the tag helpers and to streamline the underlying PHP code. If you’re using this plugin — or have chosen not to — please help by posting a comment letting me know how well you think it fits into your writing style.
Michael Kaply just posted an update to his great Operator extension for Firefox. Sporting some performance and UI tweaks Operator 0.6, the plugin gives users some helpful interface tools to link microformat data in the current web page to other services like Google Maps [instantly find a Geo coordinate on a map] or Technorati [for tag lookup].
Get the Operator addon then take it for a spin around ChunkySoup.net or Place Name Here.
I’ve gushed here numerous times about the Mozilla / Firefox DOM Inspector tool and how the insights it provides into the way the page is parsed and rendered by Gecko are indispensable when building a web site. What I haven’t spent nearly enough time doing is gushing about similar tools in other browsers—specifically Internet Explorer and Safari.
Safari Web Inspector
Safari, err, WebKit nightly builds have had a DOM Inspector tool of their own since January, Web Inspector, announced in this post. The tool really holds up well to its older counterpart listing node information, all individual and combined style rules, highlighting the active element in the browser window and more. It also has some interesting new features—two shown here—identifying what style properties have been ignored or overridden by another rule and a ‘metrics’ view which shows the box, padding and margin dimensions of any given element.
The only feature I find that I miss from the other tool is the ability to change CSS properties on the fly, but its an easy one to work around.
IE Developer Toolbar
What did I do before this thing? Seriously.
Its kind of a mix between toolbar and inspector with common items like outlines and validation tools, but the key feature is certainly the ‘View DOM’ window. Again, the features are in line with the other available tools, you can walk the DOM tree, inspect properties, change attributes of individual nodes and see important information like ‘hasLayout’ values right along side the CSS properties. But there seems to be one big missing piece that I find getting caught up on regularly when working on complex sites—no view of individual CSS rules, only combined rules—this can make trying to trace values through different style sheets (and sometimes IE only ones) still a bit hit or miss on complex sites.
Don’t let that prevent you from installing it, even without that key-to-me feature it still is a tool that has saved me countless hours since I’ve installed it. You can grab the IE Developer Toolbar here for IE6 and IE7 and read up on it here.
I’m happy to announce the release of version 1.0 of my Textpattern Microformat plugin pnh_mf. This release adds support for the hReview microformat and works in a few small bug fixes. Downloads and change notes available from the pnh_mf page.
hReview is the most complex format included so far. Though straight forward, the format calls for defining the thing (event, company, product) you’re reviewing by including one of a few different other microformats. So like I’ve done previously with hCard + adr to add the tags needed for an hReview + hCard or hReview + hCalendar is a two step process.
As always, if you have questions about what type of information is expected in each microformat consult the plugin help docs via the TXP admin interface or microformats.org and if you have questions about the plugin ask away in the comments here or on this thread on the textpattern forums.
Aside from bug fixes or small usability related tweaks, this will be the last release until I can find time to work on enhancing Textpattern’s built in tag builder and make some of the input forms more flexible—taking care of these nesting cases more cleanly as well as providing easier input for names, dates and other details.
