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October 19, 2003

OzNewton Update

Oh boy have I been busy. I have been forced to learn far more about css than I ever wanted to know. At the same time I have been introduced to SSI (Server Side Includes) for the Newton webserver. After much hacking, I got the Newton homepage to look like the blog (sort of) but it was messy and drawn in a table (which AFAIK is no longer the "correct" approach). Given NPDS already uses a stylesheet, I started hacking. After much stress and angst (and a lot of help from Richard Sheppard) I got the stylesheets working (sort of again). Then I started dreaming about fiddling with SSI's to build the main page (instead of the tables). You can see the (partial) result in this archived screenshot. After I finish the footer (and fiddle with the css again) the main index page will become something as simple as:



<HTML>

    <HEAD><TITLE>Welcome to OzNewton</TITLE>

    <link href="http://www.guru-international.com/Newton/Newt.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

</HEAD>

<BODY>

    <OzN_HDR>

    <div id="main">

        <OzN_MNU>

<h2>Welcome</h2>

<p>G'day Mate, it is <TIME> here in <USR_CITY>, Australia.

Feel free to poke around this tiny portable web server.

If you have any questions or suggestions,

click on the "Whiteboard" link below and fill in a comment form.

You can also try paging me using the webpager over on the right.

Enjoy your visit!

<h2>Notes in my Notepad:</h2><NOTE_LIST>

<h2>Notes Posted Via the WWW:</h2><POST_LIST>

<h2>Post a Note Using:</h2><NOTE_POST>

<h2>Search My Notepad:</h2><NOTE_SEARCH>

</div>

<OzN_FTR>

</BODY></HTML>

The current result looks like this archive screenshot which demonstrates that I need to get back to the css and margins and stuff but at least it works!

So what? Well it means you can now embed multiple notes (thanks to Paul Guyot) into a single html file which allows for different parts to be updated independently. It also means that I can start looking at how to use this to override some of the other templates that are used for other generated content (e.g. notes interface).

Posted by Ozguru at October 19, 2003 12:10 AM

Comments

I wanna do the includes thing with header, footer and menu like you're trying to do, or have done already. The thing is, I can't get a single script to work!
  • ScriptEditor is installed and I can run it, add scripts, evaluate them, make them active (although the close slip (x) actually acts as another toggle for the active/not active checkbox) but they don't work
  • I can't install the sample NPDS Scripts
Can you help? Any advice?

Posted by: Richard Sheppard at October 19, 2003 12:10 AM

I have sent a detailed reply by email but the two problems that I had were related to the name and the state of the script. The form of the SSI tag seems to have some constraints but I don't know what they are. I settled on using OzN_XXXX which seems to (a) work and (b) not conflict with anything else. The second problem was that (like you) I had problems with the active/inactive state. Once the script 'evaluates' correctly, I go and reset the 'activite' option and save it. Then I go back and checked that it is still active. I may try and work up a more detailed tutorial style document for the whole thing if there is any interest.

Posted by: ozguru at October 19, 2003 12:10 AM