Playing With Sharp Objects

This was a long time coming, but is finally here and will make things simpler when altering code in the future. I’ll only have to change it in one place to affect all views of the code. In addition, there is now a preference for determining which view you get on login. I’ve also fixed the installer code so that the user table is set up properly and so that you are asked for the admin password instead of having to go into mysql to set it. This is currently in SVN version 167.

A quick rundown of what’s left before version 0.6 is out:

• Installer SQL sanity checking
• Keyboard shortcuts like Google Reader and Bloglines
• Plugins - alter feed item content (see Digg badge), user prefs (social badges), feed item social buttons (mailto, del.icio.us, recycle)
• Feeds per user - Still only one feed list to view
• More localization

Regarding support, you’re welcome to use the comments for feedback as I monitor it daily, but because of comment spam I’ve been force to set up autoclose articles after 30 days. Your best bet would be to sign up at the Vanilla support boards.

Here’s a cool new app made by a fellow Monkeychow user. http://leumund.ch/v3/flickrspy This really brings out the voyeur in you by displaying all new publicly viewable images posted to Flickr. Another tool written in the addictive vein of Twittervision. http://twittermap.com/twittervision

Came across this today while checking out Dell’s newest XPS system. It will only get pricier when these 1TB drives hit the market. Now taking donations!

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A recent small addition to the MonkeyChow code can be seen below.

Now, if the feed happens to come from Digg.com, the iframe Digg badge will be displayed for that story so that you can digg the story from within MonkeyChow. YOu still have to be logged into Digg for this to work, so I recommend a middle-click on the badge.

In other MonkeyChow news, I’ve combined the CSS for frames and non-frames view, and merged the index.php non-frames feed list with the frames sidebar feed list. Now, the same code checks whether you are in a frames view or not, and displays appropriately.

My next step will be to do the same for the framed and non-framed items panes, and then split the frames menu pane appropriately between the non-frames feeds and items views. This way, you can launch something from the frames view into another browser tab and still retain the functionality.

This is currently only available in the SVN code. Once I have completed this and finished multiuser functionality, I will be releasing MonkeyChow version 0.6.