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Archive for May, 2008

New in Semantic Forms: file upload

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

The latest feature added to Semantic Forms is file uploads, added yesterday. This is a big improvement to the technology, because file uploads are a standard part of real-world forms, and one of the last things that SF couldn’t duplicate yet; before, forms had to tell users to upload their files separately, then come back to the form when they were done. The way it works now is fairly ingenious, and was basically conceived by the developers of Chickipedia for use on their site. They were nice enough to send me their code, which meant that I didn’t have to do much work to add the feature. The real heart of this functionality is the fantastic Javascript library Floatbox, which is similar to the better-known Lightbox but allows for popping up full HTML pages, and doesn’t rely on external Javascript libraries.

Speaking of Chickipedia, it’s mentioned in the current issue of Wired in a tongue-in-cheek sidebar on the “8 Best Non-Wikipedia Pedias”. I was going to say that this is the first time a project I’m indirectly involved with was mentioned in Wired, but then I remembered that they had an insert about the interactive wine bar at the Adour restaurant a few months ago (that piece is not online, apparently), and I was actually even more directly involved with that project. So, it’s the second time. It still feels good.

Technology updates

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Some interesting technological improvements and news recently…

  • I released Replace Text, my latest extension, a week and a half ago. It’s a fairly minor extension, just doing a search-and-replace across the pages in a wiki, but it’s important for certain circumstances.
  • Semantic Drilldown had a big update about two weeks ago - it now supports multiple values per filter, finding the set of results that match any one of those values; some the display has been improved as well. For example, from a German site, here’s a list of countries that are either constitutional monarchies or federal republics.
  • Sergey Chernyshev has also released two fantastic extensions recently: Header Tabs, which quickly applies a tabbed interface onto any page, and Widgets, which allows for the easy placement of any widgets (like videos, slideshows, feeds and many others) onto one’s wiki. Header Tabs has already gotten a lot of usage, though I think Widgets will be the more transformative one, enabling a whole new set of functionality without any need for programming.
  • One wiki that uses Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Forms, that’s gotten a lot of buzz recently, is Cause Caller, which is actually an application around a wiki - the wiki gives information about American politicians, while the application lets you make phone calls to those politicians’ offices, to give them your opinion on various political issues. As far as I can think of, this is the first automated usage of data from a Semantic MediaWiki-based site; i.e. where the data is used for purposes other than just reading it. Its creator also made an entertaining screencast demonstrating the wiki. I think this might be the first online video to mention Semantic Forms by name. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually show a form (maybe there are more videos to come); though Header Tabs does appear quite conspicuously. It does remind me that I should put together my own long-planned screencast…
  • Other interesting SF-based wikis that have shown up recently: The Music Snob, a resource for musicians (which also has a nice usage of Semantic Drilldown), C-Pop Fantasie, a nicely-designed site that covers Chinese pop music, and BioVenturist.com, which covers biotechnology companies, technologies and venture capitalists, all important information.

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