<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://some/remote/script.js">
</script>

When the browser encounters this script, it stops and waits until the script returns. This means that your site’s performance depends on the performance of the site serving the script. At times I’ve noticed significant slowdown – though to be fair, Google is normally faster than most others in my experience.

So how can this be fixed? I’ve spent some time on the problem, but with limited success. Ideally I’d like an Ajax-y solution where the ads flow in after the rest of the page had loaded and rendered, because the content is more important than the ads. The first step though is to place the scripts at the end of the page, so that the rest of the content is downloaded first. However, the ads have to appear towards the top of the page, otherwise the advertisers will not be happy. I tried inserting the script dynamically like so:

var addiv = document.getElementById("addiv"); //where the ad is  to appear
var theScript = document.createElement("script");
theScript.type="text/javascript";
theScript.src = "http://some/remote/script.js"; 
addiv.appendChild(theScript);

While this works after a fashion, it does not do the job. The problem is that the script typically calls document.write. If you are lucky, the ad will appear at the bottom of the page. If you are unlucky, the ad will replace the entire page.

What I needed to do is to capture the output sent to document.write and then insert the HTML dynamically. It turns out that JavaScript makes this easy. We can simply override document.write with our own function. Like so:

var addiv = document.getElementById("addiv"); //where the ad is  to appear
var adHtml = ”;
var oldWrite = document.write;
document.write = function(str)
{
    adHtml += str;
}
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://some/remote/script.js">
</script>
document.write = oldWrite;
addiv.innerHTML = adHtml;

This is brilliant, and in fact works perfectly for some of my ad scripts. Unfortunately it does not work for the slowest performer. The problem is that I have no control over the content of the remote script. In the non-working case, the remote script does not return HTML. It returns another script, which references another remote script. Now I have to figure out how to handle all the possible cases where scripts return scripts, which might or might not call document.write.

I’d be interested if anyone has a generic solution. There is a library here that looks like it might be helpful.

Another reflection is that it is in the interests both of advertisers and publishers to have scripts that execute fast and/or behave in a predictable manner that is friendly towards deferred loading techniques. It is no use writing convoluted code to deal with a particular script, when it might change at any time and break the site.

Related posts:

1. Will Microsoft respond to the JavaScript speed challenge?
2. Is Safari the world’s fastest browser? You need to test more than just JavaScript
3. IE7 script madness

The reason for this note is that the feed broke for some subscribers recently; and the reason it broke was that I’d hacked the code to ensure that you get full text feeds and not excerpts with a “read more” link. I had hacked the code not because WordPress was broken exactly, but because of a legacy problem. The feed for this blog used to be http://www.itwriting.com/blog/rss.php. WordPress still supports this URL, but without my hack it delivers excerpts, even though WordPress is set for full text. The hack works; but it is perilous because I use Subversion to keep WordPress up-to-date. If I modify the WordPress source, and then the same file gets updated in the official source, then Subversion inserts some stuff in the file to assist in resolving the conflict. That’s fine, except that it may break the PHP until I get round to fixing it. There’s also a risk that the modified file will no longer work because of changes elsewhere.

The sane solution then is not to modify the WordPress source, but to ask you to use the modern, approved and up-to-date RSS feed URLs which are:

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/feed for RSS

and

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/feed/atom

for Atom.

If you use Google Reader, for example, I suggest you remove the existing subscription and add a new one with one of the above URLs.

That said, the old URL now works again, but with excerpts and not full text. The reason is not that I want you to visit the site, add to my page views and enjoy the unobtrusive advertising (though I do); it’s because of the technical issue above. Now you know how to fix it.

Related posts:

1. WordPress permalinks broke my RSS feed
2. Moving to WordPress without breaking links
3. RSS in IE7: not too good

Unfortunately this path is not configured directly in the plugin options, as far I can see. I temporarily changed it to display a text rating while I worked out how to fix it.

The setting had to be in the MySQL database somewhere; and I found it. It is one value in a massive 10,000 character field called  option_value, in the main options table. It seems that most of the settings for the plugin live in this single colon-separated field, even though the plugin also creates 12 tables of its own for the ratings data. Hmm, I don’t like the way this implemented. How often does this field get queried and parsed?

Still, the immediate problem was to alter the value. I ran up the MySQL interactive SQL utility and typed very carefully. This is where one false move can obliterate your WordPress install; I’m reminded of someone I knew (not me, honest) who set all his company’s customers to have the same address with a careless update missing its WHERE clause. Fortunately this is only a blog. Transactions are also good. Anyway, what could go wrong? it was a simple combination of UPDATE, REPLACE and WHERE.

It worked, the stars have returned, and I know a little bit more about the innards of WordPress and this particular plugin.

Related posts:

1. Moving to WordPress without breaking links
2. A WordPress flaw: no paged comments
3. Using WordPress pages

When I moved to WordPress I picked a theme which met my requirements, then modified it to tidy up the layout and to support non-intrusive advertising. I found myself to some extent boxed in once again, since I could not change or upgrade the theme without losing my modifications. This also meant I was missing out on newer features of WordPress. Widget support is a breakthrough feature, letting you add features to the site through a simple drag-and-drop admin page, but I could not use them. I also wanted to support gravatars, which show an image chosen by the author alongside their comments, and to add a ratings system.

Ratings are a lot of fun, though not really reliable as a gauge of quality. If your article extolling the merits of the Xbox 360 gets linked by a PlayStation fan site, or your article critical of Apple gets linked by an Apple fan site, there is little chance of a fair rating. Some readers also find it difficult to separate what they think about the subject matter from what they think about the quality of reporting. Even so, ratings are always interesting and I’d like to include a list of best-rated posts.

It has taken me some time to find a theme that looked right for my needs, but I have now settled on Atahualpa from BytesForAll. It is a popular theme, so my blog will look similar to many others, but it is flexible and I’ve been able to add the most important features by modifying settings rather than editing the raw PHP, a critical issue for upgradability. I’ve also added rating support with GD Star Rating.

As ever, it is work in progress, and I expect to modify the design and add features as time allows. Although it may not look much improved yet, it is much easier to modify in a maintainable fashion, so expect more changes soon.

Related posts:

1. Fixing a WordPress plugin setting
2. A note to RSS subscribers
3. Blogging is on the brink of a new phase

Running a blog has its frustrations. Adding content here has to take a back seat to paying work at times. I also realise that the site is desperately in need of redesign; I’ve played around with some tweaks in an offline version but I’m cautious about making changes because the current format just about works and I don’t want to make it worse. I am a writer and developer, but not a designer.

One company actually offered to redesign the blog for me, but I held back for fear that a sense of obligation would prevent me from writing objectively. That said, I have considered doing something like Adobe’s Serge Jespers and offering a prize for a redesign; if you would like to supply such a prize, in return for a little publicity, let me know. One of my goals is to make use of WordPress widgets to add more interactivity and a degree of future-proofing. I hope 2010 will be the year of a new-look ITWriitng.com.

So what are you reading? Looking at the stats for the year proves something I was already aware of: that the most-read posts are not news stories but how-to articles that solve common problems. The readers are not subscribers, but individuals searching for a solution to their problem. For the record, the top five in order:

Annoying Word 2007 problem- can’t select text – when Office breaks

Cannot open the Outlook window – what sort of error message is that? – when Office breaks again

Visual Studio 6 on Vista – VB 6 just won’t die

Why Outlook 2007 is slow- Microsoft’s official answer – when Office frustrates

Outlook 2007 is slow, RSS broken – when Office still frustrates

The most popular news posts on ITWriting.com:

London Stock Exchange migrating from .NET to Oracle/UNIX platform -  case study becomes PR disaster

Parallel Programming: five reasons for caution. Reflections from Intel’s Parallel Studio briefing – a contrarian view

Apple Snow Leopard and Exchange- the real story – hyped new feature disappoints

Software development trends in emerging markets – are they what you expect?

QCon London 2009 – the best developer conference in the UK

and a few others that I’d like to highlight:

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment – Sun is taken over by Oracle, though the deal has been subject to long delays thanks to EU scrutiny

Is Silverlight the problem with ITV Player- Microsoft, you have a problem – prophetic insofar as ITV later switched to Adobe Flash; it’s not as good as BBC iPlayer but it is better than before

Google Chrome OS – astonishing – a real first reaction written during the press briefing; my views have not changed much though many commentators don’t get its significance for some reason

Farewell to Personal Computer World- 30 years of personal computing – worth reading the comments if you have any affection for this gone-but-not-forgotten publication

Is high-resolution audio (like SACD) audibly better than than CD – still a question that fascinates me

When the unthinkable happens: Microsoft/Danger loses customer data – as a company Microsoft is not entirely dysfunctional but for some parts there is no better word

Adobe’s chameleon Flash shows its enterprise colours – some interesting comments on this Flash for the Enterprise story

Silverlight 4 ticks all the boxes, questions remain – in 2010 we should get some idea of Silverlight’s significance, now that Microsoft has fixed the most pressing technical issues

and finally HAPPY NEW YEAR

Related posts:

1. The curious silence of the IE team – Microsoft needs to rediscover blogging
2. Silverlight versus HTML, Flash – Microsoft defends its role
3. Silverlight 4.0 released to the web; tools still not final

1 Capturing screenshots

On Windows I press PrintScreen or Alt-PrintScreen (for the current window), then paste into an ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro 5.0 for trimming and re-sizing. No, it’s not PhotoShop, but it loads in a blink.

For the Mac I use Ctrl-Command-Shift-3 (whole screen) or Ctrl-Command-Shift-4 (selectable area) which adds a screenshot to the clipboard. Then I use the latest Preview, which has a File – New from Clipboard option. I love Preview – it has tools for further trimming and resizing, and when you save it shows the file size as you select different formats. Since I often want to minimise the size for a web page, it’s ideal.

2 Secure file transfer

I avoid FTP for security reasons, so on Windows I normally use WinSCP for secure file transfer.

On the Mac I use Fugu, and of the two I prefer it.

3 Word processing

On Windows I use Microsoft Word. On the Mac I mainly use NeoOffice, which actually felt a bit nicer than its parent, OpenOffice. I also spent some time with Word 2008 (good for compatibility, but slow) and Apple’s Pages from iWork 09. One nice feature of Pages, for journalism, is the stats window that shows the word count as you type.

4 Web browsing

I used Safari, in order to get the most complete Apple experience. I’m getting to like the Top Sites feature, though it’s hardly essential, especially the way it shows at a glance which pages have changed.

5 Sound editing

On Windows I use Audacity. On the Mac I use … Audacity, though for some reason I found it slightly less smooth.

6 Playing FLAC

Apple is still stubbornly refusing to support FLAC in iTunes or Quicktime. My solution was Songbird, a great alternative, which supports FLAC straight out of the box, or rather download.

For converting to FLAC I used MacFLAC, though I found it less than robust. I missed dbPowerAmp (Windows).

7 Remote desktop

I find Remote Desktop invaluable for managing servers. On the Mac I used the official Remote Desktop client, which worked well though it falls slightly short of the Windows version (perhaps this is a policy!).

8 Twitter

I use Twhirl on both Mac and Windows, an Adobe AIR application. One oddity (getting picky): the font spacing is slightly better on Windows. In the word Blog, for example, there is too much space between the B and the l, but only on the Mac.

9 Email

I never thought I’d say I missed Outlook, but I did. The thing is, after much experimentation I’ve found a permutation that works really well on Windows: 64-bit Windows and Outlook 2007 SP2 in online mode (only for a desktop, of course).

On the Mac I use Mail, but I’ve found it less than satisfactory even though I run Exchange 2007 with all the required configuration.

10 Blog authoring

On Windows I use Live Writer, which is superb.

On the Mac I write posts (like this one) in the WordPress online editor. I don’t like it as much, but it does the job.

11 Bridge

Now this one is a problem . I find JackBridge ideal for those moments when I need a break from work. It won this year’s World Champion computer bridge contest.

The Mac is not so well served, but I have trialled Bridge Baron and found it not bad at all.

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 media: AAC yes, FLAC no
2. Windows 7 beta 1 performance observations
3. New in Windows 7 RC: Windows XP Mode, Remote Media Streaming

What’s curious is that even Microsoft doesn’t seem to use the platform in the way it was (presumably) intended. I opened up Windows Live Mail 2009 today (I use it only occasionally as a newsgroup reader), and was puzzled to see 6724 unread feed items.

What’s going on? Well, I use the IE7 feed list and access it either in IE7 or in my own home-brew reader, which uses the COM API to the common feed list.

Windows Live Mail had grabbed the list of feeds and made its own copy of all the data. Am I sure? Yes, first because of this suspicious option in Live Mail:

“When deleting a feed here, also delete it from your Internet Explorer feed list” – implying synchronization, not a common database. Note also the jargon; the Live Mail folk clearly think of this as a feature of IE, not a feature of Windows.

I also took a look in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Your Feeds\

and there is was, a copy of all the entries in X-MimeOLE format. The real common feed list, by contrast, is stored in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

It is not quite as bad as it first appears. When I chose to sync the feeds in Live Mail, the unread items synchronized with those in IE7. I am also hopeful that the data is only retrieved from the Internet once. though it is hard to be sure. A quick experiment suggests that if you delete a feed in IE7, it stays in Live Mail, though it no longer updates (one or other of these facts could be a bug). If you delete a feed in Live Mail it is deleted from IE7 unless, presumably, the box in the dialog above is checked.

The Outlook team made a similar error, but worse, because the feeds end up messing up your Exchange mailbox as well.

So why doesn’t Live Mail simply present a view of the common feed list, like my home-brew reader? Well, maybe the API is not robust or fast enough. The solution then is to fix the common feed list, not to do all this error-prone synchronization.

The whole thing would make more sense if the feed list was synchronized with the cloud, so that I could also read my feeds on the Web, in the style of Google Reader. Despite the name, Live Mail seems thoroughly bound to the desktop. It is simply an update to Outlook Express.

Related posts:

1. A simple blog reader for the IE7 common feed list
2. RSS in IE7: not too good
3. Microsoft Live Mesh is AIR++

OS stats

Windows 80.5% (down from 82.1%)

Mac 4.2% (up from 4%)

Linux 4.1% (up from 3.5%)

Browser stats

IE 51.5% (down from 58.8%)

Firefox 25.3% (up from 20.5%)

Opera 4.1% (up from 3.2%)

Safari 2.8% (up from 2.5%)

Chrome 0.6% (new, not available all year)

Most read 2008 posts

Note: some of the most-read posts in 2008 were published in 2007 or earlier, including Outlook is slow, RSS broken (complete with 188 comments), and Annoying Word 2007 problem – can’t select text (248 comments) – both examples of users searching for fixes to problems with Microsoft software.

From 2008, these were the 10 most read:

Fixing wifi on Asus Eee PC 901 with Linux

Vista SP1 vs Server 2008 as a desktop OS: more comparisons

Why I can’t use Microsoft Live search for real work (I now think some of the problems mentioned in this post are to do with inappropriate localization)

More Silverlight, Visual Studio setup hassles

VirtualBox is amazing, 50% faster than Virtual PC on my PC (intriguing as a recent review I saw claimed that Virtual PC is actually faster than VirtualBox).

CNN Daily Top 10 spam shows failure of user education

Changing the motherboard or storage controller underneath Windows XP and Vista

What’s new in Delphi 2009

Counting Primes in Flash and Silverlight (see also tests for Alchemy, JavaFX and Chrome)

Debugging PHP code to fix a WordPress problem

and finally

Thanks for reading in 2008, and Happy New Year. I may do a more general review of 2008 if I can find the time before it is too late!

Related posts:

1. Pretty permalinks improve stats reporting
2. VirtualBox is amazing, 50% faster than Virtual PC on my PC
3. RIA plug-in stats: Flash dominates

I’ve been conscious of several comment-related problems on this blog.

I have a few posts that have tons of comments. Most of these are about technical problems which affect a lot of people: they Google the problem to find the post. Once a discussion gets beyond about 50 posts it is hard to find the most useful content quickly. Examples:

Annoying Word 2007 problem: can’t select text (210 comments)

Outlook 2007 is slow, RSS broken (186 comments)

Fixing wi-fi on an Asus Eee PC 901 with Linux (60 comments)

Adobe CS3 won’t install (79 comments, hope CS4 is better!)

At this stage, the blog has become in effect a forum. Of course there is already excellent forum software out there; but it is no good telling people to go away and use a forum instead; maybe it’s OK that blogs and forums are becoming almost the same thing (most forums can also be used as blog feeds).

Sometimes the comments are more interesting than the original post, particularly when someone close to the subject of the post replies. I suspect such comments do not get the readership they deserve, because we are all busy and just scan the headlines. A comment widget might help with this.

An aside about reputation points. These are pretty much essential when there are lots of comments; sites like slashdot depend on them (though in that case you have to be a moderator to score comments). That said, it is an imperfect system. My posts on The Register are now scored by readers (though most seem not to bother); and I’m not sure whether they primarily measure the quality of the article, or the extent to which the reader agrees. As with Wikipedia, these things promote the wisdom of the crowd; overall it is more healthy than not, but the crowd is not always right.

Related posts:

1. A WordPress flaw: no paged comments
2. 2007: the most commented posts, and a bit of blog introspection
3. Moving to WordPress without breaking links

Apologies if this affected you – I have not been as quiet as you may have thought.

Related posts:

1. Pretty permalinks improve stats reporting
2. A note to RSS subscribers
3. Moving to WordPress without breaking links