JACOB Changelog

Want to see the actual demos? They are listed on a separate page: JACOB Chooser

List Of Changes By Beta

Guide To Deletions And Inserts | List Of Things Still To Do

Changes in Beta 9 (28 July 2006)

  1. Added a Basic Version for users with JavaScript turned off. This now makes the demo more accessible. However, it requires PHP (or rather, using PHP means I can generate the two different versions a lot easier).
  2. Moved the links into a separate text file links.txt.

Changes in Beta 8 (20 March 2006)

  1. Imported all my work bookmarks to see if JACOB is usable in a real-world situation. It's noticeably slower with a lot of bookmarks to process.
  2. Found Opera 9 doesn't display the bookmarks for a second, so I've added a waiting message. Be glad if you don't see this.
  3. Sped up the code considerably by removing non-essential spaces, semi-colons and more.
  4. Validated the HTML to be fully XHTML Strict compliant.
  5. Removed the code to add a new bookmark, as JavaScript can't save the result. Links should be added by copying and pasting them into the source code using a text editor. Note: keep the links in alphabetical order, so the code doesn't require sorting them first. (This speeds it up nicely.)
  6. Implemented a neat way to open bookmarks. Firstly, select the link, name or tags in the list to line them up. Then click again on any column to go straight to the bookmarked page. This also gives the impression of double-clicking.
  7. Removed the Go button as it's now unnecessary - except in Internet Explorer 6, which doesn't do anything when you click again on the links. If anyone knows why, let me know.
  8. Removed the Clear button as clicking on a category name refreshes the list and clears the search text automatically.
  9. Categories are now added directly into the HTML by hand. This prevents the need for the JavaScript to build them from an array. It also enables you to create shorter names for categories when compiling your links. There's no longer any need to use the full category name after the link. For example, with a category called "Search Engine Optimisation", you might choose "seo" for the category. This saves masses of bytes.
  10. Separated the demo and this Changelog, which is getting rather long!
  11. Firefox is showing a problem when a search comes up blank in a category: the last 3 columns aren't the same height as the categories. I'm not sure why.

Changes in Beta 7.1 (24 February 2006)

  1. I noticed that Firefox reduces the height of the Tags column if there are any empty tags for the bookmarks listed. This has the effect of spoiling the highlight when you click on a row - it no longer lines up in the last column. Solved it by adding a fixed height to the option element. (Damn: the highlight doesn't work across all the columns in IE6. Useless.)

Changes in Beta 7 (16 January 2006)

  1. Placed CSS into separate stylesheet.
  2. Fixed various bugs.
  3. Added code to highlight changes to the list of outstanding improvements below. Only the last changes are highlighted, but previous ones remain shown in the code by using an unstyled CSS class. You might wish to style all classes to show the changes if you like. View the source and scroll down to the bottom of the page if you're not sure what I'm on about.
  4. Added a form to enter a new bookmark. It offers a list of the current categories to choose from, or you can add a new one. Alas I realised that although I can add to the existing links, JavaScript offers no way to save them as a file. This means the demo is basically pointless, as any refresh will clear the newly added bookmarks. I don't want the user to have to add these manually by editing the code. I should have known about this before tackling this demo.
       I will now pause and think how to move this forward. I could link to a second page which shows the links as raw code, but the user will then have to copy and paste what's on screen and save it into a file. However, even that won't work as JavaScript can't access local files. So basically at the moment I'm stuck. Any ideas, let me know.
  5. Update: I can possibly use XMLHttpRequest to include files. There is a problem with IE6 (what's new?) which apparently will give a warning message when using a local file this way. Even so, this technique is the only way forward I can see. I just have to learn how to use it by studying this page.

Changes in Beta 6 (5 December 2005)

  1. Clicking on a name, link or tag now highlights the same line in the adjacent columns.
  2. You can now edit the links in the source code without worrying about the array numbers.
  3. Added more links.
  4. Removed the categories in brackets.
  5. Clicking 'All' no longer lists duplicate names (unless they are separate bookmarks with the same name but different links, or genuine duplicates in the code which should be removed).

Changes in Beta 5 (22 November 2005)

  1. Added searchable tags!
  2. Enabled fluid width for the columns within a fixed div. This appears to be the only way to deal with long links reasonably. Now opening a category of short links fits the columns to the text. Viewing longer links stretches the columns but does not cause them to drop below the others, due to the container div. Now the user is free to scroll to view any long URLs that don't quite fit the screen. I am cautious of making all the columns fit a screen size of 1024 x 768, but very long links or bookmark names may cause the user to scroll.
  3. Doubled the length of bookmark names, category titles and URLs that are shown before getting cut off with a 3-dot suffix.
  4. The height of the columns now matches the links shown.

Some Browser Notes:

Changes in Beta 4 (17 November 2005)

  1. Categories and names are now truncated to allow for both if they use long words. Previously the category was not shown in brackets if the name was too long. I added code to balance the length of both words, but it didn't look right. As it stands, names can still overlap the columns if mostly wide characters like "m" are used in them. But allowing for this makes normal names appear cut off too soon. See the example links I put in with lots of "m"s in them. What to do...
  2. Switched to UTF-8 encoding. Now the 3 dots after truncated names can be represented by a single character '…' instead, saving space. UTF-8 will also help with bookmark names including accents and non-English characters.
  3. Improved the code in various ways, such as when there are more categories than links. Previously, this led to a scrollbar appearing in the first column. Also allowed for when truncated names end in a space, by cutting off the space before the 3 dots were added.

Changes in Beta 3 (11 November 2005)

  1. Added multiple categories
  2. Made long URLs and names truncated
  3. Links now show the category after them
  4. Loads of other subtle improvements

Changes in Beta 2 (31 October 2005)

  1. URLs now listed as well
  2. URLs are searchable!
  3. Cleaned up design and moved things about
  4. Improved the code
  5. Added possible shading for odd rows - untested (needs more work) - removed
  6. Started work on updating the links
  7. Made Clear button erase messages
  8. Coded multiple categories but it breaks the way the whole program works. Will require a new method.

Work in progress! Still to do:

  1. Multiple categories per link
  2. Searchable tags
  3. Show URL of links
  4. Add/remove links - filter ampersands for XHTML
  5. Import/export of links
  6. Update the design
  7. Update the links (some done)
  8. Filter URLs before search check (knock off prefix and suffix up to first dot) - can't do incase link has another link as a variable on the end of it. (Got it to work for normal links, but removed the code.)
  9. Clear highlight in Name list if URL clicked on (to avoid confusion) and vice versa? - Tried to make it so when you click on a name, it also highlights the link, but the code doesn't work, despite being accurately written as far as I can tell. Something for future browsers (or better programmers!) perhaps.
  10. NAMES DON'T MATCH URLS IF EITHER LIST IS SCROLLED! Convert to tables and use code to select?
  11. Sort out flickering caused by scrollbars appearing briefly in Firefox 1.5. How to remove scrollbars altogether? (CSS overflow:hidden doesn't work! (At least not in Firefox.))
  12. Add box to show full link?
  13. Sort out inner border round each select in IE6
  14. Add special category "All" for links array?
  15. Add ENTER key to open link (scrolling down loses Go button on screen). Or duplicate Go button at bottom
  16. DON'T LIST CATEGORIES AFTER NAMES WHEN NOT VIEWING ALL!
  17. Optimise code
  18. Allow deletion of categories. (What happens to links?)
  19. Hide the Add Bookmark form rather than use innerHTML to create it. Otherwise I don't seem to able to get the values from the inputs using the DOM.
  20. If you type something like &#1236 in as a search, the results text shows them as entities.
  21. Bug: if you type in a search, then add a new bookmark, clicking a category fails to find anything.

Guide

Deleted text | Newly deleted text since last release | Inserted text | Newly inserted text since last release