Nimbupani Designs

The Danger of a Story

divya — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:52:11 +0000

I am hazarding, you would think, just as I did, that “Something must be done! This cannot be!” This Yahoo Answers thread is a great example of it. If you are enterprising enough, you would look for a website that takes donations to help people in that area or at least attempt to know more about the area where the photo was taken.

The problem with this story is that,it is just that, a story. This photograph can represent a million things. It can as easily be applied to Sudan as to any other country. It can be appropriated by anyone as their symbol of struggle and oppression.

But, here is an alternative story of this picture which is much less sinister and sounds more probable:

Again according to Silva, Carter was quite shocked as it was the first time that he had seen a famine situation and so he took many shots of the children suffering from famine. Silva also started to take photos of children on the ground as if crying, which were not published. The parents of the children were busy taking food from the plane so they had left their children only briefly while they collected the food. This was the situation for the girl in the photo taken by Carter. A vulture landed behind the girl. To get the two in focus, Carter approached the scene very slowly so as not to scare the vulture away and took a photo from approximately 10 metres. He took a few more photos and then the vulture flew off.

This is not to diminish the tragedy that unfolded in Sudan, but to simply point out the danger of a story. Stories that fit into a well-known pattern and titillate us with graphic and violent details are especially dangerous.

Stories cloud our perceptions and lead to a mob behavior, frequently seen online (like this story of Jon Engle which I implicitly believed in before more details came out). Anyone who asks to know an alternate point of view is treated as a “heartless” person or someone who must be in collusion with the devil or a traitor. This is the danger of a story, we get sucked into it without us realising we are reacting to it.

Thanks to the internet, you do not have to work too hard to know all aspects of a story to make up your mind. Tyler Cowen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have spoken much more eloquently on this topic, which I consider essential viewing for anyone wondering about the danger of a story.

As Tyler Cowen states, any story that is simple to understand, or is of the form Good vs. Evil, that translates to a good movie, or is a story that you like to hear, is worth investigating before assuming it to be true.

Make it a habit to never believe in any story reported in any media, until you know enough to form an opinion about it. More importantly, be willing to change that opinion as soon as more facts are known, or when it stops being plausible.

Don’t believe anything I have just said either :)

Blogging with Drupal 6 - Part 2

divya — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:04:28 +0000

In the first post of this series I covered migrating and backing up content in Drupal 6. Today it will be Drupal 6 modules.

Drupal is most efficient and maintainable without any optional modules. But, alas, we need modules to get a blog running smoothly. There are hundreds of modules available for Drupal, which makes it tempting to install anything that seems interesting. Cure yourself of that temptation. Do not install a module unless absolutely necessary, and turn on caching.

I have been burned enough times that I always consider these two questions before even attempting to try one:

Will they be available for future Drupal versions?

Drupal releases a new version with slightly different codebase every year (at least), and it is always recommended that you upgrade. Sometimes, the modules you have installed in your existing version of Drupal will not be available for the new versions, which makes us think twice about upgrading.

My rule of thumb is to always find modules that will be available at least for the upcoming Drupal version.
Do they contain security vulnerabilities?

There are hundreds of modules and many of them use insecure code, which might make your site vulnerable to security exploits.

Here are some ways to find answers for these questions:

Use popular Drupal modules only (warning page might take a long time to load). If a module is popular, it is more likely to be supported in the future versions.
Use modules that pledge support for Drupal 7. Modules that have “#D7CX” should be releasing a version for Drupal 7 when a stable version of Drupal 7 is released.
Use modules that have history (modules that have been in existence for at least 3 Drupal releases). You can check that from the earliest version number that is available for download.
Use only stable releases for the module on your live site, if this is not possible, test out the unstable releases (alpha, beta versions) on your staging server before using them on your site.

There will always be something that is not available as a module, in which case, you can either hire someone to create a module for you, or drop that idea and look for something else.

With all these caveats, here are some of the Drupal 6 modules that are useful for blogging:

Basic

Poormanscron

If you have no idea what a cron means or how to set it up (or cannot set it up due to host restrictions), this module is for you. Download
Views

The new Views is a bit intimidating at first. Be careful not to include your Views tables when exporting your Drupal 5 database.
Drupal 6 views has a lot of default views available (much more than in Drupal 5), including the one that bloggers most covet—monthly archives. Download
Google Analytics

You can always simply set up Google Analytics in the footer of your template, but this module does two additional things:
- Cache Tracking Code file locally: So, that is one less page request for your page.
- Track Internal Search: If you are using Drupal’s Search form on your site, this module will also track that and report to Google Analytics.
Download

Feedburner

Feedburner gives a universal RSS feed URL. Subscribers to your feedburner feed will not have to do anything if you move your CMS from Wordpress to Drupal or even to another domain (previously, they would have to manually subscribe from your new website).

This module returns Feedburner URLs instead of the standard Drupal feed URLs in all places where your Drupal feed URLs are referenced. I use this to return Feedburner links to my subcategories too, like Web Design and Book Reviews. Of course, there is always the danger of Feedburner going down, but I think this service is worth that risk. Download

SEO

The following modules make it easy for Search Engines and Search Engine users to find content on your site.

Path Auto

Drupal has a default URL for each node which looks like “/node/35”. This module creates an alias (e.g. “blog/new-post.html”) for a default URL based on some keywords, date, title, category, etc.

If you have used path auto in Drupal 5, continue with same settings. If you are converting to Drupal from another CMS, and want to retain your URLs, Path Auto has enough variables to continue generating the URLs you had.
Global Redirect

Path Auto only creates another URL which will point to the same content as the default URL. This poses a problem as Search Engines can index both these URLs as two separate web pages. Someone might link using the default URL instead of the URL you have specified in Path Auto. Ihis is easily prevented by using Global Redirect Module. This module detects if an alias exists, and if so, permanently redirects the incoming URL to the alias. This way, Search Engines will make note of the new location for the default URL, and any incoming URL will also be redirect to the correct alias. Download
Nodewords

This is quite useful in clearly stating what your post is about for Search Engine users. Nodewords also lets you use the abstract instead of typing in custom description for each post. Download
Search 404

If you used descriptive URLs before and do not think those need to be 301 redirected. I used to be on Movable Type in 2003, and I still get hits for URLs formed by Movable Type. This module is supposed to extract keywords from the URL and do a search for it and render the search results instead of a typical 404 page. It does not work as advertised for me, but hopefully you will have better luck. Download

Comments

Comment Closer

For the life of me, I cannot get it to work on my site. But it is supposed to close comments on posts that are older than a specified time period. Most comment spam hit older posts and this is a good way to stop them. Download
Comment Notify

The little checkbox that asks you if you want to subscribe to follow-up comments on this blog post is available thanks to this module. Download
Gravatar

If you want to display of the avatars of people who leave comments, this is a good module. While it is advertised to work only for authenticated users, it works very well for anonymous ones too. Download
Mollom

Mollom makes it really hard to comment (I am consoling myself that this is why I don’t get any on my site!), but is an effective deterrent to comment spam. Download
widgEditor

I cannot think of any reason why any other WYSIWYG editor needs to be in existence. Download

Maintenance

No CMS is maintenance free. Here are somethings you can do, to ensure your site runs smoothly:

Turn on updates

You need to turn on the Update Status module at /admin/modules. A list of updates available will be at /admin/reports/updates. You can also set it to email you when an update is ready for Drupal core or installed modules. Typically there are updates at least every 2 months.
Backup

Backup and Migrate module backs up your database on a predetermined schedule. The trouble is it backs up to the same space where your Drupal files are located which defeats the purpose of a backup. If you have a desktop machine at home that is on most of the day, you can schedule a cron job that grabs the backed up database and saves it locally on your machine (which you are hopefully backing up!) Download

That’s it! Do you have any good Drupal 6 modules that you have found useful for blogging?

Book Reviews for Feb 2010 - Part 2

divya — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:16:48 +0000

It was only 15 days ago I was bemoaning my meagre collection of books to review, and here I am with six more! Sleepless nights FTW!

Half Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s is a marvellous writer (I have joined her fan club officially). While Half of a Yellow Sun states Igbo people suffered greatly during the Biafran war, the book also elegantly depicts that, in a war, everyone is a victim. Also interesting is the tone of how women seem to be resigned to their husbands’ infidelity and use that to justify their own extra-marital affairs. This is a good, if fictional, introduction to the North-South divide in Nigeria which still clouds the current uncertainty with the Nigerian Presidency.
New York Trilogy

The New York Trilogy is as complex as M F Hussain’s Meenaxi (or more so). There is a character called Paul Aster (the same name as the author), and you have no idea when the so-called author becomes a narrator. There is a handy chart to understand the characters in the novels, but I am still confused. All of these stories are based on what can happen when a detective gets obsessed with stalking someone. An engrossing read that keeps you confused for years to come :)

This edition also has art by Art Spiegelman, which was fantastic!
Wizard of the Crow

This giant book is a thinly-veiled allegory on Kenyan politics. Wizard of the Crow is set in a fictional state of Abruria ruled by a despot. The protagonists Kamiti and Grace are articulate, literate young people who struggle to raise money and find work. Kamiti is a passionate humanist and extensively talks about his experiences in Madras, India and morals from the Bhagavad Gita. He is guilt-stricken as his poor parents spent their entire life savings on sending him to study in India and yet he cannot find a job back in Abruria.

Suddenly, some people mistakenly interpret Kamiti’s actions and serendipity for witchcraft and start consulting him. All actions of Kamiti can be rationally explained, but it amused me to no end to see how the rest of the characters interpret it. These actions are not peculiar to any “African nation” but you can see it in action everywhere! Foolish superstitious beliefs and Pat Robertson’s trash about Haitians pact with Satan, are more actions in the same vein.

It is a long read, but very well-written. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the author, also suffered for speaking out - He was imprisoned in Kenya for his writing (by the dictator Daniel arap Moi).
The Lost Daughter

I have started to read books in the ascending order of marking them as “to-read”, which means I have no idea why some of the books end up in that list. This was one such book. It is not something I would pick up usually.

The Lost Daughter is about a mother who muses on her parenting while on a holiday. It is an uncomfortable book, and there are parallels that can be drawn from it to incidents in any mother-daughter relationship. I found it very annoying that the writer focussed so much on what the mother is thinking about, which is usually about herself or her relationship with her daughters, ex-husband, or potential lovers. It might have worked if it was written in first-person, but feels like the author is trying to force her view through the mother.
Hell Boy Vol 7 / Tom Strong Book 4

Hellboy, Vol. 7: The Troll Witch and Other Stories was a riot as usual (I am running out of adjectives to describe it!) Tom Strong (Book 4) is a big pile of mush. I fear Alan Moore must have lost his marbles when he wrote this character (or at least the story in this book).

I won’t be surprising you with a Part 3 for Feb at least :) Any books that you have been pondering about lately?

Blogging with Drupal 6 - Part 1

divya — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:28:47 +0000

As you might infer from my tweets, I have a love-hate relationship with Drupal. I want to document here what I gathered in my quest to move my blog to Drupal 6, to spare you some of the back path-breaking work.

I hope to cover what I learnt about Drupal 6 migration, modules, and design in 3 posts. I assume you have a blog running Drupal 5 and you know the meaning of a Web Server or a Database.

In this post, I want to talk about setting up a staging server. Bloggers are tempted to use their live sites to experiment with migrating or testing modules. You are most vulnerable when you do this, as you can even wipe out your entire database by installing a rogue module.

Hence, the most important thing you should do as a Drupal blogger is to set up a local staging server where you can test your migration to Drupal 6. Once you are satisfied, you need to repeat the same steps for migrating the live content to Drupal 6.

If you are looking to migrate from Wordpress or other CMS, here is how to migrate content.

Set up Staging Server

Before we begin the migration, we need to setup Drupal 6 on a Staging server. It would be best if your Staging server can reflect the server where your website is hosted as much as possible. Follow these instructions to set up Drupal 6 on your machine.
Migrate Content to the Staging Server
1. This is the nasty bit. If you are importing from Drupal 5, you are in luck as Backup and Migrate module can do the donkey work for you.
  1. Install Backup and Migrate on your live site
  2. Put your site in Off-line mode (Admin > settings > Site Maintenance)
  3. Turn off clean URLs, disable optional modules (e.g. Views, Image, TinyMCE, etc.), and switch to a default theme. If your frontpage is a View (as mine was), set it to the default node.
  4. Go to the Admin settings for Backup and Migrate, and export your database as a downloadable file.
  5. Turn back on all the modules (make sure your settings are still correct), clean URLs and revert to your theme. Finally take your site back online.
2. Import the database from the above step into your local Database Management System (usually MySQL).
3. Open the Drupal 6 update.php in a browser to upgrade the imported database.
Install Modules

The trick to have pain free upgrades is to depend as less as possible on external modules. Unfortunately, the curse of infinite modules almost always hits every Drupal Administrator. Recently Drupal has introduced a pledge system, which module maintainers use to declare their support for the upcoming Drupal release. But, it is still not a good solution.

To look at it positively, it gives you opportunity to fine-tune the user experience on your site. If a module does not have a future release, it is most likely because of poor demand, which means you shouldn’t be using it anyway.

I will cover some of the interesting modules for blogging in my next post.
Update Theme

There are several themes available for Drupal 6, which you can use immediately. I hope to cover some of the pitfalls of writing a theme for Drupal 6 in a future post in this series.
Test Local Staging

Use this opportunity to test your URL Rewrites if your local staging uses the same web server as your host. If this move involves moving your blog from a sub-folder to the main directory (like mine did), it helps to write and test URL Rewrites on this local staging server.

If you are moving from another CMS system to Drupal, you should ensure the paths redirect seamlessly or are retained. Two modules that can help you here are Path Auto and Global Redirect.
Migrate the live site

Practise, practise, practice. Typically you might not have caching systems to handle your blog downtime, so make sure you are well-versed in the migration process (all the above steps) so that you can do them with the least downtime possible. I repeated all the steps above six or seven times on my local staging server, before I found the courage to do it on my live site.

It still took me two hours.
Backup Regularly

Coding Horror’s catastrophic failure just underscores how you need to take up backup in your hands and not simply trust your hosting provider.

With Drupal 6, Backup and Migrate Module can be used to schedule regular backup of your Drupal database. Unfortunately you can only backup to a location that hosts your Drupal files. You should download these files every day/week (depending on how frequently you update the site), so that you are truly safe from catastrophic failure (and back up your local machine!)

If you like tinkering with the site theme as I do, you should use a Versioning System so that you can go back to changes done in case you don’t like your latest update. You can put the site files on your local staging server in version control, but your hosting provider will typically not provide that facility for your use (which means you may have to update the live site manually).

There is a reason for this backup madness, which is to be prepared when disaster strikes. Of course, this is assuming you care enough about your blog, if you didn’t, you won’t be reading this anyway!

In the next post, I will cover some of the modules I have found useful in Drupal 6, and talk about modules I had to lose from Drupal 5 and how I coped with that loss.

Links for 2010-02-24 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

BBC - BBC Internet Blog: News & Sport Embedded Media
This is how every site redesign should look like. Unfortunately mine did not cover even 1/10th of the detail these guys went through. Needs to be stapled to my head.

Links for 2010-02-22 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

YouTube - Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues
Very useful short video on duplicate content

Links for 2010-02-21 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

What really happens when you navigate to a URL
to be stapled on my head till I can recite this from memory
Carousel Gallery (jQuery) for Wordpress
Great plugin for WP!
gist: 296128 - GitHub
The smallest HTML5shiv eva!
Free resources online for protecting your Drupal site | Cracking Drupal
Some good resources for protecting your drupal site
WATS.ca - web accessibility technical services | Accesskeys and Reserved Keystroke Combinations
If you must use accesskeys make sure you are not overriding these combinations
Creating iPhone Styles
Not recommended, but if push coms to shove, better know how to use than not!
How to customise the search box in Drupal 6 | kirkdesigns.co.uk
Much better than my method of creating a module!
Missing Features » 48 Essential Drupal Development Tips From Lullabot
Great list of nifty Drupal tips

Book Reviews for Feb 2010

divya — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:14:41 +0000

This month has not been very good for reading. I hope to correct that next month! Here are my reviews:

Tropical Gangsters

If you are curious to know why many African countries that receive aid and yet show no sign of progress, this book has some answers. Robert Klitgaard talks about his experience as a World Bank consultant in Equatorial Guinea, a country still ruled by the despot who features in the book. Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience With Development And Decadence In Deepest Africa is written simply (probably too simply) but is a good unbiased look into the world of Aid and Development.

Developed nations have repeatedly looted Equatorial Guinea, by providing expensive “consultants”, who have absolutely no clue on how to help Equatorial Guinea (except for their own benefit). So, most Equatorial Guineans do not trust an outsider. It does not help that a dictator rules the country. It is shocking to read about Mercedes cars of ministers plying barely serviceable roads and other atrocious gimmicks by both Foreigners and Guineans alike.
Hellboy Series (Vol 3, 4, 5)

I became a Hellboy addict after reading the first volume. These three (Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5) further that addiction. Hellboy, the comic series, is definitely better than the movies. I am amazed how well Hellboy moves between Science-Fiction, Fantasy, and Mythology.
Goon: Rough Stuff

Whenever I am at the comics section of the library, there is usually nobody else around. But this time, there was a kindred soul who was enthused by seeing me picking up Hellboy and started recommending comics (too bad I already read Watchmen!) The Goon: Rough Stuff (Goon (Unnumbered)) was one of those he recommended. Goon is awesome. It is the story of two zombie-killing thugs who become the heads of a criminal gang — what is not to love? I think I would have enjoyed it more if I was not afraid of being turned into a Zombie myself.
Waiter Rant

I remember my first visit to Waiter Rant clearly. It was the day I spent more than 5 hours reading archives of that blog. I had never done that before for any website (except Wikipedia). His book, WaiterRant: Confessions of a Cynical Waiter, is mostly a collection of his blog posts and it brought back memories of that day. It is a melancholic, but compelling, look at the life and times of a no-longer-young waiter.
Embroideries

Marjane Satrapi has written award-winning graphic-novels about her life in Iran. Embroideries is a humorous story documenting a gossip session among a group of ladies in Iran. The story starts with Marjane’s grandmother stating “To speak behind others’ backs is the ventilator of the heart”. Every woman discusses the issue of sex or their sex lives. It is really funny and touching at the same time. You should read it and discover how apt the title is!

That ends my reviews for Feb! Any books you have read recently that you recommend?

Links for 2010-02-14 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

High Performance Web Sites :: 5a Missing schema double download
The mysterious ways of IE shows itself in downloading CSS twice if specified with protocol relative URL

Mortality of Morality

divya — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:12:42 +0000

Morality, as Wikipedia says, is “a set of beliefs distinguishing between right and wrong behaviors”. There is a perception among many people that moral codes are permanent, that, what now is morally right will remain so eternally.

My assertion (which Wikipedia calls Moral Skepticism) is that morality meanders with time. Paul Graham covers some aspects of it in his essay about What You Can’t Say.

200 years ago, you were only allowed to love thy neighbour if he was also of the same social class as you. Slavery was moral. Women were morally obliged to mind the business of taking care of children instead of voicing their opinion about politics.

But, I can hear you say, the basic principles of morality are eternal. You only need to read the religious texts of several religions to see how common the moral codes are! But religious texts are always derivative, and interpreted. For example, the meaning of Hijab in Islam has changed over time.

A moral code is usually defined by the triumph of an opinion that influences a majority. 100 years ago, almost every state or region had a different moral code, but thanks to colonial globanization, most countries now share the what-was-then-Christian view of equality and human rights. Some European countries have become more liberal (legal drug use, gay rights, etc), and the world seems to be moving towards a uniform liberal moral code.

Thanks to the internet, these liberal moral codes have spread a lot faster than before. All you seem to need these days is a petition with 300K signatures (citizenship not necessary) to raise awarness for altering existing moral codes in any country.

Iran’s protests are an example of how moral codes are getting impacted with technology. Youtube, Flickr, Twitter have all featured prominently in the arsenal of a protestor, so much that China and Iran are taking steps to control them. Protestors have also got a bigger audience now, instantly. But interestingly, the new era of communication does not seem to make people protest more than simply putting a twibbon or adding their email to petitions. There has not been any kind of protests in the internet era like those that put an end to Vietnam War or Black Inequality. If anything, technology has made us complacent about morality.

Still, moral codes are changing. As an aeron-chair expert, I also think it is safe to assume a moral code is under attack and very vulnerable, when people find the need to defend it anonymously instead of identifying themselves with it. For example, most people will have no hesitation in stating their opinion about child pornography, but some people will rather talk “off the record” or “anonymously” about gay marriage. In fact, Washington judiciary approved a motion to make anonymous the names of people who were petitioning to revoke the rights to gay marriage.

I know some of you might be offended by this dissection of morality, but this is just a thought experiment. I do have my own codes of morality (which tend towards liberal), but I do understand my moral codes might change too. I hope this post provokes some of you to leave a comment with your take on morality!

Thanks to Nandini for making me think about morality while we were having a session at the Argument Clinic about Japanese culture.

Links for 2010-02-11 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

The Final Coming of SVG | Nimbupani Designs
My new post on SVG about why it is more reasonable to expect it to become popular.

The Final Coming of SVG

divya — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:31:29 +0000

I started drafting this post about a month ago, giddy with the news about Microsoft joining SVG Working Group and all the possibilities SVG portended. So, I started dreaming of creating a demo of how SVG could be used by web developers now, as background images with fall-back support, webfonts, and what not. Why, you ask? Think about all these that you can do with SVG using CSS:

Simple background images that are several times smaller than PNG/GIF formats.
Scalable background images that can be reused on elements with different widths and heights.
SVG background images can share same stylesheet as the webpages which means you do not have to open Photoshop every time you need to change the colors of background images.
Use the same SVG file as a font and an image.

Alas, it was not to be! The story of SVG is like the story of the boy who cried Wolf. Every 2 years there is a riot about SVG’s coming dominance, nothing happens, and everybody goes away disappointed. So, when SVG truly becomes a standard supported by most browsers, nobody gives a damn.

At the risk of sounding like that boy, my opinion is SVG dominance is closer to reality than ever before. SVG support for most modern browsers has improved (Opera, Firefox, Webkit). HTML specification has been updated to allow in-line SVG too! Hell, there are even Flash runtimes written with JavaScript and SVG that can run Flash animations on browsers that do not support Flash (I am looking at you, iPhone Safari).

David Storey has a nifty example of a HTML5 UI that uses SVG files as background images. Browsers do not consistently support using SVG files as background images. Safari does not render the file if the SVG does not have absolute width and height specified (not so for Chrome). Firefox does not render SVG background images at all. Here is a demo of using an SVG file as background or border image.

You have much better luck with SVG images rendered via the object element, most browsers support SVG as an image format, and for IEs you could use SVGWeb to replace them with a flash file. In SVG-friendly browsers, you can also use this jQuery plugin to manipulate SVG files.

So, all this means good times are ahead for SVG. Microsoft even seems to be asking relevant questions about implementing SVG, which only supports the assertion that IE9 will be the first Internet Explorer to support SVG.

If you are interesting in learning SVG, the W3C SVG Primer is best place to start. You can also create simple shapes in Illustrator or Inkscape and save them as SVG, but they are more likely to be tag-soups, so be sure to clean them with Scour.

Links for 2010-02-06 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:00:00 PST

What Web Designers need to know about EPUB | Nimbupani Designs
My notes on why EPUB is a format to look out for

What Web Designers need to know about EPUB

divya — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:38:52 +0000

Steve Jobs ate his hat when he announced the iBook application for the tablet, but the iBook portends a bright future for web designers too. Wait, what? Books and web designers, how are they even related? One word: EPUB.

EPUB is a publishing standard designed for reflowable content which means the book can be viewed on devices of multiple dimensions. It does this by using XHTML/CSS for rendering the book and a set of standards on top of that to store metadata that can be extracted by E-Book readers to render a table of contents and other details.

EPUB is a collection of 3 specifications:

Open Publication Structure (OPS) 2.0, defines what formats are allowed to be used for the content (e.g. XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2).
Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0, describes metadata, and structure of the .epub file in XML
OEBPS Container Format (OCF) 1., specifies the directory structure of the EPUB ZIP archive.

EPUB has most recently found an advocate in Apple, but is also supported by many stand-alone Book readers like Stanza, Adobe Digital Editions, Bookworm, Sony Reader, and more.

Officially, Kindle does not support EPUB, but Savory is an application you can download to Kindle, which converts EPUB to Kindle format on the fly.

What is in it for you, Web Designer?

Authors are attempting to self-publish e-books, and realise they need HTML expertise to do so. With your superior HTML knowledge you would have a great opportunity to win authors as clients.
Kindle sales are one of the driving factors of Amazon’s 71% increase in profit since the last financial year.
Most e-books today are created by automated tools which are, at best, tag soup generators with no concern for design. My guess is publishers who consistently output great e-book designs would do much better in the marketplace.

How do I get started?

Both Kindle and EPUB formats are based on HTML. Unfortunately, there are not many online resources for creating a Kindle book, but Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide To Formatting Books For The Amazon Kindle and its associated website are highly recommended.
There are several resources for creating an EPUB book though. Read this in-depth tutorial on creating an EPUB book (registration required). For a light read, read this article on the different methods of automating the creation of an EPUB book.

What about HTML5 & CSS3?

I know it is cool to talk about HTML5 and CSS3, but you cannot use any of that in an EPUB book.

EPUB is an open format but no new version of the specifications have been released since 2007 (one of them is dated 2006). XHTML format has, since then, become extinct too.

There is no public roadmap, nor are the mailing list archives open to non-members (you need to pay USD1000/year to be a member). From the Bug Tracker, it seems like there will be a new version sometime in the future.

Open Publication Structure officially requires EPUB readers to support SVG, but only Adobe Digital Editions supports it. EPUB also supports embedded fonts(preferably OTF) using the CSS2 definition of the @font-face rule.

Open Publication Structure does not talk about displaying HTML5 Videos or Flash animations and most EPUB readers do not support them.

Internationalization

Open Publication Structure spectacularly fails to make the case for internationalization, and most popular EPUB readers do not support non-western glyphs. The only way you can get around it is by embedding the font required to display international characters within the EPUB archive.

Fortunately, EPUB readers sold in India and China seem to have out-of-the box support for non-western fonts.

You have even worse luck trying to render languages with vertical script (and most historical texts in Asia are written in them).

There is a way to get around it using SVG in Adobe Digital Editions. But, as the comments note, this is not good enough. That article was written in 2007, and there is still no sign of internationalization in Adobe Digital Editions.

How do I keep track of this in case it becomes as cool as HTML5?

O’Reilly is a big EPUB supporter and has a great set of resources for EPUB (you can follow the trail from there onwards).
You might also want to read this cartoonist’s take on how he created an EPUB book for his wildly popular comic series, Valentine.
Here is an OPML file of feeds from websites I track for EPUB news.

Hopefully this post will spur you to become an E-Book designer. You know where to send royalty cheques in case you become a world-famous one!

Links for 2010-01-30 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 PST

Multilingual Drupal: Some Dos And Don'ts | Drupaler | Drupal Blog, Collaborative Drupal Resource
Good instructions on how and what to translate into multiple languages in Drupal

Book Reviews for Jan 2010 – Part 2

divya — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:04:11 +0000

I spent a lot of time this month trying to get through Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821, but I just cannot read academic books. The book covers a very interesting era before the rise of paper currency when coins of small denominations were in short supply and how private corporations tried to mitigate that (rich people melted the higher denomination gold/silver to create smaller denomination coins). Unfortunately, it meanders through the years with no clear progression and is quite boring to read. It is a miracle I got through the first few chapters. Onwards with the reviews!

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is written by designer William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart talks about how complex and chemical-induced the environment around us has become. It astounded me know an average shampoo contains 22 chemicals including some used to offset the side-effects of other harmful ones.

They ask, why we have no problem using things that contain some of the most harmful chemicals which are not even allowed in the vicinity of human life in their raw form. Why does the “packaging” makes it harmless?

They also mention how “recycling” is usually misguided as it only utilizes more chemicals than normal to make these things fit for reuse.

The authors advocate the philosophy of waste = food, something that would ring true for people who still follow old cultural traditions. They suggest using things that can biodegrade and be consumed by other living organisms. This strongly underscores for me the use of cow manure in Hindu traditions as fuel, fertilizer, and disinfectant, among others.

The book does not advocate eliminating all chemicals but judicious use of them in ways that can make the environment richer.

Everyone needs to read this book, just to understand how industries are disrupting nature.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel is not a travel book but a book that advocates taking things slowly, travelling to gain an experience and not to tick off “must-see” places from the list. I am guilty of “weekend” and holiday trips done hurriedly to just see a place with a bit of “experience” thrown in at some three-star hotel. I would love to do this when I take a sabbatical.
The Art of Herge, Inventor of Tintin: Volume 1: 1907-1937 (The Art of Herge)

This is a better book than The Adventures of Herge, with lots of pictures of Herge’s advertising, illustration works and sketches right from childhood. The Art of Herge, Inventor of Tintin: Volume 1: 1907-1937 seems to be written for a younger audience and contains a sanitised biography of Herge as compared to the other book.
Sagramanda: A Novel of Near-future India

This is a poor man’s version of River of Gods, and a terrible one at that. Avoid.
“The Sandman” by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon

The Sandman has great artwork as usual. Reading this, I realise what Neil Gaiman did with this franchise is quite radical.
Hellboy Volume 1: Seed of Destruction

Hellboy, Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction is just brilliant. I now see the appeal of Hellboy (did not think much of Hellboy when I saw the movies). It is so absurd on so many levels that it is good (and I develop love-at-first-read with such stories). If you like comics and Terry Pratchett, you will love Hellboy.

Any books you have read recently that you recommend? Do comment!

Theme nodes with closed comments in Drupal 6

divya — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:46:53 +0000

I use Comment Closer to close comments on old posts to reduce spam on my blog. I wanted visitors to know immediately if a post was no longer accepting comments, and give them alternative means of contacting me about the post. You can see it in action in these two old posts: post with comments, post with no comment. Here is how I did this in Drupal 6:

Posts with no comment

Use the following in node.tpl.php file in your Drupal theme:


<?php if (($page != 0) && isset($node->comment_count) && $node->comment_count < 1) { ?>	
	<?php if($node->comment == 0 || $node->comment == 1) { ?>
	// Enter HTML content you want to render for posts
	// that are closed with no comment.
	<?php else { ?>
	// Enter HTML content you want to render for posts
	// that are open for new comments but have none.
	<?php } 
} ?>

Posts with comments

In comment-wrapper.tpl.php, use the following:


<?php if($node->comment == 0 || $node->comment == 1) { ?>
	// Enter HTML content you want to render to inform the visitor
	// that new comments are no longer accepted.
<?php } ?>

We need to edit both comment-wrapper.tpl.php and node.tpl.php as comment-wrapper.tpl.php (despite its name) will NOT be rendered if a node has no comments.

Nimbupani Designs

The Danger of a Story

Blogging with Drupal 6 - Part 2

Will they be available for future Drupal versions?

Do they contain security vulnerabilities?

Basic

Poormanscron

Views

Google Analytics

Feedburner

SEO

Path Auto

Global Redirect

Nodewords

Search 404

Comments

Comment Closer

Comment Notify

Gravatar

Mollom

widgEditor

Maintenance

Turn on updates

Backup

Book Reviews for Feb 2010 - Part 2

Half Yellow Sun

New York Trilogy

Wizard of the Crow

The Lost Daughter

Hell Boy Vol 7 / Tom Strong Book 4

Blogging with Drupal 6 - Part 1

Set up Staging Server

Migrate Content to the Staging Server

Install Modules

Update Theme

Test Local Staging

Migrate the live site

Backup Regularly

Links for 2010-02-24 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2010-02-22 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2010-02-21 [del.icio.us]

Book Reviews for Feb 2010

Tropical Gangsters

Hellboy Series (Vol 3, 4, 5)

Goon: Rough Stuff

Waiter Rant

Embroideries