PolarLava::Blog

I'm now running what will likely be PolarBlog V1.4.0 on this site.  The only noticeable change you will see is the addition of the "Topics" links in the right navigation menu.  This, like most of the features can be turned off via a configuration option if you don't want it.  There may be some additional features added, thus the "Alpha" aspect of this, but mostly it is a "Beta" of what will be released.  See this changelog for the quick rundown of what else is in this release.

PolarBlog V1.3.0 has been released.  This release contains…

Enhancements

• Internationalization (I18N) Support - PolarBlog should now be capable of displaying in languages other than U.S. English.  This release contains both English and German language files.  If you are fluent in another language and are interested in using PolarBlog in another language, please read this blog entry.

• Comment email notification not always being sent.
• Comment emails not being sent, but replies work.
• Displayed comments sometimes appear out of order.
• Search results are displayed oldest to newest instead of newest to oldest.
• "Next" navigation button is erroroneously displayed with search results.
• Double slashes in URL when PolarBlog is the servers root page.

• Added I18N_LANG
• Added I18N_CHARSET
• Added I18N_DATE_SEPARATOR_FORMAT
• Added I18N_DATE_FORMAT
• Added USE_GOOGLE_LINK
• Added USE_WORD_COUNT
• Deprecated DATE_SEPARATOR_FORMAT
• Deprecated DATE_FORMAT

I'm now running what will be PolarBlog V1.3.0 on this, my live blog.  If you notice anything odd, let me know.  There are a few bug fixes and enhancements in this release, but the biggie for this release is internationalization (I18N).  With this release —barring any unknown problems, PolarBlog should now support languages other than U.S. English.  I've been working with a German developer on implementing this and he may also be beta testing this as well in the coming days.  If you are fluent in something other than English, translators are need.

Looking ahead to V1.4, if you have features you would like to see added please let me know.  At this time I know of two feature that will be in V1.4:

• Topic Icon Sizing - Right now all icons are locked at 32x32.  This was a carryover from PWL.  I may add scaleable sizing to the Topic Edit section, but that may be more trouble than it is worth.  At the very least the 32x32 lockdown will be removed.  That's a trivial change.
• Output Compression - I will be add the ability to gzip compress your PolarBlog output.  This creates a minor load increase on the web server, but it cuts your bandwidth useage greatly.

This unplanned release fixes a problem introduced in V1.2.2 whereby the Comment link on an entry would display the entry (ala Permalink), but not the commenting form!  I've also backed out half of the change made to the DisplayEdit() function that dealt with converting HTML entities.  This wasn't working as well as I had hoped and I need to explore this further.  This entity situation is likely of minimal impact to anyone.

I've been working on adding I18N (Internationalization) support to PolarBlog.  Being a lazy and lame American, I only speak/read/write English.  If you have the ability and willingness to translate the text in PolarBlog from English to another language, please contact me at kevinp AT polarlava.com.

From an implementation standpoint this release is a bit tedious as I have to scour through all of the code to weed out all of the hardcoded English.  As such, it is somewhat slow going.  Also, with the holiday season now in play, that also is impacting my progress.  Thus this feature will most likely not be released until some time in January.