myelin: BlogGazer

An XML Weblog Browser

A Weblog Browser is a tool that lets you browse XML backups of bzero and Radio weblogs.

History

The first Weblog Browser was BlogBrowser by Brent Simmons, for Mac OS (screenshot). BlogGazer is Windows-only, although it's written in Python, which will make it a little easier to port to other operating systems. Pete Cole has written one that runs inside Internet Explorer (you can find it on his page of Zeepe Framework demos).

The 'BlogGazer' name is from Robert Barksdale.

More info on the backup format: Formats for Blog Browsers (Dave Winer).

Download

Requires Windows and Internet Explorer 4.

• ZIP file: BlogGazer-0_01.zip (4MB)

Extract that and run browse.exe. Then drop me a line and tell me if it works or not.

Change log

v0.02 - Development snapshot of second alpha release (coming soon). Known issues:

• Clicking on links now opens them in the same window (should open in a new window)

Bugfixes since v0.01:

• Window title now says 'Myelin BlogGazer - (blogname)'
• Post display now links titles to <link> tags from RSS
• Now puts 'BlogGazer/version' and this URL in the user-agent string when doing HTTP requests
• Status text now changes when you move the mouse over a link
• Can now view Phil Ringnalda's archives (which use a different date format)

v0.01 - Initial alpha release (announcement | press). Current known issues:

• File and Help menus don't work
• The app uses blocking socket I/O, which means that it will freeze when downloading stuff
• Window resizing is a bit flickery
• The console is still shown, so you'll get a whole lot of debugging junk showing up in a console window
• There is no error checking on downloads, so if you get the URL wrong you'll get a traceback in the console window but no notification in the main window yet
• No icon yet
• Clicking on links in the displayed HTML starts opening them in the same window, and then returns a blank page (workaround: shift-click to open in a new windows)
• The user-agent string sent is "Python/urllib 1.15"; should be "BlogGazer ..." (fixed v0.02)
• Window title says 'Weblog Browser', not 'BlogGazer' (fixed v0.02)
• The status bar doesn't do anything (fixed v0.02)

Attributions

BlogGazer includes Python, available from python.org.

BlogGazer includes wxPython, available from wxpython.org.

BlogGazer includes Mark Hammond's Win32 extensions for Python, available from starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32.

BlogGazer uses Mark Nottingham's RSS parser, available from mnot.net/python and released under the following license:

• THIS SOFTWARE IS SUPPLIED WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, AND MAY BE COPIED, MODIFIED OR DISTRIBUTED IN ANY WAY, AS LONG AS THIS NOTICE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP REMAIN.

BlogGazer uses Brett Cannon's pure Python version of strptime, available from the Pythoncookbook:

• aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/56036

Thanks to the Python team, the wxPython team, Mark, Mark and Brett.

Anyone else? Mail me if I forgot you :-)