Brandon Frohs

Today is the day. No, not the 20th anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Kampwerth. Well, yes, but that’s not what this article is about. Today is the release of Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of having personal relations with Ubuntu, I apologize and encourage you to abandon Windows on the curb. Or at least send Windows to the other room while you gaze upon Ubuntu in all of its glory.

If you haven’t used any of the nightly builds (aka you’ve been using Ubuntu 9.04 until today), you’re bound to notice some major changes. The first change you’ll notice is the faster boot time, thanks to Upstart. Then, of course, the upgrade to the new GNOME release (which uses Empathy instead of Pidgin by default). On top of that, Ubuntu also ships with a new Linux kernel. With the expected changes out of the way, I’ll introduce a few things that you may not have been expecting.

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As many already know, I’m not a fan of limiting an application to be backward compatible. I am, however, a firm believer of forward compatibility. I believe applications (any product actually) should be prepared for the future. Sure, something new and unexpected will inevitably pop up sooner or later, but that isn’t the point. The point is, preparing for the future will make expanding the application in the future a smoother process. This is why many web applications provide some way (however limited) to change the look and feel of the front-end. With Consummo, I’m taking this one step further.

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Have you ever visited a website with the intent of reading an article, only to see a full page ad? After clicking ‘continue’, or waiting fifteen to thirty seconds, you finally reach the page of the article. But wait, what’s this? A banner ad, a skyscraper ad, and a huge square advertisement smack-dab in the middle of the article itself. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you notice a new window has opened under your current window with an ad in it. After closing that, another window pops up with another ad. If you hadn’t closed the article already, you probably will now. This example may seem extreme, but it really has happened. Luckily, it is not nearly as common as it used to be.

I mentioned unobtrusive advertising last year when I was ranting about copyright complaints by blog owners, but I believe a bit more of an explanation (and rant) is needed. Let the world know how you feel about advertising by leaving a comment or three below Maybe we can get the word out about unobtrusive advertising (or at least get into a debate with someone who has no class whatsoever).

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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software–to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit to
using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by
the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to
your programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

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Most every web developer has asked himself (or herself) this question at least once. While some applications only need one method of parsing, many should support at least two. There is rarely a need to include support for more than two methods on any single part of an application though.

In this article, several parsing techniques will be covered, including Textile, BBCode, and HTML. WYSIWYG editors will also be discussed. Pros and Cons of each technique will be examined to provide you with facts and my own opinion.

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It’s been nearly a year since I last spoke of Consummo, so I’d like to get rid of any doubts. Consummo is still an active project of mine. Over the past year, work and life in general took prescedence over Consummo and I’d like to apologize for that. I’ve decided to cut down on the amount of hours I work and focus more on Consummo.

Now then, let’s discuss Consummo a bit more in detail. As with any application, Consummo has grown much bigger and more in-depth than ever intended. I originally designed Consummo to simply replace existing forum software, but I’ve come to realize it should be able to do so much more. Since Consummo means to sum up or make perfect, it is only fitting that Consummo offers complete functionality. What do I mean by that? Well, imagine yourself as a web designer or website owner. What functionality might you want? I hope to provide that and more.

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