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The Code Style Web site has evolved by the gradual refinement and accumulation of articles and features. This review is part of a fully backdated site log and archive that may help shed light on when, why and how particular features were implemented. Many of these log entries refer to the Code Style Java package, which delivers the servlet services on this site.

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Google stock quotes demo, 30th March 2008

Created a new LatestQuotesDemo servlet class based on the RSSDemo and XSL to convert Google finance page data into a simple table format. Servlet has XML validation disabled to overcome source markup problems that cannot be cleaned up by JTidy and only supports POST method requests. Copied the master Metacentric version of the Code Style XHTML 1 transitional "Lax" DTD to the Code Style project to test validation.

Updated Apache Ant properties and filters to include Log4J in the Code Style servlet container configuration, and to define the LatestQuotesDemo servlet. Also disabled XML validation in the JAXP servlet to test Google transformation.

Ran a style check on the Code Style code base and made adjustments to various classes:

Also refined the server.xml output format of the ServiceLogClientParser to support direct copy and paste.

Performance optimisation for IPMap class, 22th March 2008

Re-wrote the countSiblings(String) method of the IPMap class to improve performance using the SortedMap subMap(Object, Object) method to select all the IP addresses under a particular node and simply return the size of the set. Added explicit initial capacity arguments to Vector types in the IPMap class. Substituted constants in place of magic numbers. Adjusted the unit test class to account for the new line settings.

Refactored the main method of the ServiceLogClientParser class to separate the main steps in the process to printParserOutput(ServiceLogClientParser, File String), parseInput(ServiceLogClientParser, File), deleteInput(File). The new structure optimises the order, logic and error handling of each step. With the changes to the IPMap class, this resulted in about a 66% improvement in the performance of the class. Adjusted the new line settings and the message formats for existing output methods. Replaced various magic numbers with class constants.

Added a redirect for the path /fonts to the root level .htaccess configuration pointing to the font sampler section index page. 

Redirect seeother /fonts http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/index.shtml

Put FontStats.dtd into the public DTD virtual directory to publish with the font survey XML files, with links via a new FAQ: Are the results available in other formats?.

Google Analytics onclick tracking for external links, 19th March 2008

Switched all Anchor Points external links to use direct URLs with Google Analytics event handler tracking instead of servlet redirection. Using direct links should be better for search engine indexing purposes and more useful for users. Used a replacement expression to match the URL in existing links as %1, plus zero or more characters before a close angle bracket, >. Then match the text between the open and close a tags as %3: 

<a href="/servlets/AnchorPoints\?+[]"*>+[]</a>

The backslash before the question mark in the URL escapes its special meaning in the regular expression. The +[] matches any characters up to the closing quote mark. The matched text is then used to replace the whole expression with a standard href attribute, absolute URL and original link text: 

<a href="%1" onclick="urchinTracker('%1');" class="External">%3\</a>

The 1% token represents the contents of the first regular expression match, the absolute URL. The 3% token represents the link text between the open and close a tags in the original text. The backslash before the close tag escapes the special meaning of the angle bracket, <.

Linux font survey expansion and survey applet enhancements, 15th March 2008

Added 18 further Linux fonts to the Unix family font survey, including the DejaVu, Liberation, MgOpen and Vera font sets:

Following feedback from users, increased the height of the applet by 100 pixels to make the message input field and font listing easier to read. Users wanted to be able to select and copy the installed font list for their own purposes. Only required a change to the height attribute of the object element to 500 pixels. The applet interface reflows to fill the available space.

Also set the font size for the font survey input fields to 14 points, which is displayed closer to a comfortable 12 points, and applied word wrapping to the message input TextArea by setting vertical scrollbars only: 

TextArea commentArea = new TextArea("",
                                    ROWS,
                                    COLS,
                          TextArea.SCROLLBARS_VERTICAL_ONLY);

Added the Media style sheets FAQ, Java objects FAQ and Servlet lifecycle FAQ to the mailing list subscription page. Applied the the same SQL file output template used for font survey feedback to mailing lists submissions, with output directed to the same file. This means that subscription change requests from either form will feed into the standard mailing list update process. Amended the PSFTP upload script for the mailing lists to include the form configuration files, page and email and templates as part of the standard update process.

Corrected a number Dublin Core test case document links to .htm files. The file format had been changed some time ago, but some link element URLs had been omitted.

Override for inherited background image, 14th March 2008

Added more explicit rule to child elements to prevent the new background logo in #Header div being inherited into the h1 element. 

/*
  Lots of selectors are blue!
  Transparent background necessary to override
  image background in #Header
*/
blockquote, caption, code, dt,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, th,
.MenuBox th, Q, .Q, .A,
.Box label, legend {
  color:            #039;
  background:       transparent;
}

Cursive font survey results script, 13th March 2008

Created an SQL query script to produce a simple text table of cursive font survey results. The script uses the same query format as the other generic font types to rank the frequency of cursive fonts for mailing list updates.

New Linux fonts and Mac font screen shots, 10th March 2008

Created an SQL script to replace 7 lowest ranking fonts in the Unix survey sample with new fonts more common on recent Linux platform distributions:

Latest updates to the Code Style font survey results:

Generated the latest font survey results tables with new set of Mac screen shots. Amended FontSurveyTemplate to include all fonts in the fontfamily database table in the CSS output, not just those included in the results. Thereby added the 7 new Unix fonts to Sampler.css. Also updated the font survey applet submission templates with latest fonts.

Adjusted the layout of print stylesheet, CSPrint.css to place new Code Style logo above title heading. 

#Header {
  background-position: 0 0;
}
#Header {
  padding-top:      60px;
  margin-top:       0;
}

Archived font survey submissions, 8th March 2008

Updated the font survey archive SQL script to archive survey submissions before 1 January 2004. Older submissions are moved to an archive_submission table, so that survey results are calculated with only the past 4 years' submissions. Applied script to the master database and re-generated survey results to test.

LightTTP compatibility changes, 7th March 2008

Updated the Code Style server side scripting code base to be directly compatible with the LightTPD Web server. Mainly affected references to global server variables in server side includes. Took the opportunity to standardise and optimise the syntax of many script elements. The changes are also compatible with the current Apache Web server.

Sponsorship banners for font sampler, 1st March 2008

Added a site sponsorship promotional banner to the AbstractSample font sampler class through a protected getSponsor() method. Added calls to the getSponsor() method at the appropriate points in the ImageSample and TextSample servlet classes. This also required adjustments to the CSWideImport.css file to make the right hand margin wide enough to take a 180 pixel banner and make text ads the same width. 

#Sidebar, #Content p,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5,
#Content dl, .Box, .Feedback,
#Header p, #Header h1,
#SiteSearch, .MenuBox {
  margin-right:     21%;
  margin-left:      16.6%;
}
.TextAd {
  float:            right;
  width:            16.4%;
}
.Sponsor {
  width:            17%;
}

Completed site sponsorship banner images and added to all high and medium traffic pages and many low traffic pages. Adjusted the sponsor output of the FaqMenuGenerator class to take these banners and re-generated all FAQ section pages.

Created a new PSFTP script to upload FAQ section pages only. Re-ordered the existing PSFTP FAQ update script to put the premium content pages up before the sections that link to them.

Brought CodeStyleTemplate class up to date with recent side bar menu markup changes.

New logo layout refinements, 28th February 2008

Set the minimum height of the Header div to 65px to ensure that the new logo image is fully visible. Removed the div contextual element from the #Header selector for the logo image in the livery style sheet. Also set the line height for the .Title selector to 1.1em.

Added a style sheet rule to adjust the position of the new Eurostile logo image with the wide style sheet, CSWideImport.css, and moved the image logo placement rule in the horizontal menus style sheet, visibility-HorizontalMenusImport.css, to the #Header selector and reduced padding-top to 2em.

New Eurostile logo, 23rd February 2008

Replaced the grey tinted circled C Code Style logo background with a new blue version in the Eurostile font and tag line. This background image is attached to the Header div element. The new image required some superfluous border properties to work around a positioning problem in Opera, and an extra rule to prevent the image being inherited by the nested h1 and p elements. 

/*
  Some top border is necessary for Opera
  to position the logo correctly, so
  warning for same colour as background.
*/
div#Header {
  color:            #000;
  background:       url(/images/logo-EurostileLozenge.png)
                    #FFF
                    3% 0.7em
                    no-repeat;
  border-style:     solid;
  border-width:     1px 0px 0px 0px;
  border-color:     white;
}
div#Header h1 {
  background-image:  none;
}

Also removed the grey tint to the top rounded corners of the options side bar panel. Increased the width of the purple bottom border on the Options heading, and the line height. Removed all special styling from the .CS selector to make Code Style text the same as regular text, only retained the white-space: nowrap rule.

Replaced the text of the Options sidebar heading with an image of the same in the Eurostile font. Also minimised the padding on the element with 10 pixels on the left, set the font-family property to sans-serif and reduced its size.

Changed "search" in the Site Search to lower case and added an id attribute to the submit button to select in Internet Explorer 6. Set the width of the site search panel to the same as the Options sidebar menu using redundant max-width and min-width properties to override an unnecessarily narrow rendering in Internet Explorer 6. Also increased the width of the site search input to 100% and floated the submit button right. 

input#search-input {
width:            100%;
}
input#search-submit {
float:            right;
}

Also used a min-width rule to ensure that site sponsor banners are never less than 180 pixels wide with a width rule to allow it up to 24% of the overall width. Minimised the padding and border on images in the sponsor div.

Adjusted the height of the Header div to auto to allow for multiple lines of heading and increased the margin-bottom property to 1em. Applied tighter top and bottom margin on the .URI and .Title selectors. Moved the padding for the .URI and .Title selectors to the contextual selectors #Header h1 and #Header p.

Site sponsorship service page, 21st February 2008

Completed Soupermail form configuration and templates for the new site sponsorship service and tested in privately on the production site. Also uploaded sponsor banner images and sponsorship rate include files.

Latest updates to the Code Style font survey results:

Decimal format for money, 17th February 2008

Added a decimal format to the AbstractDecimalCurrency and a new getDecimalFormat() interface method. Also added a getDecimalAmount() method to the Money class to get the amount only, without any currency symbol. Used this method to get a fully formatted amount in the PayPal class, rather than the double returned by the amount() method.

Made a correction to the AbstractProductSelector class so that only selected products are concatenated and passed with the PayPal order. Removed all references to cycled text ads, which are now discontinued.

Introduced new table cell styles to the persistent style sheet CSPersistent.css for subtotal and discount amounts in the text ad selector servlet. 

.Subtotal {
  color:            #000;
  background:       #EEE;
  text-align:       right;
  border-bottom:    double 3px #999;
}
.Discount {
  color:            #000;
  background:       #F9F9F9;
  text-align:       right;
  border-bottom:    solid 1px #666;
}

Added text ads and the footer button image to the print style sheet exclusions, CSPrint.css: display: none, and changed all element selectors to lower case. Updated the copyright date for standard style sheet. Switched the layout of the main page heading and home page URI link to default to left alignment and applied a 25% margin to line up with the left hand edge of the main body area. 

.URI {
  margin:           1% 20% 0% 25%;
}
.Title {
  margin:           1.5% 20% 0% 25%;
}

Added all relevant Java classes to the PSFTP text ad upload script, including the new CustomerDiscount class.

Customer discount for service bookings, 16th February 2008

Made further extensions to the refactored product selection classes to support price discounts through a customer discount key scheme. Implemented a quantity pattern for handling and formatting money amounts in a more rigorous way, including a final Money class, Currency interface, AbstractDecimalCurrency and concrete USDollar and BritishPound subclasses. Further refactored AbstractAdSelector and implemented a PayPal class to handle standard order form generation. The CustomerDiscount handles customer key checks and discount calculations.

New independent SponsorCategory and ServiceArea classes implement the Product interface to support order form generation; both extend a new AbstractProduct class. Also created a working draft SponsorSelector servlet.

Removed the former CycledAdSelector and TextAdRebooker servlets and configuration. The new TextAdSelector servlet supersedes both.

Generic product booking form, 15th February 2008

Extracted the generic Product interface from the AbstractAdSelector class to the model package and created a new abstract superclass, AbstractProductSelector, for text ads and (forthcoming) sponsorship services. Moved all generic methods up from the more specific AbstractAdSelector class.

Refactored text ad booking form, 9th February 2008

Refactored the AbstractAdSelector class for text ad orders with subclasses to produce a more generic product selector scheme with call-outs to specific application content elements. All the new methods are retained in the AbstractAdSelector for the time being, but will ultimately be extracted to a new abstract super class to produce a SponsorshipSelector servlet.

Latest updates to the Code Style font survey results:

New font and Java strings FAQ mailing lists, 26th January 2008

Added mailing list registration options for the Linux font survey FAQ, Mac fonts FAQ and Java strings FAQ and updated the notification email template.

Previously on Code Style

These backdated pages record detailed changes to the Code Style Web site since July 2000, when development first got underway. Some pages may refer to documents or features that have since changed or are no longer part of the site, but the archive is checked to ensure there are no dead links.

Site log, origins to present

For a summary overview, see the annotated site log contents.

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