I just saw that Firefox 2.0 has been released!!! Woo hoo! I haven't tried it yet, but just downloaded it. I have been so busy being unemployed that I haven't followed the projects progess at all. Get the new Firefox at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

The requirements I listed for my blog software came out of some of the frustations I had with existing blogging tools. Now there is nothing wrong with Wordpress, Typepad or most blogging tools. They are well written and fairly easy to install and use. However, there are a few things that bug me.

First was the requirement for an SQL database with most tools. As I mentioned in my last post, roundtripping all the data from an SQL database everytime a page is rendered just seems wasteful. Why not generate static pages since blog entries almost never change? Your pages are gonna render faster, your site setup is simpler, and your site is gonna scale better. Plus, what about if I want to generate a journal that I don't want to publish? For example, a work blog or a project blog that I need for keeping track of what I have done a daily basis, but don't want or need to publish. There is no easy way to do something like this with most tools.

The commenting system in Wordpress used to drive me nuts. It seemed like there was no easy way to prevent comment spam. Everytime I would block an IP or create a word filter, the spammers would find a hole and I would log in to find 200 posts. (I will find you online gambling bastards someday and make you pay!! :-p) So I wanted to just rip out the commenting system and not have it there at all. But the application is so tightly coupled that never seemed like a possibility. It would be nice to be able to pick and choose what application components without breaking the application.

Finally, I found the WYSIWYG editor for posting entries annoying. Now the online editing features are pretty nice and getting better every day, but I'm a geek. I would rather enter my HTML raw than use some WYSIWYG editor. That way I can write using JEdit (which is what I'm using right now) or vi or whatever I want to use. I don't want to be forced to do things only one way.

Well that pretty much some things up for me. In a future post I'll discuss what XML standards and tools I used to create the software that publishes this site.

Well it is a darn good question. We all probably need new blog software like we need a new strip mall or another drug ad on TV. But I have my reasons.

First, let me list my requirements. The blog software should provide the following:

• Editing Simplicity - The ability to update entries with vi or another simple text editor. If you want to put a fancy web front end on the editor then great. But you shouldn't be required to use an online web editor.
• Component Independence - You should be able to choose the components you wish to use. For example, if want a commenting system, its there. If you don't, you don't have to include it at all.
• Publishing Flexibility - You should have control over what information is published to your web site. Just the published HTML or the HTML and the source content. Or for that matter, not publishing the blog at all.
• File System Based - You shouldn't have to fire up MySQL before you can use the tool. Since typically, blog entries never change, the need to repeatedly regenerate pages from a relational database seems wasteful to me.
• Standards Based - Content authoring and templating systems should use existing standards. Why invent a new templating language when standards already exist to do that really well.

Well that's what I want. In my next post, I go over some of my complaints about existing tools.

The contact form on the about page is broken so e-mails via the page are not working. I'll try to fix it soon.