All the changes in 1.52 are in the stream template, and a little addition to Fargo's CMS to support the new stuff. And all the changes are fairly technical.

Maps

Maps are the big 1.52 feature. Here's a narrative.

You can use maps in the backgrounds for days by attaching attributes to the headline for the day. This feature will get separate documentation.

How to install

Reload http://fargo.io/ and verify the version under the dinosaur is 1.52.

What's changed in the stream template

New fonts. Ubuntu and Vollkorn. Per the recommendation on this page. Ubuntu is an old favorite

Thanks for Ken Smith's suggestion to include the italic and bold versions where available.

Fixed a bug where if you went to a permalink without subs (example), it would flip the wedges on all items that did have subs. A jQuery newbie mistake.

The title of each page now has the site name in square brackets. The home page is given the name "home," it would otherwise be the empty string.

Updated the fargoTemplates repository on GitHub.

What's new in the CMS

There's now a connection between the attributes on the day page in the outline and the <div> representing the day in the rendered HTML. This is how the data is transmitted from Fargo to the page for the new map feature.

For example -- here's the attributes on the main headline for yesterday's Scripting News. You can see it completely specifies the map that's displayed behind the day's content on the site.

To see how that's reflected in the HTML data structure you can open it in a debugger, or peruse this screen shot. The correlation is pretty clear. All the unusual attributes are present. We don't bother with the atts that every headline in Fargo has -- created, name and text. Anything the user has added, however, is transmitted, and of course available to the JavaScript code running in the page. This is how we make the linkup with Google Maps as the page is loading.

It took a while to figure out how to do this mapping, but this is exactly why the data-xxx feature is in HTML, what's interesting is how nicely it maps onto the structures we're already maintaining in the CMS. The worlds match up nicely.

03/24/14; 12:58:52 PM

A good question on the smallpicture-web list.

How can I use a Google Web Font in my Fargo website?

There are probably a few ways to do it, but imho the easiest is to add the font includes and new style declarations in a <%customStylesScripts%> glossary entry. This is included in every template, after all the other styles and scripts, in the head section. So you can override anything, in theory, by putting it in that glossary entry.

Here's an example site that illustrates.

Here's the OPML source for the site.

03/23/14; 10:15:57 PM
  1. It's better not to put links in headlines with subs. It makes clicking on the headline have two meanings, and this can be confusing. If I find I want to add notes under something that's already linked, I add a new headline, and moved headline with the link under it.

  2. If you want something to be in the feed, you have to use the + icon to create it. Some people are apparently creating new items by pressing Return. I do it myself, without thinking. Those items will not be in the feed.

03/21/14; 04:55:16 PM

For now, if you want to create a noteblog, follow the instructions on the Testing 1.51 page.

I'll merge those instructions in with the regular Fargo Docs, shortly.

Updated the templates repository on GitHub. v0.42.

Update: The Fargo Docs site now has a Noteblogging howto page.

03/21/14; 11:38:49 AM

These instructions have been replaced by a page on the Fargo Docs site.

03/18/14; 11:58:02 PM

The default outline template got a couple of updates.

  1. The slogan at the bottom is now hidden. It's still there, and if you want to bring it back, add this bit of CSS in a #style directive: .spSlogan {display: inline;}

  2. You can now put a background image on an outline page. Add a backgroundImage attribute to the title headline. Its value is the URL of an image. It should be pretty big. This page uses the outline template and has an image.

I updated the GitHub repository with the latest versions.

The #style directive

If you haven't checked it out yet, it's really sweet.

Basically you can add CSS styles at any level -- in your cmsPrefs.opml file, or on an individual page. It's one of the coolest new CMS features in Fargo 2.

See the page on the Fargo Docs website.

03/18/14; 05:52:18 PM

This evening I flipped the switch, and now Scripting News has been transformed into a new kind of blog -- something I call a noteblog.

The site is edited with Fargo, of course.

There's a new template, called "stream" -- and a new nodetype -- "idea."

You will be able to create and edit sites like this, once the new version of Fargo is released.

Example page

Here's an example of a day page, today's page.

Release in stages

We'll do the release in stages, as was done with Fargo 2.

First I'll post a pointer to the Fargo 2 list. Adventurous people will be able to try it out. Report problems -- and there will be problems, that's for sure.

There's also some new art in feeds that's been necessary. I've been discussing it on Scripting News. The changes will cause problems with feed readers. But it will also enable new kinds of feed readers. This is important for the future.

There's also a new bookmarklet, that once installed and set up, makes it easy to shoot a link to into a designated Fargo outline. I'm using it now, and it works like a dream.

Important point

You do not have to use these features!

If you're happy with the way Fargo works, then I'm happy too.

Sometimes people think change will break things, but I try really hard not to do that. I'm a user too, and I really hate breakage.

I'm trying to think but nothing happens!

03/15/14; 09:46:29 PM

Stephen Pond reported a problem with links in the crumb trail of his blog.

There really are two problems here, one with Fargo CMS and one with Fargo Publisher.

This evening I fixed the problem in Publisher.

When you go to this address: swppond.smallpict.com/2014/03 it would fail, because there isn't an object named 03 at that path. But servers should be a little more forgiving, and see if it's possible to interpret 03 as a folder. The rule is this: if it contains a file named index.html, we serve that file. That's what the author intended us to do.

Fargo CMS should generate a / at the end of the URL, then the server-side workaround wouldn't be necessary. But it's a good thing for the server to do anyway.

I updated the GitHub repository and added a worknote.

03/12/14; 09:47:28 PM

I just updated the new default versions of the outline, bloghome and medium templates in the global prefs file. To get the latest version of this file, reload the Fargo app.

Also updated the templates in the GitHub repository.

03/12/14; 02:42:01 PM

On the smallpicture-user list, Andy DeSoto asks a great question about the built-in slogan macro. He wants to know where it's defined. That isn't the issue, if you don't like the way it works, you can override it, by writing your own version of the macro, and putting it in your cmsPrefs.opml file.

If you look in my cmsPrefs.opml file, which you can view on this page, you'll see that I've defined several macros. If you define your own #macros table, and put a script in there called slogan and have it return the empty string, you'll basically void the built-in routine.

Here's a screen shot of the macros table with this new version of the slogan macro.

Here's the docs page on defining your own macros.

And to answer the original question -- the built-in macros really are built-in, they're not in a place that you can edit them.

03/05/14; 05:04:36 PM

Last built: Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 6:11 PM

By Dave Winer, Saturday, March 1, 2014 at 5:29 PM.