use Perl

I've just uploaded a new design for http://news.perlfoundation.org. Based on the perldoc.perl.org style, it implements Phil Smith's idea for the "Explore Perl" toolbar. I'll blog in more detail about this later, but essentially we've now got a single list of links that appear on multiple sites but are maintained in a single place.

Many thanks to Ask, Squeaky, Phil Smith, and Karen for their help and ideas.

P.S. As with any redesign there may be the odd browser issue or bug, so if anything looks amiss please email me at jj@jonallen.info and I'll look into it.

Last night I gave my talk Web Mashups with Catalyst at the Birmingham Perl Mongers technical meeting.

We also had two guest speakers - Stuart Langridge talked about the future of Python web development, and Nick Harewood demonstrated Microsoft Silverlight and Expression Blend.

It was very interesting to hear about these different approaches to web development. Of particular interest was SketchFlow - seems like a great way to prototype and get feedback on the functional parts of a design without getting tied up over the visuals.

A couple of days ago I released Catalyst::View::Thumbnail, which provides an easy way to serve thumbnail images. It should work with any model that can put raw image data onto the stash (you don't need the MIME type, it's automatically detected), so a controller to produce thumbnails 100px high would look like this:

sub thumbnail :Local :Args(1) {
   my ($self, $c, $filename) = @_;

   $c->stash->{image} = $c->model('Images')->slurp($filename);
   $c->stash->{y}     = 100;

   $c->forward('View::Thumbnail');
}

Have a read of the tutorial, Creating thumbnails with Catalyst, and please let me know of any fearure requests or bug reports.

The source code is on GitHub at http://github.com/jonallen/Catalyst-View-Thumbnail/tree/master, and on CPAN at http://search.cpan.org/dist/Catalyst-View-Thumbnail.

Cheers,

JJ

I've put together a short guide to installing Perl modules without root access using local::lib.

If anyone has any corrections or suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

Cheers,

JJ

Update: Yasuhiro Matsumoto has kindly posted a Japanese translation of the guide. Thanks!

Hot on the heels of the Perl 5 version 10.1 release, I've updated http://perldoc.perl.org with the new documentation. Thanks to Dave Mitchell and everyone else involved in getting the 10.1 release out, well done!

The old Perl 5 version 10.0 documentation has been moved to http://perldoc.perl.org/5.10.0.

Cheers,

JJ

Today I uploaded the perldoc.perl.org source code to GitHub, the repository is at http://github.com/jonallen/perldoc.perl.org/tree/master. Issues, feature requests, and patches are all very welcome!

I've also made a few additions to the perldoc FAQs on the project page.

Cheers,

JJ

Just wanted to say a big thanks to Cog, Alberto, Joana, and everyone else involved in putting on such a fantastic conference!

I saw many excellent talks, caught up with lots of friends in the hallway track, enjoyed many bottles of Super Bock, and generally had a grand time. Thank you!

Oh, and my YAPC::Europe photos are now online.

Cheers,

JJ

A few people have pointed out to me that scrolling down pages on perldoc.perl.org was causing their screens to flicker.

Unfortunately I've not been able to reproduce the problem, even when using exactly the same web browser and OS versions. From the reports I've had, it only appears to affect Firefox, only affects a very small number of people, and has nothing to do with CPU power.

However, after some more investigation and help from those affected I think I've found a fix.

The perldoc CSS uses visibility: hidden; to hide the draggable page index window - this gets changed to visibility: visible; when the "Show page index" link is clicked. Today I updated the site to use display: none; and display: block; in addition to setting the visibility property, and according to reports this seems to have solved the problem.

Apologies to those affected, and thank you to Martin von Wittich, Offer Kaye, and Michael Ivanchenko for their help in testing.

Today's update also adds a preferences page which allows you to change the positioning of the navigation bar from Fixed (the default - the nav bar is anchored to the top of the screen) to Standard (nav bar scrolls with the page content).

Cheers,

JJ - http://perl.jonallen.info

Following the perldoc design update, I've now started work on various fixes and optimisations.

The first of these is page load time.

After profiling in Safari, it became apparent that a large proportion of the load time was due to latency, and that the JavaScript files were blocking the loading of images, delaying the final page render.

These issues are now fixed, and the stats for the perldoc homepage are as follows:

• Images
  Reduced from 10 to 3
• JavaScript files
  Reduced from 4 to 1
• HTTP requests
  Reduced from 19 to 9 (3 of which are for Google Analytics)
• Total download size
  Reduced from 222Kb to 165Kb

With a few extra tweaks to the object load order and placement of JavaScript files, the overall page load time should now be significantly reduced.

I'm pleased to announce a significant update to perldoc.perl.org, the Perl documentation website.

The main change is a complete new visual design, bringing a fresh, modern look to the site. Additionally there are a number of new features to aid navigation and usability - a floating page index window, recently read pages list, improved Pod rendering, and many more.

Over the next few weeks I'm planning a few more updates, including extending the site to hold documentation for all Perl 5.8.x releases.

I've tested the new design using a variety of browsers, but if anything looks amiss please email me at jj@jonallen.info with your OS and browser versions, and if possible a screenshot.

Cheers,

JJ - http://perl.jonallen.info