Fast Takes: 03/21/2004

Embedding Visualization into your own page

One of the interesting attributes of creating well defined services is how easy it is to distribute the display code and have it completely separate from the business logic. For the blog mapping software the HTML code below will create a new display widget. The blog displayed on startup in the URL in bold. This example is for Jon Udell's weblog, it does take a little time to load as he has a lot of links but it is fun to be able to naviage all his links in a visual manner.


This is an example of the HTML code for a page to create a blog map

<HTML>
  <HEAD>
	<title>DreamFactory 6.34 Project: Viewer</title>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
   </HEAD>
   <BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
      <object
           classid="clsid:226906C8-B911-11D5-82A3-0000F81A655B"
           codebase="http://www.dreamfactory.com/codebase/dfacactx.cab#Version=6,34,0,1"
           id="dfacinst"
           border=0
           width=100%
           height=100%>
           <param
             name="openfile"
             value="http://www.mcdowall.com/dfProject/viewer.dfac?root=
                        http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/">
               <embed
                    type="application/dreamfactory"
                    pluginspage="http://www.dreamfactory.com/codebase/winplug.exe"
                    width=100%
	    height=100%
                    openfile="http://www.mcdowall.com/dfProject/viewer.dfac">
               <embed>
      </object>
   </BODY>
</HTML>

Anyone can add this code to their blog and provide a new metaphor for navigating their neighbourhood. As I add more features they will be delivered on demand i.e. no need to update software everything is delivered out of the network.

Update to visualization tool

With help from Bill Appleton at DreamFactory I have upgraded the visualization tool. If is now full screen and much more useful. If you want to play with the source click on "Author". There are still some initialization problems that I am working through.

To use just click on display and you will get a graph of the blogs I link to. Then double click on any block and the home page will appear in a new browser window. The URL will also be inserted into the URL field. If you now click on display a view of the blogs around that blog will be displayed.

The next steps are to do some more clean to the initialization code. This will allow anyone to insert this widget on their blog and specify their blog as the root node - cool everyone can have their own personal mapping server courtesy of DreamFactory with no server code. Demonstrates the simple value of software as a service.

Rich Clients and Services

I have been messing around with display graphs of blogs again. This time I have designed the system to be a service (the blog crawler) that can be accessed at http://www.mcdowall.com/servlet/crawl?root="blog url". This will return an XML file of all the related nodes this blog refers to. To see a visual representation I have created a simple DreamFactory client here (windows and mac plugin only). If you see the source code on the page you can embedded this in any page of your own and have a graphical view of your local blog neighborhood.

The ability to "loosely couple" the service and the display is a key advantage of the new world of network clients. DreamFactory is a great example as it does not require a server to be deployed. Therefore the service and the display are truly loosely coupled. All the network client and service know is the interface. As I evolve both they will be able to move independently.

Compared to a classical web approach with significant amounts of display logic embedded in the server this is a dramatic leap forward. We are still at the early stage of this shift but have been through everything from character screens to the web I see this as a truly tectonic shift.

Note: software still buggy and the UI is not very elegant

Fast Takes

About Me

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Embedding Visualization into your own page

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Update to visualization tool

Monday, March 22, 2004

Rich Clients and Services