dirtyBlog

Today I’ve made available a very basic (read-only) API. You can learn more about it on the about the API page. So far you can do basic interaction like searching:

http://api.dirtybeta.com/get/releases/search/dirtybeta

and then do lookups based on those results:

http://api.dirtybeta.com/get/release/id/1

Eventually the plan is to make the site completely functional without the GUI of the website, so that external applications like Widgets can benefit from the database completely without having to hit the website.

More to come!

This is a pretty major release! And the halfway mark to version 1.0 has been crossed! YAR! Anyway here’s what’s new:

1. Per suggestion, increased the size of the tag cloud.
2. The tag page is now pretty icons instead of just boring ol’ text.
3. Fixed IE6 (boy I hate that browser) rendering bug created by tag icons.
4. Changed popularTags label in the sidebar to tagCloud, because, unlike releases, tags are not user-submitted. Makes more sense this way.
5. I noticed a while back that dates weren’t showing up in Netvibes. I really have no idea why that is, but I think I’ve fixed it. My guess is it was because the timestamp dates were defaulting to midnight (like they do), so all newly submitted releases should starting showing proper pubDates.

Now then, as usual with these sprint releases there are many small fixes and one major one. Here’s the biggee this time around: Added an RSS link to the top of each tag page. This has been in the software since inception, but hasn’t really been promoted or linked to (which is a good thing because version 0.4.5 broke it). This is a feature in a feed service that I’ve wanted for years and I’m really excited about it. Here are some typical examples that many folks will find useful:

• RSS feed of all open source software
• RSS feed of all new websites
• RSS feed of all Wii games
• RSS feed of all Xbox-360 games
• RSS feed of all Windows software

This is a pretty major release for dirtyBeta, and I’ve decided to finally start to promote the site a little more. Not really knowing many avenues to take to do this (which is embarassing because I have a minor in Marketing), I’ll be using some of the no-brainers like Digg and possibly Reddit (if I can retrieve my stinking password).

So if you’re here from one of those sites, welcome! If you’re wondering what this is all about, this is the companion blog for dirtyBeta, a software release syndication and feed service. dirtyBeta’s goal is to inform users about new software, video games and websites.

(Also, a quick note: If you’re here from a social bookmarking site and you’ve found one of my posts to be obnoxious or spammy, well then sorry, but that’s how those sites work. Some sites let you bury such stories, and they all certainly allow you to ignore entries. I sincerely think this service will be a valuable tool to many (or I wouldn’t try to promote it), and I’d love to have the word spread about it.)

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy this release.

This was as very productive release! Here we go:

1. Release names are now highlighted along with summaries on the search page.
2. Speaking of search, there’s now a search form on every page like there should be on every page on all of the Interwebz!
3. Uh, searches and tag pages are now longer broken… cough…
4. Not that we’re there yet, but pagination now is intelligent enough to not shoot off into the hundreds (you should have seen the development box, it was nasty looking).
5. Fixed a bug in the tag cloud that was sizing tags with zero releases larger than those with just a few.

Now then! Those are the somewhat smaller updates. Here’s the big one that’s very obvious just by glancing at the release page: icons! Spiffy eh? Hope you enjoy:

Due to lack of use, the following tags have been removed:

1. adobe
2. apple (mac made more sense anyway)
3. bittorrent
4. driver
5. education
6. microsoft (ditto for windows)
7. nintendo
8. sony

… Not that anyone will miss them :) Also extension has been deprecated and moved to plugin.

This release is all about tabs! Releases can now by sorted by recently posted, recently released, highest traffic and most comments. This feature really should have made it in the first release…

Well, I’m one (small) step closer to having this site the way I envisioned it before it reaches that big sought-after 1.0. Seriously, if it wouldn’t have been so ridiculous, I would have made this a beta.

Here’s are the updates in this release:

1. Search Highlighting
   Search results now show the keywords highlighted as opposed to, well, not. Hooray for ease of use!
2. RSS Limit Increase
   The RSS feed was showing 10 results per page, which is just silly. Netvibes supports paging, so let’s take advantage of it!
3. Summary Character Counts
   When submitting software releases, it was a pain to figure out if the characters were over the 255 character limit or not. Nobody ever knew that but me, but now they’ll never have to! Some handy-dandy JS counts the characters at the bottom of the textarea.
4. Links in Summaries are Clickable
   Kind of a no-brainer here; this should have been done in the beginning. Now links users post in their summaries are clickable.
5. Slight Design Tweaks
   The tab on the left is gone. Waste of space, anyone?
6. Severe Submission Changes
   This has changed substantially. First off, name and version have been combined, because it seemed confused (and also would mess up the API plans I have). Second, URL is no longer a required field. Why? Because this is soft
   Slight Design Tweaks
   The tab on the left is gone. Waste of space, anyone?
7. Severe Submission Changes
   This has changed substantially. First off, name and version have been combined, because it seemed confused (and also would mess up the API plans I have). Second, URL is no longer a required field. Why? Because this is software releases, not social bookmarking! Somebody may make a version of something and just have it available in ware releases, not social bookmarking! Somebody may make a version of something and just have it available in Synaptic or something. Point is, it’s software and not just URLs. Also: video games are now allowed. Again, this is software! Video games are totally software. Several tags have been added accordingly.

   Lastly, releases must occur within a month of posting and no more than 3 months ago. This is because the site is meant for new software releases. The constraints are arbitrary, sure, and they may change — but they’re meant to emphasize new.

That’s it so far! Relatively involved release… hopefully someday someone will find these fixes useful!

After realizing dirtyBeta gets a D (63) in YSlow, I decided to fix that ASAP. So today I decided to fix this.

What’s This Mean?

Why, faster page loads of course! When you visit dirtyBeta, you should notice lightning fast page rendering thanks to Firebug and YSlow.

How I Did It

1. Added a CDN: You can consider this cheating if you like (it kind of is), but not everybody has the benefit of having a separate robust server just to serve up static files. Since it doesn’t really reflect on the engineering on the site, I added dirtyBeta to my preferences and got a letter-grade boost. Booya!
2. Removed ETags:
   This was a really simple fix:FileETag none

   ETags really only make sense if you’ve got multiple servers holding your static files, which dirtyBeta currently does not.

3. Added an Expires Header:
   I meant to do this before launching the site, but I figured there’d be some really basic CSS changes I wanted to do directly after launch (and I was right), so I held off. Well, enough waiting. I added this:

ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault “access plus 10 years”



   To my Apache conf, and we’re good to go! This is what finally landed my A, which I’m very pleased with, especially considering it’s not possible on my day job’s site.

What’s Next?

Improvements can always be made! I could make fewer HTTP requests by spriting some images (got a C on that) and figure out why my CSS and JS files aren’t getting GZIPed. Oh well, another time.

Well, that was quick. I really don’t plan on doing nightly builds, but a helpful co-worker pointed out something very basic missing from the site: What Is This?

I really can’t stand going to a site and not having any idea what it’s about. Some sites have reached milestones long ago where it’s a moot point to have an “about us” paragraph readily available on the homepage. But then again, isn’t the Internet all about discoverability and infinite growth? I still occasionally bump into somebody who doesn’t know what eBay is. It’s mandatory for new sites, sure, but I believe everybody should have simple explanations on their homepages. Here’s a great example from one of my favorite music sites:

Isn’t that nice? You’ve got a simple primer to start with, and a readily available link to follow if you’re still curious. So… now dirtyBeta has a What’s This in the sidebar on every page (which I’m sure will only appear on the homepage in a future version).

Oh, two more small things:

1. I’ve got a Widget in the works! It’s nothing special really (it’s based on the not-so-popular GamesRadar Widget, but hey, maybe it’ll help get the word out!).
2. The release list has been restyled a bit so that the release and posted dates don’t scrunch together on monitors narrower than 1200px. That’s what I get for developing on widescreen monitors…

Introduction

Hi there! Well, I’m really excited about this — I’m getting ready to launch my latest project, dirtyBeta. I’ve been working on this for months and by now it really feels like giving birth, only nerdier and realistically less life-altering. This site (dirtyBlog) is the official, supplemental blog for the site where I’ll be diligently updating and keeping records of new developments, features and tools — of which I have many planned! As a bit of a forward, let me introduce myself and write about the history of the site’s development a little.

My name’s Matt Hackett. I’ve been a professional web developer for going on 4 years now, and currently work for Yahoo! in the Widgets department. I have more than 5 years of experience with the various technologies that make the web work, including XHTML, PHP, CSS, JavaScript and some ActionScript. I’m constantly coding. It’s sick. I work sometimes 50+ hours/week, then go home and code a new JS library or throw a Widget together. But wouldn’t you know it? I’ve really only got one website I can put on my resume (which is a shame), and it’s really outdated and unused (dailyMidi — whose framework powered a lot of this site). Time to fix that!

I’m one of those guys that always has a dozen ideas buzzing around and just lacks the time to actually work on them. At my peak, I owned over 50 domains and I swear I had original ideas for all of them. Some ideas became stale over time, some became unoriginal, and others I just lost interest in. What separates this project from the others is: I really wanted a site like this to exist. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve needed to know about new software:

• When FireFox automatically installs a new version of itself and asks that I restart it. What was in this new version?
• When something I use constantly but don’t read up on often updates — The Gimp came out with a fantastic new cropping tool, and I didn’t know about it for weeks!
• When proprietary software I’ve paid for has a limit on its renewal discount (Propellerheads, I’m looking at you!)

Just within the last few days I was asking a co-worker about a medium through which I could promote my new website through Yahoo! — there are hundreds of random mailing lists that would work — but nothing was available that wouldn’t be looked down upon as spammy (and rightly so). The thought sprang into my head, something like, “Man I wish there was a single, great site that notified people about new softwa– damn.” I really believe there is a need for this.

But aren’t there other sites out there that already do this? Let’s look at some of them:

• SourceForge - absolutely a fantastic place to host your open source projects. But it’s just open source, and it’s more about the actual projects themselves than a simple means to get the word out.
• FreshMeat - Again pretty closely related to FSF.
• Other news sources such as SlashDot or Digg - These are great for general purpose news, but what about just the new software? That’s what dirtyBeta is all about.

So What’s Next?

Well, first thing’s first. This is a user-powered site, people! So let’s get some generous contributors to graciously donate their time to improving the content of the site by submitting new software releases to the site. If you like the idea, by all means spread the word so we can all benefit. I’ve got a massive to-do list, including:

• Custom feeds - The ability to subscribe to a custom rss feed via a search term or tag.
• Improved sorting - Only care about what’s new this week? This type of sorting will become much more relevant once the site begins to collect data.
• Expanded tagging system - The more tags the merrier (and the more you can customize feeds!). Soon there will be a tool to suggest new tags.
• API - An API is already in the works, which will allow 3rd-party applications to tap into dirtyBeta’s database.
• Much, much more…