Eric Duncan : Geek Stuff, The MiXX Collection

PostIcon CS Bug Fix

Eric A. Duncan — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:59:00 GMT

With the previous release of The MiXX Collection, it was updated to work with CS 2007. Well there is a bug in CS 2007's CSModule that no longer allows updating the ExtendedAttributes after a post is created.

In other words, the bug in the PostIcon that was introduced with 1.0 release caused a 0.jpg PostIcon to be saved at times and not propertly updating the WeblogPost object.

Download: As always, you can download the latest version and source from the file gallery.

This release, version 1.1, resolves this issue with a performance penalty work-around. But due to the changes and protection in the CSModules, there isn't any other way. The work-around is during a CreatePost event, we don't write the ExtendedAttributes on the PrePost CSModule event (since we do not have the PostID any longer). Instead, I hook into the AfterPost event that fires, after the post has been created, to obtain the PostID. This fires off an UpdatePost method to write the entire post to the DB - again.

Don't worry, this is only during the first initial CreatePost event. If you go back and Update a post, it fires normally - that is only 1 time because we now have a PostID during the PrePost event to write to the ExtendedAttributes.

I'm open to suggestions if someone else has a cleaner solution. It all comes down to not being able to update/write to the ExtendedAttributes during the AfterPost (PostPost) CSModule event. I've mentioned it for years, there should be a method to save the ExtendedAttributes without having to update the entire object.

And as always, bookmark this link for updates: http://eduncan911.com/archive/tags/The+MiXX+Collection/default.aspx You can also access the RSS option in there to subscribe via RSS as well.

Another PostIcon Site Launches - Soapinions

Eric A. Duncan — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:33:00 GMT

Barbie, here's a website for you.

Soapinions is a community site for discussion with the latest soap operas on daytime television. Like what the Sex of Chad's Lover is! OMG! It can't be!

They were looking for more of a "visual" appeal. Well, they got now. :)

http://soapinions.com/blogs/default.aspx

Using my MiXX.PostIcon, they are simply going back and flooding their original posts with new images. I kind of actually like the larger 100px sizes vs my 63px here on my site. I may update mine.

Microsoft's Windows Ultimate launches with MiXX PostIcon!

Eric A. Duncan — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 19:27:00 GMT

+ + =

Telligent announces another great site we've done for Microsoft - Windows Ultimate Edition.

http://windowsultimate.com/

What's even cooler about this site? It uses my The MiXX Collection's PostIcon package (woot!). Dan Bartels was the developer for that portion of the project, and he slightly tweaked the code to display the post's Attachment, if it was an image, as the PostIcon as well as the normal logic.

I will roll this into the next release of the PostIcon module. Most likely between the check for the BBCode and inline image parsing (an intermediate step). Thoughts?

PostIcon Updated

Eric A. Duncan — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 21:38:00 GMT

You can download The MiXX Collection that includes the updated PostIcon AddOn from these urls:

(install only)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/2611/download.aspx

(source code-must compile)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/5894/download.aspx

Change Log:
2006-12-16 (v0.9.3.25764)
- Changed from throwing exceptions to just logging exceptions, to
   allow the rest of the page/site to load without redirecting to an
   error. To debug, look in your CSExceptions for UnknownError and
   FileNotFound errors logged.
- Added in parsing of the regex groups in the config file. This
   allows for custom regex patterns to be used, and you can
   explicitly set what group this module will parse the needed values
   for.
- Fixed a small issue to where the PostIconModule was using the last
   used AnchorPosition specified in a post as the default for the
   time the AppPool was running.

Updated previous version, and deleted old files.

The MiXX Collection for Community Server

Eric A. Duncan — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 21:30:00 GMT

Today I package up my MiXX tools into a collection of addons for Community Server. Right now, it only includes the PostIcon addon. At the end of this weekend, it should include a new MiXXVideoModule that is a major overhaul of the existing CS VideoModule.

(install only)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/2611/download.aspx

(source code-must compile)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/5894/download.aspx

This is the first of a number of major updates, finally releasing enhancements to Community Server I have sought after for many years. You can use the RSS Tag link to subscribe to the tag The MiXX Collection for the latest news of this tool.

MiXX.PostIcon released to the public

Eric A. Duncan — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 05:48:00 GMT

EDIT 6/05/2007: Changed links to CS 3.0 version. Subscribe to here for updates: http://eduncan911.com/archive/tags/The+MiXX+Collection/default.aspx

Some of you might have noticed my new homepage over the last month. Those of you using an RSS reader to read this, go check out my homepage for the new PostIcon module I'm talking about.

What is it?
The purpose of this Server Control and CSModule is to automatically
create a small lightweight PostIcon with little to no work on your part.
Just embed a normal image, bam, you have a PostIcon automatically.

This module creates the PostIcon for a Weblog Post during its creation
and/or update physically on disk. It will connect to your image source,
load into memory, crop, resize, compress, and save the tiny ~2 KB file
to disk. It then adds the full pathname to an ExtendedAttribute for that
post called "PostIcon", allowing for the skin to render where required.
This storage-to-disk method greatly speeds up the homepage rendering as
we do not access the photo gallery.

To use, simply create a blog post with at least one <img> embedded.
That's it. The default logic above will take the first <img> in your
post and process it to disk.

Optionally, you can specify a particular image to use as your PostIcon.
Say if you had multple embedded <img>s, or if you don't have an image at
all but wanted a PostIcon for the post.

You can use the BBCode format of:

[PostIcon Anchor = "Center"]http://domain.com/image.gif[/PostIcon]

This will allow you to specify an Anchor position, if you want to crop
in a certain region. The Anchor attribute is optional. See the
module's config file for more information on Anchor.

How does it work?
There are two parts to make this work. The backend uses the PostIconModule to download into memory, crop, resize, compress, and save the selected image to disk.

And the frontend UI uses the PostIcon server control to rendered the saved image, with smart logic.

What is the logic to determine what gets downloaded, cropped, and saved or even displayed if none is set?
There are two methods of logic. The first is which image, if any at all, is processed on the initial PostCreation process. And the other logic is in the PostIcon server control that renders, if there is no image saved from the module.

The PostIconModule determines what url gets written to the post, if any. It does this by following the order below:

Does the [PostIcon] BBCode exist? If so, parse the image specified.
Is there an <img> declaration somewhere in the post? If so, parse the first <img> and use it as the PostIcon.

If the PostIconModule fails to parse the image, no url is written. In which case, the PostIcon server control determines what gets displayed with the logic below:

Is there a DefaultImageUrl specified? If so, link directly to it.
Is the UseAnonymousAvatar set to true? If so, link directly to it.

Why are you saving to disk and writing a direct url? Isn't the Photo Gallery built for that?
Yes, it is but I wanted speed on my homepage. And loading the Weblog posts + 20 to 50 images on the homepage is a bit more processing then I care for.

So with the PostIconModule I load the image into a MemoryStream, crop the image based on the Anchor set, resize the image to what is specified in the config, compress it as a JPG (tests showed 60% quality compared to Gif 89a and PNG is smaller then all), and finally save it to disk.

The PostIcon server control loads only the direct Url that is stored for the post, therefore generating a very quick homepage load time.

Where's the source code?
With the rest of the files below.

Where do I get this wonderful tool?
Here ya go:

(install only)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/2611/download.aspx

(source code-must compile)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/5894/download.aspx

Future Releases
If by popular demand, I might add in rendering of the User's Avatar if multiple people are posting to a single blog. But since this is rare, I skipped it for now.

Also if by popular demand, I may add in some type of Email detection (i.e. MetaBlog API posts) and display a custom image (if the image logic fails to save one). For example, I might want to display a common PostIcon for all posts made by Blogmailr. Such as this one: