Just Journal Developer Blog

I just commited about a month's worth of work to cvs. This includes the new picture code which still needs work. There is a memory leak in the apache file upload library that is triggered on large pictures. This is an obvious problem.

I'm about halfway through adding the new pictures feature.  There is a new menu option called pictures.  You can view any pictures on that page associated with a specific journal.

To add pictures, go into preferences and click add pictures near the bottom.

A few caveats:

1. I haven't finalized the maximum picture size.  Anything 1MB or smaller should work.  Consider that large resolutions will not display that well though.

2. I have not finished the delete option.  You can not yet delete pictures after you add them.  Eventually I'll get this working.  I've run out of time today.

3. You can not change the title on a picture after you upload it.

4. Every once in awhile an error displays even though the picture uploaded ok.  I'm still working on this.  Make sure the image did not upload before you try again.  If it keeps failing, make sure the picture is not too big.

5. There appears to be a possible memory leak in the apache commons FileUpload component.  A new version claims to fix this but it will involve several code changes.  I'll be upgrading that when I get time. 

6. Currently images are sorted alphabetically.  I'm planning on adding photo albums (think categories).  You will be able to sort pictures into different albums and give them titles.  For now a lot of pictures becomes increasing hard to read.  It is also a good idea to name photos from similar events the same at the beginning to keep them together.  You have up to 150 characters for the title so use them.

7.  You can not associate an image with a journal entry yet.  If you want to link to an image, first upload it and then put the full link in your journal entry.  I want to  make this easier in the future.

I also plan on adding tags, comments, and possibly an RSS feed of the pictures at some point.  I've been promising pictures for years and so I don't want to set any time frame on these enhancements. 

An xss flaw was fixed in Just Journal today.  There maybe others, and I'm auditing the code.  Entries by design allow HTML optionally but other items like subjects should not.  I may have to disallow all javascript in the near future.

I've isolated the strange problems. All java applications are acting strangly and any applications which use x11 dependancies are causing vm crashes. This appears to be a JDK/X11/OS issue.

I just updated the server software in hopes of getting rid of the HTTP headers that seem to randomly appear from time to time. It does not look like I was successful. I'll research the problem.

I've had to restart the site with new software a few times.  I found several problems with the friends system which needed to be fixed.  Friends entries would not display at all.  I reworked the sql queries a few times and managed to get a query that works.  In order to see friends posts, you must view them on your own friends page.  If you go to a friends page, you can not see them.

The reason for this restriction is to make sure that everyone in your friends list also has you in theirs.  Otherwise, you shouldn't get to see the entries.  The queries are just too complex and slow to fix that at the moment. 

Also, I added a new feature.  There is a digg link if you view individual entries.  If you see something interesting, digg it.

Just Journal was down for about 10 minutes this morning for a hardware upgrade.

The windows client was updated to fix a bug with the SSL option.  It would not allow you to disable SSL which was a big issue when the certificate had expired.  This bug has been fixed. 

Outlook integration was removed in this release.  Microsoft has removed Outlook for several editions of Office 2007.  It is clear that less people will be using this at home and so there is no need to support it any longer.  If someone wants to buy me a copy of outlook, I'll consider supporting it again.  I do not plan on upgrading to a version of office with outlook.

I've purchased a new SSL certificate which is valid until 2008.  The Windows client should work again.  I will fix the bug where you can not disable SSL in the windows client at a later time. 

 

The SSL certificate for Just Journal has expired.  Its still possible to login using it securely, but it needs to be replaced.  I've never made a dime off the site and they do cost money.  Since its Christmas time, it might not be renewed immediately.  If you want to donate for a new SSL key, use the link on justjournal.com's home page.

The site was restarted a few times today as I was working on the RSS Reader.  The work has been completed for now.  It now collapses the contents of a feed entry and you can select to display them.  This should make viewing RSS feeds significantly easier.  Use the + and - signs to collapse or expand each entry which are found in front of the title.  You may also use the collapse all and expand all links at the top. 

Also, please remember that it only supports RSS feeds that start with http.  If you see an apple style feed://, just change the feed:// to http:// as they are equivalent. 

I've corrected the bug with the update journal page in opera. The time is now updated as it should be.

I've added the code to delete links from your journal today.  You can add and delete links using the preferences after you login.

Link can be optionally added or removed from the left hand side of your journal. 

Opera 9 seems to be caching the "update journal" page. As a result times are ported incorrectly. I'll attempt to fix this later.

I just patched the firefox rendering bug.  Journals should work in all browsers again.

I've just noticed in some cases firefox 2 is not rendering the journals properly and displays an XML parsing error.  This is related to the change last night.  It only happens when html is used in an entry and not xhtml.  I'll work on resolving this issue.  IE should work on the pages when this happens since its not standards compliant and won't jump to xml parsing.

Just Journal now allows you to change the name of your journal.  The journal title option was added to preferences.  There is currently one bug in the feature that I should have patched later tonight. 

I've added buttons to add rss feeds for several popular services tonight to each journal. 

Both of these features need to be added throughout just journal but they should already work in the most important areas.

The just journal site was updated tonight. I've disabled auto generation of links for some types of entries until a bug can be fixed.

Passwords can now be changed! Go into preferences to do this. The interface isn't quite done yet. When you change it it will just show a screen with a white background and your old and new password. Do not change it while someone is watching. I'll fix this at a later time.

I also published part of a new feature which lets you add links to your journal. I've been using it for a few months, but the preferences are not quite done. You can currently add links but not remove them. I will fix this at a later time.

The Just Journal windows client is working on Windows Vista RC1 32bit.  The install and run of the application worked properly including iTunes integration.  I could not test office integration however. 

On a side note, Firefox 2 beta spell check is working in this box as well.

I performed a hardware swapout tonight.  The site is now running on a dual xeon 2.0Ghz with 1GB ECC PC2300 RAM.  The previous system was an amd sempron 2300+

The website server was down for a time for hardware upgrades.  More ram, a new power supply and an additional fan were added to the server.   The server will be down one more time in the next week for an OS upgrade.  It should not take more than a few minutes.