I’ve written an article over at the Lockergnome RSS resource on optimizing your RSS feed. If you are at all concerned with the amount of bandwidth you’re using because of your feed, check out the article.

I’m shopping for a new cell phone. Every time I talk to a sales person at the store they point out that the phone has lots of games and polyphonic ringtones. They don’t even ask what’s important to me. Apparently they think that everyone buys a phone for the entertainment features. I suppose games would be nice to kill time if I’m waiting for an appointment or something, but I have no interest at all in polyphonic ringtones. Am I the only one that thinks they sound like elevator music played on a $15 Casio keyboard?

I used to read the Business Thinker’s Trends Digest religiously every week. The author read seemingly hundreds of business publications each week and wrote summaries of some of the most interesting articles. Then the author moved the Digest to be part of her PR firm’s Web site, then stopped maintaining it regularly (it was last updated in March). Combined with a lack of an RSS feed, and I simply don’t keep track of it any more.

I’ve been looking for a decent blog that links to business news and trends, and haven’t found much. I came across A Penny For... today, and its interesting, but I want more. Up2Speed looks promising. Anyone know of some good business and marketing blogs?

Chris Pirillo has started a new site about RSS. If you want to learn how RSS can help you or keep track of new RSS tools and services head over to Lockergnome’s RSS Resource.

I’m one of the contributors to the site. I come across a fair amount of RSS-related information each week, but I don’t want this blog to spend too much time focused on a particular technology, so I don’t usually blog it. So now I’ll post it there. So far it’s shaping up to be a good site.

Have a burning passion for content syndication? Chris is looking for more people to contribute: "This was designed to be driven by several contributors, but only fellow evangelists and technologists need apply."

Site membership agreements and other legal documents typically use outline numbering. Outline numbering can be accomplished on the Web by using nested ordered lists and a bit of CSS. Nest ordered lists several levels deep and then simply define a list style for each level of the list.

<ol>
    <li>Item 1</li>
    <li>Item 2
        <ol>
            <li>Sub paragraph 1
                 <ol>
                     <li>Ad nauseum</li>
                 </ol>
             </li>
        </ol>
    </li>
</ol>

And the CSS would be:

<style type="text/css">
ol ol { list-style-type: lower-alpha; }
ol ol ol { list-style-type: lower-roman; }
</style>

Fresh on the heels of my comment that standards-based design is taking hold, Zeldman today put up his slides from a talk entitled "Designing With Web Standards," including a list of some commercial sites using CSS layouts.

I’m sure my comment prompted his action. Or something.

A year ago it was notable when a company redesigned with Web standards. Now it is less so.

There are a variety of companies that are using CSS instead of tables for page layout. AIn October, I mentioned Mercedes-Benz and Wired. Since then Cingular and ESPN have both redesigned with CSS layouts and been mentioned here.

It is interesting that CSS is becoming the norm instead of an exception. I’m even doing the site for a California state agency with pure CSS layout. As far as I know, it’s one the first state government sites to be done this way. (The state of Montana site uses a bunch of absolutely positioned layers instead of tables, but this technique isn’t much better than using tables.)

Is anyone else finding less resistance to the concept of CSS layout from clients and bosses?

It’s been pointed out a few times that my comment forms don’t always remember you when you check the box. That’s fixed, and here’s a few tips on making your MT comments work better.

First, the problem that my comments form had was that the MT comment JavaScript sets the cookie path to a blank string. This causes the browser to only set the cookies in the current directory. So if your entries are in multiple directories like mine, the cookies don’t work.

The other cookie-related problem that many sites have is that their site is available at www.site.com and site.com. As far as the computer is concerned, those two addresses might be different servers and a cookie is only available on the hostname that it was set for. When someone enters a comment at www.site.com the cookie is set for the hostname www.site.com. If the user then later visits site.com, the cookie isn’t available, so the form contents aren’t remembered.

A simple adjustment to your MT cookie code will fix both these problems. Just change the rememberMe and forgetMe JavaScript so that they set cookies with the proper host and the root path. Here’s a copy of each function, already modified. Just change the 'site.com' to your server’s name.

function rememberMe (f) {
    var now = new Date();
    fixDate(now);
    now.setTime(now.getTime() + 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
    setCookie('mtcmtauth', f.author.value, now, '/', 'site.com', '');
    setCookie('mtcmtmail', f.email.value, now, '/', 'site.com', '');
    setCookie('mtcmthome', f.url.value, now, '/', 'site.com', '');
}

function forgetMe (f) {
    deleteCookie('mtcmtmail', '/', 'site.com');
    deleteCookie('mtcmthome', '/', 'site.com');
    deleteCookie('mtcmtauth', '/', 'site.com');
    f.email.value = '';
    f.author.value = '';
    f.url.value = '';
}

The other usability problem that most MT comment forms have is even when the form contents are remembered, the Remember Me checkbox or radio button is not. Users often don’t know if they need to check the box again in order for their information to continue to be remembered. So to be on the safe side, they check the box every time they enter a comment.

If the user’s information is remembered and you have a checkbox labeled "Remember Me," the state of the checkbox should be remembered as well. This is very simple to do as well. Find the JavaScript code that writes the user’s remembered information into the form and add a few lines that sets the state of the checkbox. Right after the line that says:

document.comments_form.url.value = getCookie("mtcmthome");

Add the following...

if (getCookie("mtcmtauth")) {
   document.comments_form.bakecookie.checked = true;
}

By making it easier for people to comment on your blog, more people will. And more people commenting means more traffic for your site.