Described as ‘when semantic extraction goes horribly wrong’… these are the results of a disastrously untested search engine being let loose on the net… and screenshots of howlers are growing day by day on forum and blog posts. At release, an article on TechCrunch revealed that a search for ‘Causes of AIDS’ rather unfortunately listed ‘Jew’, due to it’s inability to distinguish between the disease and the verb ‘to aid’, which could be found in a Wikipedia article on Jewish history. A company representative offered an explanation to TechCrunch author Leena Rao:

“This is an unfortunate example of homonymy, i.e. words that have different meanings.The showcase was not configured to distinguish between the disease “AIDS” and the verb “aids” (as in aiding someone). If you click on the result “Jew” you see a sentence from a Wikipedia page about 7th Century history: “Hispano-Visigothic king Egica accuses the Jews of aiding the Muslims, and sentences all Jews to slavery. ” Although Wikipedia contains a lot of great health information it also contains non-health related information (like this one) that is hard to filter out.”

LanguageLog also blogged the site under the most appropriate title ‘Semantic FAIL’, with readers posting their own examples of search results… my favourite so far was the suggested treatment for Hookers: ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’.

Peter Nederlof’s javascript fixes CSS dropdown menus and other elements that use the :hover pseudoclass. If you read Dutch you can read his essay here.

Lightning Tools

Okay, I’m super geeky and like modifying Sharepoint styles longhand in XSL. But its not something for the faint-hearted – one mistake and all your web parts can turn out blank. The Lightning Conductor Web Part now comes with a nice web front end for creating styles. I don’t think it’ll stop me geeking around with Sharepoint though… oh and it looks like Heather Solomon’s talking about IE6 workarounds too…

This problem is pretty well documented across the MSDN forums and developer lists – only recently did I come across a solution, so in the interests of helping out anyone else who has spent months trying to get this to work – here’s a brief how-to. It assumes basic knowledge of Sharepoint Designer, MOSS 2007, and a bit of XSL.

You will also need the latest patches for MOSS 2007 which allow attachments to be displayed in customised data views of lists.

What we will create is a summary view of a list which contains ‘more…’ links to a full view of a list item, where you can download the attachment.

Step 1 – AllItems.aspx

Create a new List which you wish to customise. Open AllItems.aspx and customise it as an XSL Data View – or alternatively, if you wish to display your data on the default.aspx of your site, create a data view. Select a few fields to display which make a good summary, and format it as you wish. If you are using AllItems.aspx I recommend saving this under another name such as ‘CurrentItems.aspx’ so you don’t lose your ability to edit list items.

Create a link somewhere in the dvt_1.rowview template in the format:

<a href="disp.aspx?ID={@ID}">More...</a>

This will link you to a single item display page that we are about to create, and passes the ID of the item to be displayed.

Step 2  – DispForm.aspx

Next open up DispForm.aspx and revert to its Master page’s content.

Create a Single Item data view of your list on this page showing all of its fields. Include the Attachments field.

In the dvt_1.rowview template replace the Attachments tag with this:

Attachments: <SharePoint:AttachmentsField ControlMode="Display"
     FieldName="Attachments" runat="server" Visible="true"/>

Now we need to set a Parameter for the List Item ID so that the page will display the corresponding details of an ID passed to it: click to show Common Data View Tasks and click on Parameters. Add a new Parameter called ListItemID. For Parameter Source select Query String, for Query String Variable enter ID and for Default Value enter 0. (Lists begin their first item with an ID of 0).

Next click on Filter and check the box at the bottom marked ‘Add XSLT Filtering’. Click Edit.In the section marked ‘Edit the XPath expression’ enter:

[@ID=$ListItemID]

Click OK, OK again to exit the Filter menu, and save this page as ‘disp.aspx’. Notice that this corresponds with the hyperlink we added above.

Now go to Paging and ensure that your list is set to display all items, not just a single item.

If you’ve set this all up correctly you should now have a full view of your list, which links to a single item view displaying the corresponding attachment for download!

I’m still getting to know XSL and MOSS so I am yet to get a list to display multiple items with corresponding attachments, but I’m sure its a case of fiddling around with parameters…

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/240952/iriXx

The large ‘Whiskey’ amuses me.

Drunkn blogging is probably never a good thing… however…:

1. What is your first name? iriXx. yarly.
2. What is your favorite food? Whiskey. Or maybe nachos. I dont really do food.. pass the whiskey.
3. What high school did you go to? not telling
4. What is your favorite color? Blue
5. Who is your celebrity crush? anything directed by Mamoru Oshii is teh sex leg. Either that or Chris Metzen.
6. Favorite drink? Whiskey
7. Dream vacation? Iceland. Or back home to London
8. Favorite dessert? Creme brulee.
9. What you want to be when you grow up? I am. Do I really have to be?
10. What do you love most in life? My husband… and whiskey. Luc Ferrari’s music a close second.
11. One Word to describe you? Absentminded.
12. Look up your flickr name and find something/someone dedicated to you – much of SGI machines

credits: 1. Take the gun, 2. The Macallan Fine Oak, 18 years, 3. Goldsmiths Art Building, 4. mundane monday, 5. Musee de l’erotisme, 6. Single Malts, 7. Thanks Helga! Here is your canvas…, 8. Classic Creme Brulee, 9. Teddy bear, 10. Más que solo dos anillos., 11. a model of my brain, 12. cracking open the O2 to install the 1600SW Flat Panel Monitor Adapter

I’m still firmly Free Software/Creative Commons, and hurrah for ‘Open Source’ (aka GPL 2.0′d) MoveableType. I’ve tried out a number of blog/web2.0/CMS type applications and would have to say this and Squiz’s MySource Matrix probably take the cake for the friendliest interfaces so far.

Matrix wins hands down for me as far as seriously flexible content presentation & ease of use; I’ve also spent a fair bit of time of late working with Microsoft’s MOSS (Sharepoint 2007) which I’d describe as just plain weird in that Microsoft way we all love to hate, but a useful exercise in XML/XSLT. I’m not overly fond of proprietary software but clients find it easy to use and its popularity is growing, so for anyone working with CMS’s in an Office environment it tends to be a necessary evil.