BigBlueHat

Most web sites build with a Content Management System (CMS) do not send the correct “Last-Modified” date to the browser. The average CMS (include WordPress which runs this blog) show the current time as the date the page was last modified. The truth, though, is that the average web page or blog entry hasn’t been touched for some time (and certainly not in the last 30 seconds).

BlueInk, however, outputs the date the page was actually modified last. If you view the home page, for example, and click “Tools | Page Info…” (or the like for your specific browser), you’ll see “Modified: 02/13/2008 11:19:30 AM” That is, in fact, the last moment I made a change to that page. Yesterday, though, before we added this marginal but useful feature you would have seen whatever your current date and time are.

So why should I care?
While this may be the first time you’ve ever bothered to look at the page info for a web page, this data is useful to other web sites and web services that may interact with your web site. Search engines would be the first most obvious group of services to perhaps use this info. The growing number of “Web 2.0″ applications and even what are being called “Web 3.0″ or the “Semantic Web” applications could (and likely will) make use of that data.

We hope that our increasing “geekiness” about HTTP, REST, and other web standards will continue to pay off for our users in ways none of us may yet have envisioned. We’ll keep the future in mind.

Regular users of BlueInk may have noticed that BlueInk now has backend search functionality. Brad began work on this near the end of last week, and got it rolled out on Monday–which also happened to be National Inventor’s Day, though, like most inventors, we forgot to celebrate.

The new search functionality provides a quick and easy way to find content items without needing to remember its name. Additionally, users will see a list of pages the content item appears on. This allows the user to know exactly where the item is in use before they decide to edit it.

If you’ve not tried BlueInk yet, please check out the demo. We’d love to know what you think about it.

One of our primary goals with BlueInk is to save web content editors as much time as possible. We hope this adds to the arsenal of usability BlueInk already offers.

Brad’s been hacking on some niggling little inconsistencies in BlueInk: notification messages weren’t consistently placed, sessions timed out too quickly in Media, the loading message stayed up after renaming files, and a few others. After his changes things are much smoother now.

Inspired by his work this morning, I added some new icons for each of the content types. It’s now more obvious which content type you’re working with under the Content section.

Minor changes like that can get overlooked when we focus on “big picture” feature additions and long term architectural decisions. We’ve come to the conclusion, though, that these little things make a big difference in how enjoyable a web based software application is to use. The more enjoyable a product, the more usable. That’s our theory, anyway. Do you agree?

Check out the new improvements on the BlueInk demo site.

With the new year come new ideas. Ben and I have been brainstorming and/or barnstorming about the future direction of BlueInk, and let’s just say some exciting things are in store. Our major goal is incorporating control over the site layout and design, so that those who want to manage more than just content can do just that. Perhaps we can coin a new acronym, CDMS, to stand for Content and Design Management System. And like my long lost cousin Jesse James Garrett, I too will become known for condensing a perhaps vague and far-reaching concept down to four capital letters.

We like them. A lot. Especially those from a quaint locally owned outfit known as the Donut Shoppe. I suggest you try the chocolate-covered cream cheese donut, which is just as unnecessarily decadent as it sounds, and the donut known simply as “spice.” These treats have been known to cause me to utter profound phrases such as, “Just remember… always eat lots of donuts… on Tuesday.”

Some days these donuts provide just the inspiration we need to tackle the world’s problems, such as adding many wonderful features to our CMS of triumph known as BlueInk. In recent days we have added the capability for front-end registration and a corresponding permissions system, refined a couple of content types (contacts and events) based on popular microformats, and constructed a fairly robust form-builder system. We invite you to try our demo and let us know what you think—we are seeking to enhance it steadily, so if you have any ideas, criticisms, or observations, we are all about hearing them. Just let me grab a donut first.