I’ve just done some moderately substantial updates to my script for fulltext searches in PHP with MySQL. Although I don’t think the changes merit a whole new version number, I’ve made enough changes to justify releasing it to the public, I think! Mostly, I’ve focused on making it easier to implement, although I’ve also made changes to make the actual searching better, as well.

The principal changes include:

• Extended the Boolean capabilities to include the full range of MySQL boolean query options, including the “less desirable” and “more desirable” modifiers (<, >), complex queries using parentheses, and wildcard searching using the asterisk.
• Added options to display results in either a definition list or a table format.
• Made it far easier to customize the script to your own database: it’s no longer necessary to dive into the script and rewrite the MySQL SELECT statements or customize variables.
• Added an option to allow the script to search on email addresses. This has been requested a couple of times, so I figured I might as well provide it as a choice.
• Made a lot of settings controllable without diving into the script itself: heading levels, extracted text length, whether to give me attribution…

My next goal is to improve the overall security of the script: but that will have to wait until later. Next week will definitely not be a week for programming: instead, it will be a week for moving.

I welcome bug reports: I’m sure they’re there – they just need to be chased down.

Read further details about the script.

Download the script now.

Kelly Ford, from the IE Accessibility Team, posted today in the IEBlog about IE7’s expected behavior with a variety of commercial screen readers and screen magnifiers.

The general sound of things is that IE7 will be compatible (or mostly compatible) with the most recent versions of most assistive technology software.

Although the number of products detailed on the IEblog is quite small, it does cover the better known products in assistive technology, all of which either are currently compatible with IE7 or will be patched for compatibility within the next month.

The information in the post is brief and provides little information about any kind of advanced functionality: however, if you want to verify whether your assistive technology will be compatible with IE7 it’s probably best that you check this out — before you install IE7!

This post has nothing to do with IE7’s support for CSS, adherence to web standards, or general functionality. Instead, it’s a general complaint about one specific annoyance: why did Microsoft’s IE development team want IE7 to “click”?

I mean, as a marketing metaphor, it’s great. Everybody wants their product to “click”. However, in this case I think they’ve taken it a bit too literally.

Read more: Internet Explorer 7: Irritation of the Day

My little boolean search engine has been receiving a fairly substantial amount of traffic, so I thought I should make it a little bit more user friendly. I just uploaded a new version of the zip package which includes a template file to connect to your MySQL database and, most importantly, a little readme file with some very basic instructions for installing and modifying the search engine for your site.

Finally, I put up a example implementation so you can try it out for real. Also made some minor changes to the script itself, but no real spectacular changes – it should be a TINY TINY bit faster now, but that’s about it.

Edit: put up the wrong link to the search script. Oops!

Well, it’s a work in progress, so it keeps mutating bit by bit. Today, I fixed a minor bug which caused some images to be produced at the wrong length and added the ability to use a wider variety of colors for your poll images. No longer are you restricted to monochromatic! The whole rainbow is available. Aww, how cute.

At any rate, the new package is available and you can download it as you please.

Afterthought: Oh yeah, I forgot. I also added a minor feature which prints the vote percentages after the images.

I just fixed an error in the code for my PHP based poll script – please download the new version! No change to the version number; this wasn’t that major of a fix, but if you are producing a poll which will have fewer than 5 result choices you will need to use the new version.

 Thanks!

Recently made some minor revisions to my MySQL/PHP Poll. The previous version was very limited in that it was only capable of handling polls with exactly 5 options. The new version is still fairly limited, but can now handle polls with anywhere from 2 to 5 voter choices.

Download now!