New Feature: Correct me!

me — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:53:42 +0000

There were many times that I found misspellings, wrong comma placements or other small mistakes on websites while surfing through the web. And I think my blog is no exception (these two sentences already sound incorrect somehow…)! And whenever I find one of those small mistakes I would really like to simply click into the text and relocate the comma or add the missing letter or whatever. Of course this isn’t possible (except for special Web2.0-sites like the Wikipedia). You have to use a contact form, an e-mail, the comments-function or the like if you actually want to call the website-owner’s attention to things like that. But a simple comma replacement isn’t worth the effort and imagine writing an E-mail like

Dear Sir or Madam,

on page xyz of your website is a misspelling in line 123. The word you use there is “mitsake”, yet I think you meant “mistake”. Please correct that.

Sincere regards …

Sounds snobish, does it?! That’s why I’ve written a little JavaScript- and PHP-Code to put my idea into action. See everything in detail after the jump.

Edit This Post - New feature: Correct me! - Enabled by JavaScript and PHP

If you’re missing this “Edit This Post”-button in your window: at the moment I’m the only one who can see it. And even if I’ll unlock it, Safari- and Google Chrome-users will be the only ones who will see this.

But anyway. Here’s a nice gallery:

[Zeige als Diashow]

What I don’t like at the moment:

The look: I haven’t styled it yet! The whole look is css-based and it doesn’t look very well currently. I also don’t want to have it centred, but I have a “logged in”-display at the bottom left corner and I didn’t want the two to be layered over each other.
The unnecessary click: If you click on “Edit This Post” the describing text slides up. There you have to click again on the button “Edit This Post” to finally actually edit the post. Two clicks where only one is needed…
Little functionality: I’m not very sure about this point. You can only remove, replace or add text. You can’t change links, style parts differently or things like that. But on the other hand: Keep it simple, ay?!
No safety: I’ve written it today. I only cared for the basic functionality. So, there are probably bugs and stuff.

And another thing: Maybe an “in-text-comment-function” would have been better. Like at flickr with these “notes” within the photos. That would have the advantage that users could see what others have already written/noted. Furthermore you wouldn’t need to correct the text necessarily, but you could also leave comments like “What do you mean here?!”

Nevertheless I won’t change everything I’ve written today. By the way: This is what I get per mail

To: me@me-blogs-it.com
Subject: Correction has been sent for Post 305
Message: Correction at character 1461: …write Mac-, iPhone and iPod touch-Apps! I’…

I don’t receive the whole post. The text is trimmed to the part where it differs from the “old”, original post.

Now: What do you think of this whole thing?

me-blogs-it.com » correct me

New Feature: Correct me!