Forums : Ohloh General Discussion

This is a discussion thread for the blog post New Badge.

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

I think it might be a good idea to add the project name it is displaying stats for. Also, it might be a good idea to link to Ohloh.net's project statistics for more detailed information about the project.

Kiba over 18 years ago

Thanks kiba,

I think it might be a good idea to add the project name it is displaying stats for.

The project name was originally yanked from the list because some projects have names that are too long (Battle or Wesnoth, for example). We could either stretch the badge to fit it or simply limit how many characters we show (like 'Battle of Wes...').

Also, it might be a good idea to link to Ohloh.net's project statistics for more detailed information about the project.

Yes - sorry if I was unclear, that would be the idea.

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

Hey, just wanted to say, lovely application!

Currently I can't link to badges in phpBB, because it guesses whether its an image or not. Adding .gif onto ;badge would be a reasonable fix.

johndrinkwater over 18 years ago

Hi John,

Makes sense -- ok - will fix.

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

John,

I made a trivial fix that results in the url looking like this:

http://www.ohloh.net/projects/658.gif;badge <-- everything in quotes (this example is for SCOURGE).

Since i can't repro your case, can u tell me if this works for you? If not i can make an explicit path to handle this case.

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

Sorry, I should've provided a sample! and no, the fix doesn't work either. :)
phpBB uses [img] tags around a URL, and it parses the link to make sure its not something malicious.
So to get the badge displayed in a forum signature, or post, you need to type: [img]http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3399;badge[/img]
But this doesn't work, it just escapes it as text, because it doesnt end with a file format extension; http://www.ohloh.net/projects/3399;badge.gif would work
Cheers,

johndrinkwater over 18 years ago

Hi Jason,

This is a discussion thread for the blog post New Badge.

One of my projects has a long name:
MARF:Modular Audio Recognition Framework (http://ohloh.org/projects/3508)
so on the badge it looks like MARF:Modular..., which isn't that bad, but ain't no pretty
either. I put it on my project page (http://marf.sf.net), but it's kind of out of place there.
I know you had issues with sizing, but maybe it'd be possible to provide badges of
two-three sizes, like small, medium, and large? Alternatively, maybe project pages
could allow users to enter short names or abbreviations (which by default are equal
to the project name itself), specifically for badges. In my case then, I could keep
the project name as just Modular Audio Recognition Framework and in the short field
for the badge just MARF. Similarly like unixnames in SF.net.

Additionally, I agree with a post somewhere suggesting to put the Last updated on
the stats badge.

Thanks for the great tool otherwise!

-s

mokhov over 18 years ago

I like the idea of a short name or description. When I look at my account I see a lot of text that I don't really need to see everytime - I know what my projects are about. This is also inline with making my stacks more like a status report that I have requested before.

Also I occasionally look at ohloh from my blackberry - quick reference when a laptop isn't handy. Being small screen friendly would be a nice touch.

donert over 18 years ago

I like the badge a lot, but after testing it out on my blog, I think I'm going to remove it. It's just too distracting. Slowing it down drastically would probably help. I think it's more a cool little point of interest that encourages click-through than actually being informative (though I really like the stats, it definitely adds to the interest part).

Maybe you could allow a bit of tweaking with custom attributes:
for(var tag in document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')) {
if() { // find the tag for this badge
render(tag.href, tag.getAttribute('speed'));
}
}

You get the point. It might not be practical to allow that level of customization though. I'd be happy if you just made it how I would like it. Slower. :-)

ssmoot over 18 years ago

I like the badge a lot, but after testing it out on my blog, I think I'm going to remove it. It's just too distracting. Slowing it down drastically would probably help.
...
You get the point. It might not be practical to allow that level of customization though. I'd be happy if you just made it how I would like it. Slower. :-)

On the contrary, I find the speed appropriate. Even a tad bit too slow.

-s

mokhov over 18 years ago

Could you add a short and full name for the projects?

Hence we could use the short name for the badge (and show the full when you pass the mouse over it).
This would prevent the truncations of the project name.
For example : oge being the short name for Open Game Engine

Also, if the cycling is too annoying for some people, you could provide a badger without it.
One that display only the project name and the metrics are shown only if you pass the mouse over it.

Cheers.

lazalong over 18 years ago

hi pjcast,

I have some free time to fix this problem now. Before I do i need to understand what, exactly, is the problem. Here's what I suspect your mean:

The badge javascript inserts an image into the html dom. This image has a link of this format: http://ohloh.net/projects/4005.gif;badge. I am guessing that the problem you see is due to the fact that this image url doesn't end with gif (instead with ';badge'). Am I correct?

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

Ok, I think I just might have solved your problem. The javascript returns a normal friendly gif url (ends with .gif). Give it a spin!

Jason Allen over 18 years ago

pjcast, http://www.ohloh.net/projects/4148;badge_js is not the image and you cannot use it in an IMG tag - it needs to be included as Javascript. I'm quite sure that phpBB won't allow this is a non-administrator's signature.
jason, you seem to create a static GIF - why do you include it through JavaScript?

pjcast, try [ IMG ]http://www.ohloh.net/projects/ID/badge.gif[/ IMG ].

Daniel Hahler over 18 years ago