Hi folks -- good news: the Journals team installed the R7 release to beta early this morning. If all goes well today, the plan is to install R7 to production Thursday morning, July 27, during the early morning install window starting at 4AM ET. There will be a short outage during this time.
(Please note that while one day in beta sounds like an awfully short time to test, the beta install is actually more for moving R7 to a staging area just immediately prior to production -- there's testing going on throughout the entire development process.)
If all this sounds familiar, it's because it is; I'm recycling portions of this entry, because the team originally tried for the R7 install at the end of June.
As I mentioned last time, R7 is a relatively small release that includes a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, including some infrastructure for some features that will be rolled out in future releases. Here's what's in beta right now that you can play with:
* Object Tags (Allows Embedded Video): As we mentioned last time, in beta right now, you can embed AOL UnCut Video and YouTube video players into your Journal entries. R7 will let you do all that in your "real," non-beta Journals.
Since the end of June, the team has added a few fixes into R7 -- for YouTube, you will no longer need to fiddle with the HTML code they give you -- you can paste the YouTube embedded player code directly into your Journal. (See Journals Editor Jeff's instructions on how to embed YouTube video in your Journal -- we'll need to update these -- or create new instructions, more likely.)
For UnCut Video, video autoplay is now turned off by default, so people visiting your Journal will need to click the "play" button to see the video. (Autoplay gets to be really annoying, especially if you can't figure out where the sound from the video is coming from -- this way, the viewer has control of whether the video plays or not.)
Also, you'll be able to embed the new woohoo slideshow thingy into your Journal. You can play with it in beta -- I just did, it's cool -- we'll do a more complete explanation with instructions when it goes to production, but it's essentially a nifty flash photo player that draws from the AOL Pictures in your AIM Pages profile.
* User-Friendly Journal Entry URLs: Here's what I wrote in June. It's all still valid, so I just did a cut-and-paste:
Right now, the URLs (Web addresses) of individual entries are not the most user-friendly things in the world. For example, here's the direct link to my cow-orker entry: http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/entries/1121.
Now, you can't tell what the entry is about just by looking at the URL, since it's just a number.
With R7, we will be getting friendlier entry URLs -- they will automatically incorporate the date of the entry, as well as the title of the entry, into the direct link URL. For my cow-orker entry on beta, the URL is: http://beta.journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/entries/2006/02/13/about-my-cow-orkers/1121
As you can see, the front part of the URL is the same; after "entries", though, you get the date posted (Year/Month/Day), and then the title of the entry (with dashes instead of spaces -- it will truncate after a limit), followed by the entry number. (The entry number was kept at the end so that the tech folks don't have to completely rework the database).
Also, some characters (like question marks, double quotes, etc) will be stripped out to make sure the URLs work.
Old-style entries will redirect to the new ones; also, if you change the title of your entry, it will automatically change the URL, and the old URL will redirect so it won't break (which is nice).
If you don't have a title in your entry, that part of the URL will just be "untitled."
One note: the new URLs will be more useful, but they will also be considerably longer, so keep that in mind.
International will also get this change.
* Moblogging: Moblogging will be launched to production. It will work pretty much as it does in the beta (see my instructions on how to use Moblogging) -- you'll just be able to do it from your production Journal.
We'll do followup entries after a successful install tomorrow, but these are the primary points.
Thanks -- Joe
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9 comments:
wish they'd just leave well enough alone!! geez!
Joe,
Good news: I now have edit controls on the beta version of my journal. This is the first time I have checked since I complained about them being missing last month, so I don't know if they reappeared with this morning's install, or if it was earlier. No matter, and not important. Just thought I'd let you know.
To joolsinwa,
These updates are adding features that many of us have been wanting for years. There is nothing forcing you to make use of any of them if you don't want to. I, for one, will enjoy being able to add an embedded video player to my journal, and am looking forward to other changes coming down the pipes.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
Wait until you see the woohoo photo widget. It's cool. -- Joe
Joe do you have to have an AIM journal to use woohoo?
Betty
Betty -- To use woohoo, you need to have an AIM Pages Profile (which is different from an AOL Journal/AIM Blog) -- I will be doing a woohoo preview post in a little bit). Thanks -- Joe (posted & mailed)
THAT'S COOL THAT YOU CAN USE THE PICTURES ON YOUR AIM PROFILE-THAT IS IF YOU COULD 'GET' ANYTHING TO WORK ON THE EDIT BOARD.WHY CAN'T WE JUST USE THE PICTURES WE HAVE IN OUR AOL ALBUMS??
we can use photos off our aim profile. i don't have an aim profile. is aol going to make me have one in order to use this added feature to AOL JOURNALS? aim for aol? makes no sense to me. oh well......
Kathy
Thanks for the link on how to post a YouTube video!! You guys rawk!!!
Awesome! AOL Journals is getting better and better. One of my comments a while back was regarding the Search Engine Friendly URLs, and its finally here! The benefit of that for AOL Journalers, is that they will get more hits from web surfers.
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