Searchable slides

I've added an XPath search feature to the OSCOM slideshow. Thanks to Brendan Eich, it's working identically in both IE and Mozilla (though coded somewhat differently for each). I'll have more to say about this technique in an upcoming article, but since the feature is already public I thought I'd at least mention it. Sure is nifty to be able to do something like this in a serverless and cross-browser fashion -- well, for IE and Mozilla, anyway, others need not apply, I'm afraid.

In my talk I gave the example of Phil Gyford's The Diary of Samuel Pepys, and asked the rhetorical question: "What CMS environment would make it easier for Phil to achieve this effect?"

If you haven't seen it, here's a fragment of the diary:

Thanks to God I got to bed in my own poor cabin, and slept well till 9 o'clock this morning. Mr. North and Dr. Clerke and all the great company being gone, I found myself very uncouth all this day for want thereof. My Lord dined with the Vice-Admiral to-day (who is as officious, poor man! as any spaniel can be; but I believe all to no purpose, for I believe he will not hold his place), so I dined commander at the coach table to-day, and all the officers of the ship with me, and Mr. White of Dover. After a game or two at nine-pins, to work all the afternoon, making above twenty orders.

And here's the underlying structure Phil's creating:

Phil noticed my links to him and wrote to me to say: "I keep wondering myself what CMS environment would help me..."

I don't have the whole answer, but my gut tells me that we all want to be able to achieve these kinds of effects, and that structured writing and structured search are closely related.

Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2003/06/03.html#a711