kadyellebee

I’ve had a few FOAF tabs open for the last few days until I finally had time to play with the ideas in them. I updated my FOAF file a bit, and then was trying to find my favorite viewer to add to my links on the sidebar with the current icon I have there.

• FOAFer is one that I snatched a while back from Meredith and I really like the way it lays out the information. It starts out with info about the person the FOAF is about, next to the Image if defined. Then in 3 nice columns below that, it shows the people known, projects, and interests. Its really a nice way to format a large amount of info. However, it doesn’t display everything in the FOAF file. It has a smaller subset of things that it allows.
• FOAF: Web View condenses the information into a small list of URLs. It sorts things in alphabetical order, which is kinda nice. It doesn’t allow for titles or descriptions of the items in the file, though.
• FoaF Explorer shows everything. It goes through all of the listed attributes and displays as much info as it can. Somtimes, I see it getting a glitch where the title for an item is repeated (ie, Six ApartSix ApartSix Apart instead of just Six Apart) The order of the items in the file is backwards. It starts from the bottom and works its way up, with people known in reverse order. Even if an attribute isn’t in the stable specs, it shows the information given.
• plink is the least useful of the tools, to me at least. Maybe if you were looking for dates, it would be more helpful.

Ideally, I would like something that combined the layout and ordering of FOAFer with the amount of data that FoaF Explorer uses. Including the option of FoaF Explorer to easily "add a friend" to your foaf file (which shows the code to add) would be a way to encourage people to create FoaF files.

Also, more cut and paste options on the Foaf Wiki would be helpful - I had to really search to find out how to format the Bio section, and the Based Near I had to find someones file who was using it to figure out what to do. Once I found FoafExamples, I felt more like I was on the right track. More things like this blog entry would be helpful: Hand-Crafting My FOAF. The colors in this one are too much for me to process with the info! I did start out by using the foaf-a-matic, but I immediately wanted more options when I did that!!

So this entry has now allowed me to close half of the tabs in Firefox. Still a bunch to go before I’m caught up, but its good to be able to get these thoughts down instead of just floating in my head every time I maximize my browser.