I changed the theme of our blog. Our spartan ‘design’ was hurting my eyes. I’m trying out the ‘Day Dream’ theme – let me know what you think.
Whenever the blog goes quiet, it’s a sign that we’re coding a lot.
The latest public release of the Hansard Prototype now refers to ‘people’ rather than Members: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people – for example: Mr. Tony Benn.
This represents a substantial improvement in how we recognise and display those recorded as speaking in Hansard. Your comments are most [...]
We currently style tables in a slightly smaller font size than the main text on the Hansard prototype site. We’d really like to know if this is working.
Have you spotted a table that was incorrectly formatted? Do you find them readable and accessible? We’d be grateful if you could take the time to make us [...]
We’re no longer recognising geonames in the Hansard text, nor are we producing KML files from sitting days.
Although it was an interesting experiment, it wasn’t useful enough in real world usage to enough people. Removing these experimental features means reparsing the source files is quicker.
We’re still working out what to roll out in terms of [...]
I recently wrote about how you can sort search results on the Hansard prototype site.
We’re still getting reports of the functions not working as people expect them to. If you have a problem sorting search results, please let us know – we’d be particularly interested in what browser and operating system you’re using.
We’ve just deployed the most recent build of the Hansard application code. We’ve also reparsed the source files and added some additional content, improved the parsing of some earlier pages and added in some previously missing volumes.
In addition to the usual collection of minor alterations and typos, publicly visible improvements continue, including:
* an extended and [...]
I and another member of the development team recently attended a ‘Workshop on Finding and Re-using Public Information‘, held at the London Knowledge Lab: “This informal, hands-on workshop will bring government information experts together with those who are interested in finding and re-using government information.”
The event was compered very ably by Rufus Pollock, with Jonathan [...]
The Hansard prototype site can be searched from ‘outside’ – with a search engine that spiders the site, or from ‘inside’ with the search engine developed at part of the site’s functions.
You can search the site for the word ‘bingo’ using Google, by restricting the results Google returns. Adding “site:hansard.millbanksystems.com” to your query – http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bingo+site:hansard.millbanksystems.com.
A [...]
