Here I give some ways of finding that out. I’ve done it for three Windows browsers (the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome). It’s imperfect because in other tools I was given slightly different results (this may be to do with caching, I don’t know), but it’s a start.

Internet Explorer 9

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Press F12, or click Tools > F12 developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cache > View cookie information.
4. In the main browser window you should now see a list of those cookies that are set by that site. You don’t get as much information as you do in other browsers, but it’s a good start.

Chrome

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Click CTRL + SHIFT + I, or click the spanner icon then select Tools > Developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
4. Expand the ‘Cookies’ menu and click on the domain name of the site you want cookies for.
5. You should see a table of all the cookies being set by that website, including the domains they’re being set from (ie which are set directly and which are set by third parties).

Firefox

I offer you two possible routes for Firefox. The first requires the Web Developer extension, the second requires the Firebug  and Firecookie extensions.

Web Developer extension

1. Install the Web Developer extension.
2. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
3. Click ‘Cookies’ in the Web Developer toolbar, or go to Tools > Web Developer > Cookies > View cookie information tools. The screen should split in two.
4. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
5. You should now see a list of those cookies that are set by this site, similar to that shown by IE 9. You don’t get as much information as you do using Firebug (see below), but it’s a good start.

Firebug extension

1. Install the Firebug extension.
2. Install the Firecookie extension.
3. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
4. Press F12. The screen should split in two.
5. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cookies.
6. You should now see a table of those cookies that are set by this page only.
7. However, you can export all the site cookies as a tab-delimited text file by clicking the ‘Cookies’ drop-down in the sub-menu.

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Well, it turns out you can embed .pdf and .ppt files via Google Docs using a simple iframe. You don’t even need a Google account.

<iframe src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://document.pdf&embedded=true"></iframe>

Simply replace the bold text with your document’s url and style the iframe with css.

This appears not to work very well with actual Google documents though, as it appends a load of navigation detritus. But it seems to work well for regular hosted documents.

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This explanation of Graded Browser Support and ‘progressive enhancement’ from Yahoo! is well put and, coming from Yahoo!, adds credibility to our arguments for it.

Visit YUI Graded Browser Support

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Visit A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

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I realise that even among beginners there will be a wide range of expertise levels. Therefore I ask attenders to have at least started trying to write a Rails application.

It doesn’t matter how far you’ve got with it – you may only be halfway through the first page of a tutorial and are stuck trying to install something – but this approach should give everyone a context for being there. In other words: rather than trying to learn together from different starting points, we can each bring a problem that we need help with and collaborate on concrete goals.

When?

If you’re interested please indicate on Doodle your preferred times for a first meeting.

Update

The most popular time for a first meeting was 7.00pm on Tuesday 4 May, so that’s when it will be.

Where?

The first meeting is being held in Room B225, Birmingham School of Media, Perry Barr. (Many thanks to Paul Bradshaw for arranging the room.)

We’ll see how this first one goes, but we might try for any subsequnt meets to be more central. If you have any suggestions let me know in the comments below. We need a space that:

• is free to use;
• is available late on weekdays;
• has free, reliable wifi;
• can comfortably accommodate a number of people working together, without disturbing others.

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I’m not actually going to try and explain what RSS is (or equivalents such as Atom), because it’s a bit technical and has a confusing history complicated by politics.

Instead I’m going to try explaining what a feed reader does, using an analogical story. I welcome feedback on the usefulness of this.

—
Once upon a time there was a vast lake, dense with fish. There were millions of them – of many different species, shapes, colours and sizes – and thousands of new fish appeared every minute.

Each day huge numbers of people would dive into the lake to look at the fish. But many only wanted to see certain kinds: people interested in blue fish only wanted to see blue fish; people interested in red fish with a fin missing only wanted to see those; and so on.

Unfortunately there were just too many fish. People were missing the fish they wanted to see, and the fish themselves were not getting the attention they deserved.

Then one day a group of clever folk invented a special kind of diving goggles. These goggles could be set to display only those fish that met certain criteria. So people who only wanted to see blue fish could now do so with little trouble.

And because the goggles knew which fish the user liked, they could let them know of other fish that they might find interesting.

On top of that, the user could fine-tune the goggles to display exactly the fish they wanted to see (for example they could choose not to see Bob Bigfin, who was an annoying blue fish). They could also set the goggles to tell their friends automatically which fish they liked.

Of course, lots of people thought this was a great idea and started manufacturing their own goggles. Some gave theirs away free of charge, and some sold theirs with extra features.

And so everyone was able to find what they were looking for in the enormous lake, and discover new fish based on what they already liked.

And so it is with your feed reader: you can filter the web for what interests you. The difference is that you don’t have to swim around the lake: you see the results all in one place, without having to go back to a website or search engine.

All you need to do is give the feed reader the address for the feed, be it RSS or Atom (you may be given a number of options for different versions of both: don’t worry too much about which to choose, it won’t make much difference). The feed reader then does the rest for you:  it looks online and displays anything new almost as soon as it’s published.
—-

Could this be any use in explaining the virtues of using feeds?

Update

6 March 2009: I amended the story in line with the changes I incorporated over at We Share Stuff.

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This is simply not possible anymore, and attempting it just makes you seem heavy-handed and out of touch. Far better to listen to what other people are saying about you and engage when appropriate.

The US Air Force produced a useful guide to blog assessment which susequently found its way onto the internet. It’s good, but I wanted something more generic, in plainer English, and more suitable for UK Third Sector organisations.

So I’ve had a crack at making my own version, which you can download here. It’s released under a Creative Commons licence so you can re-hash it providing you don’t do so for commercial gain.

Download my flowchart for managing online reputations (pdf).

Have you found this flowchart helpful? If so, I’d love to hear how. Either leave a comment below or use this form.

Update: 26 February 2012

I have made a minor tweak to the pdf. I have changed the heading of the first ‘yes’ thread, making its relationship to the subsequent choices a bit clearer.

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Visit 31 Days to Building a Better Blog

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