Matthew Buchanan (Home)

I was recently looking for a solution for an upcoming project which required me to load content by post type from Tumblr’s API. The one or two options I found produced hard-coded markup for each post, and didn’t make it easy to customise their output. As a result, I put together this little framework that combines jQuery ajax loading with Boris Moore’s JsRender templating syntax (the successor to the jQuery Template plugin).

I’ve documented the key parts over at Github and put together a quick demo page that loads various post types into a single page. Please let me know if you find it useful!

For users of my Solaris theme, there is now a version history page that details recent improvements. The 1.0.6 update has been submitted to Tumblr and, once approved, will automatically roll out to all blogs that have not switched to the Custom HTML mode in the Customize area (if you have, you’ll need to manually install the theme again, and port your changes to the new version).

The 1.0.6 update includes support for the new AJAX notes handler which loads notes in batches of 100 from Tumblr’s server. (David was kind enough to add callback support so that I could continue to post-process notes after they’re loaded into the page.)

One other recent feature that you may not have seen is support for three custom tags on audio posts that enable you to override the metadata Tumblr extracts from MP3 files for cover art, track name and artist name. These tags also work for externally hosted audio files. I’m investigating an IE7 issue with the script, but it appears to work fine otherwise. Please email if you have issues with this or any other aspect of the theme.

Creative use of Twitter’s API by Zac White to track all status updates that were replied to with the phrase “that’s what she said”.

Heather Rivers works some magic with the Tumblr API. Be nice if Tumblr’s custom theme engine had hooks to generate this type of thing.

Jon Tan describes the process of pulling together Flickr, Tumblr, Magnolia, Twitter, Upcoming and several other web services to provide all the dynamic functionality of a new site for Denna Jones.