First Post!!!

It's been a while, and nothing seems to have changed. I assure you, this is just an illusion (albeit not an unfair assessment). After a brief sabbatical filled with stories of magical lands filled with polychromatic ponies, I have done a fair amount of work on this site's backend - namely, in how fictions are processed.

First note: I have no improvements for the search function as of yet (sorry!)

So far, I have been using the Fic of the Day to find stories to add to my kindle e-reader.

I'll add a pages feature to that later. Promise.

Improvement 1: I have written a epub generator from scratch! That was fun.

Not only did I build the files myself, but before I threw them together I also fixed up the syntax so that It's valid XML. This means that epubs from this site will even work in Apple's stringy e-reader.

Also! I added a pinch of magic dust and added all of the (available) externally-linked images (if any)

... right into the book!.

I also changed how the title page works, putting the cover image, title, author, rating, fiction tags, wordcount all on the first page, then the full description, then the first chapter! (I don't know about you, but I have alot of unread books on my kindle, so this helps me figure out what I'm about to read)

Improvement 2: Text Generator

Yes, I know this sounds boring. FimFiction's text files are simply the html data stripped of the tags, with delimiters for the chapters. Fine, if you want to feed the text to a program you're writing to analyze it, but if you're just trying to read it, it all runs together.

I spiffied it up a bit and added spaces between the paragraphs, crude centering and line breaks, and general text-related magics. Granted, you're not going to see strikethroughs or underlines or headlines and so on, but it's text!

Magic!

Improvement 3: Emoticons!

Ok, maybe not a notable improvement, per se.. But I added a few thousand possible emoticons on top of the 48 that fimfiction uses, and and having a bit of fun with that (if you haven't noticed by now)

Improvement 4: Logins

Ok, I'm still working on it. So far, logins don't do much, but the plan is to add the option to omit fics you've read from your search results, and maybe a public reading list with custom reviews so you can send that to friends.

Improvement 5: Story Links

Not so much as an improvement as much as an accidental feature, but you can take any story link from fimfiction, change the "fiction" to "fetch", and viola! A page with pretty epubs and mobis! (https works, too.. I only have a self-signed certificate right now, sorry). Didn't mean to do it that way, but when I discovered I'd done that, have found it really useful.

Improvement 6: Opensearch

This basically means that chomium/google chrome/other modern browsers will learn that the site is a search engine, and offer to let you search while visiting the site instead of loading the page first to give you the search box.

Improvement 7: Super Secret

I'm nost sure if I'm ready to show this off yet, and there's still alot of work left, anyway.

I love numbers. There's a hint.

Notes:

I know that some of you may want some other search options, and there are some to play with, if you would like (I just don't have any easy way to use them yet - I'm not done with the engine)

To use these, simply add the relevant parameter to your query string (Not in the search box! The address bar!)

Author: a

Rating: r

0 = Everyone

1 = Teen

2 = Mature

3 = Young Adult

4 = Adult

5 = Clop

6 = Dubious

Status: s

0 = Complete

1 = Incomplete

2 = On Hiatus

3 = Cancelled

for example: searching for completed teen fics written by "shortskirts" (search options can be in any order, and author is a wildcard)

http://fimfetch.net/?q=&s=0&r=1&a=shortskirts