New Breviary URLs

The latest work at the breviary has not been primarily code changes, but has been the addition of some new dedicated pages. The breviary was designed to make pray the office both flexible and easy, and over it’s evolution, I’ve been making progress in both of these directions (more flexible and easier…).

I started with the date/time of day/option-sets entry screen.

Eventually, I made the move to cookies as a means of capturing specific options. (And I do need to do some work to make sure all of the options are functioning properly in cookie form…)

One of the issues I’ve faced from the beginning is the need for a static url which will get folks right down to the business of praying. An entry page was the only way in for two reasons—1) you had to make your choices somewhere, and 2) you needed to indicate what office you wanted to do. Cookies made the first one disappear, and—at the prodding of some friends—I’ve coded a page to by-pass the second as well. It functions by using javascript to find the timestamp on your computer (the client), then passes that value to my server-side PHP code. (So—if you have javascript disabled, this won’t work for you.) This allows me to present a single static url so that, if you already have a breviary cookie/set of preferences saved, all you have to do is jump to this url and the Office as you like it, appropriate to your time of day ought to appear.

Here’s the url: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/breviary/office.php

I’m still working out the exact times for changes between the offices so there may be continued tweaks with that part of it.

In related news, I have created a dedicated page for the Brotherhood of St Gregory—the ones who provided the impetus for this change, in fact—one of our Anglican religious communities bound by rule to pray the offices, according to their set preferences: a straight-forward Rite II with the monthly psalm cycle. This page requires no cookies at all and should work for anyone if this is the kind of office you desire: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/breviary/office_selectionBSG.php

For those interested, I’m also in conversations with Fr. John-Julian concerning a similar page for the Order of Julian of Norwich which should be up and running before too long.

So, my thanks to the Brotherhood for kindling a fire under me to get this work done, and I hope these new pages provide all of you with an even simpler way to experience the offices.

10 thoughts on “New Breviary URLs

  1. Scott

    Ever more useful tools and resources. Thank you, thank you, Derek! Well done as always.

  2. Gretchen

    Fatal error: Call to a member function free() on a non-object in D:Hosting5261249htmlbreviarydate_reckoning2_0.php on line 1278

    Windows 7, Firefox 3.6.16

  3. John-Julian Swanson

    Yes, I got what Gretchen got on that first link.
    I’ve got: iMac, Safari, Mac OS X 10.6.7.

  4. Derek Olsen

    Ok—I’ve made a little progress here with some additional help with javascript and the insertion of some pre-set options. Try the office.php link again, those for whom it didn’t work. It works on my desktop as it should. My Blackberry thinks that it’s Epiphany, though! Anyone else encountering this?

  5. Chris McQueeny

    Derek,

    This is a complete non sequitur, but I don’t see an email link anywhere so I’ll say it here… I’ve spent a number of hours recently searching throughout the Anglican blogosphere for a site precisely like this: an intelligent, historically-grounded discussion of matters liturgical and other related subjects, but in the context of the 1979 BCP and the Episcopal Church generally.

    Whatever one thinks about them, I’m really tired of reading about the 1928 Book and/or who should and shouldn’t be ordained.

    Plus, you sprinkle in mediaeval goodness, which is appreciated by all right-thinking persons. In short, good stuff, I look forward to reading more of it.

  6. Finn Froding

    I agree with Chris, and I appreciate the courteous discussions and especially the chant resources. In fact, I have sung daily offices for continued periods in my life, and have developed orders of matins and evensong based on the 1979 BCP that have much in common with the ones discussed here, and incorporating almost all of the Sarum office hymns. I would like to share some of these, but I have not found a good way to create digital files of chant notation. I downloaded the program Gregoire from France and enjoy the simple entry, but cannot seem to save files – I encounter memory exceptions and crashes. I’d be grateful for advice on making this program work, or alternative programs that do the job.

  7. here

    Awesome post ! Cheers for, writing on this blog page dude. I shall message you some time. I did not know that!

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