If you read this blog outside of an aggregator, you might notice a few minor new tweaks. I am dogfooding Subtext 1.9 which runs on ASP.NET 2.0. We are very close to preparing a release, so I figured I would beta test this one on my own blog and see if everything works well.

A couple of new things you might notice is that there is now a simple search field on the left hand sidebar that displays its results in an overlaying div. Also, when you view an individual post, there are links to the next and previous post. I have also added gravatar support to the comments.

It took me a while to warm up to the idea, but I really like the gravatars. I have participated in many various message boards and sites (such as flickr) in which users choose an avatar to represent themselves. It is a small thing, but adds to the fun and identity for the visually focused. However in most cases, you have to set up a separate avatar for each site.

With gravatars, you register an avatar with their site and in any system that supports it, your avatar is displayed when you supply your email address to the software. Subtext takes your email address, creates a one-way MD5 hash of it, and then requests your gravatar from gravatar.com. If none is found, then a default placeholder is displayed. I will post a comment to this post as a demonstration.