New pix

New pix from Winter Retreat 2008 now litter the website. Yes, the front page picture is doctored. We gravitated to a ski lift named "Sunrise" and couldn't help but make the association with our own Sonrise.

Don't forget our Picasa site, which hosts numerous picture albums from past events.

And stop by our YouTube group. Feel free to post your own videos!

Event planning: group chat on Gmail

During event planning for our last retreat, I was impressed to hear how the cooking team took a night out for a Google Spreadsheets/Gchat/AIM collaboration session online. The menu went from empty to full tummy in the span of a few hours with the contribution of the entire 5+ person team. The hybrid chat/online spreadsheet solution greatly simplified collaboration across town.

Want to make things even easier? I just read that Gmail incorporates a new group chat feature. AIM had this awhile back (I haven't seen it since, but I know that at least Pidgin has it), everyone seems to be using Gchat these days. Now we can group chat directly in Gchat, directly in Gmail. If that allows us to collaborate and fellowship online all the more...that's all the better!

Enjoy,
David

Website Update! (version 3.2)

The Sonrise website sports a few new features in honor of Thanksgiving, or more precisely, in honor of the One to whom we give thanks! Point your browser to our website to find a few new frills (in time for the turkey grills!):

Overhauled sidebar: featuring a tabbed interface with sections for the blog feed, poll/shoutbox, calendar/events central, and picture albums feed.

Improved Ministries pages navigation: the old Ministries page tabbed interface has been replaced with a modernized interface that allows for direct page loading from external pages.

Embedded documents consistency: if you have permissions to edit documents embedded in the website, you'll notice that documents are displayed in View mode by default so that you can see the page as anyone else would (with links for editing).

Events Central: an embedded document built into the Schedule page as well as the Cal sidebar tab, for quick reference to online sign-up spreadsheets.

More details can be found here.

Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving!

Trouble in (Published Docs) Paradise

UPDATE: A workaround has been added to the newly launched website! Now Google docs are embedded in view-first mode, meaning that they look like normal published documents. To switch to edit mode, a link is provided at the bottom of the document. (2007-11-19)

There seems to be another Google published docs bug floating around again. If you're not able to view the various Ministries Pages while logged into your (or the sfsonrise) Google account, you're not alone. The workaround is actually to log out of Google while viewing the pages. I know that can be a pain, but we'll keep looking for a bug fix from Google...

Published documents workaround

UPDATE: This issue has been fixed! Now the ministry documents will re-publish automatically again.

It appears that another nasty google docs bug has crept up, but they've noticed it and posted a workaround. Instead of framebusting, published docs aren't viewable without logging in. I know that sorta defeats the purpose of a published document, but the workaround is to uncheck the re-publish automatically box.

What this means is that if you're in charge of a ministries page, you'll need to manually go to the Publish tab and click the re-publish button for your edits to become visible. What it also means is that people can once again see your published page without having to log in.

Sonrise and exam schedules in one calendar

The main Sonrise schedule and the separate Sonrise school exam schedule can now be viewed together in a single calendar on our Schedule page! Now you can survey whole months at a time to check how you and your friends' exam schedules fit together. And if you're planning a Sonrise event, you can find a date that works best for everyone involved.

Why didn't we have this before? Because of a limitation in the old Google embedded calendar, it was difficult to add multiple schedules without things becoming a mishmash. But after a recent update, it's clear as sky! (ok, not Sunset sky, usually...)

Enjoy!
David

"www" no longer necessary!

You might have already noticed, but ucsf.edu sites no longer require the initial "www". Many sites these days have been dropping the necessity of the "www", and some browsers even add it automatically when it's absent but needed. From past tests, the full "www.ucsf.edu/sonrise" was always necessary to get to our site, but as of a couple months ago, the address can be successfully shortened to "ucsf.edu/sonrise". The same goes for "ucsf.edu/ccf" and other ucsf sites. Now you can tell your friends about our address, without twisting your tongue in the process!