Tim
Life is good Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Kalamazoo

I’m always thinking about new things to do to the web site. I’m also always thinking about my next project that’s sort of underway, but still a LONG way from a 0.0.1 (Beta 1) launch. So with all these thoughts I often get muddled down and can’t think one thing out all the way. So while I finish up designing the email processor and a few new features in the site, I’ve taken on yet another train of thought. Updating the sites design for a fresher, cleaner, and more minimalistic look. But one thing I’m really getting to is this point; good design is hard!

When I review the site and think of new ideas I try to stay under a fairly small structure of design. Nothing fancy, nothing that’s super hard to build, and of course nothing that I have to test on 8 different browsers to be sure it’s working. In fact, here’s how I work; I only test the platforms I use. So currently I only test Firefox 3.5 and IE 8. Why do I do this? Because if you’re not at least marginally up to date on your browser, then you have no business surfing the web. I’m constantly reading blogs, news articles, and entire web sites saying what an abortion IE 6 is and that people should stop using it so they don’t have to test for it. (Hell even Google stopped supporting it!) So under my normal working theory, why test for IE6? There is no advantage to having to design three different sites just to maintain that you’re able to properly render in some irrelevant stone age old browser. There is no prize, no money, no ribbon, and most certainly no one caring that you’re site looks good in every browser on the planet. Granted there might be people who complain that it sucks in IE 6, but then again WHO CARES!

Now how about all those other misfit browsers out there, Safari, Opera, Chrome…… and the list goes on. While these are all wonderful browsers I’m sure, I just don’t care enough to make it work or even try to test it. If I can make to look at least half way decent in IE and Firefox then it should look somewhere near halfway decent in the other smattering of browsers out there. Will everything work? Well that’s another story.

But off of that diatribe and onto my actual point….wait there was a point….oh yea I forget now back on track. The site, while usable lets face it lacks a little luster and polish of MANY other sites out on the net. It’s got more of an abhorrent patina than a luster. Well unless that luster is actually dog poop with turtle wax on it then were on the same mindset. But most of my work is done behind the scenes to make it all work and fit together nicely. But now it’s time to really spit polish this thing and clean up the outward non-member user interface. How am I going to turn the retched pile of dung into a beautiful work of art you ask? Well I’m not really; I’m just going to tweak it and make it a little less contemptible.

- The first place to start is to replace as many of the built in AJAX controls with faster lighter weight jQuery code. This will not only reduce a little load on the server at run time, but will make the pages load faster (if even only slightly). This will be seen mainly when it comes to the rounded corners. While they work pretty well now, there is a LOT of wiggle room to make them at the very least faster if not nicer looking too.
- Another area in terms of page loading times is caching as much as possible on the browser. So when you load up the gallery daily like I do, most of the images will be fetched from cache and load instantly rather than having to download all over again like they do now. This same method will work for jQuery as well since its being brought in from Google and really might already be cached on your machine.
- I’ll also be taking a page from Facebook on the galleries in terms of linking back and forth between the image, the gallery and that member’s gallery.
- Improving the paging for the gallery page will help reduce the work it takes to get to page 6, from page 1. It will also have a more modern feel to the paging. For an example of modern paging, check out Bing.
- Normalizing the layout and making it work properly in any browser, much less just IE and Firefox. I'm sure you've seen the random blocks of gray rather than white where content is, i.e. the tag page.

Of course thats not all. I'd really love to mostly rebuild the UI and add some texture, flair, and sizzle. But to do this I'm gonna need some design help, and maybe even a helping hand from a designer. But of course I've not got any one to help with that.

But visual updates are not all I'm up to these days. I'm refactoring my back end code, reducing the memory footprint, adding new features and trying out some new technologies like jQuery, and Markdown. I’m also adopting some coding standards that are going to carry forward into my next project(s). Another thing I’m doing is to actually trying to clean up the code base. After years of not knowing what I’m doing (not that it’s changed) and writing bad, un-maintainable code its really needing to make it a little more simplified and well less of it! If you’re interested in a source drop just let me know and I can get one ready for you. I’ll also be including a drop when I make my next release. This is going to be a major release so it will be 5.0 namely because of the new direction I’m taking with everything but also because of the amount of changes I've actually made, visable or not.

So I fyou think you have a great idea for the site, or would like to contribute drop me a line, or leave a comment and I'll be sure to get back with you.