...more recent posts
Wow. This seems reasonable given the current economic situation, but I hadn't seen it in writing (although this is just a note, not an official message.) Anyway, looks like Userland isn't going to be offering free Manilla sites forever. Apparently they've alread turned off the ability to create any new free sites.
I've been trying to think of a way to organize photos on the site. This started in an effort to support Alex's work, but as always I want to generalize anything I build so that it will work for a variety of people in a variety of situations. This is efficient, in one way, but also difficult. As the scope of a tool increases, it's utility often decreases. Anyway, I had been trying to think this problem out (walking the line between a general enough solution so I can reuse it, and a specific, and simple, enough one so that it is really useful) and hadn't been having much luck. Then the other day I started putting up some photos, and as usual, once I started to get some real experience with the problem (instead of just thinking about it) the answer was clear immediately. What I want is a way to make closely linked series of pictures. Something like a slide show, where each frame is a new page. Traditionally the pages would have forward and back buttons to either advance or retreat through the series. (This is what Alex does a lot for the picture pages accompanying Arboretum.) I was going to build a whole new system to deal with this, but of course now I see that the archive system for these pages is exactly what I want. If the window for display on the page is set to 1 post (instead of several,) and the '...more recent posts' and 'older posts...' links have their wording changed (to '...previous' and 'next...', say) then that is exactly what I want. To make a slide show like series, just post all the pictures to one page, and then crank the window down to 1. Easy. I'll get this finished up right away.
Anyway, I'm mentioning this mostly to help me remember the lesson. I try to do this anyway, but often I forget. You can't just think about a problem. You have to really get involved with it. And luckily this is often easier than just trying to think about it. Jump in and swim around - even if you don't know how to swim - and the answers will come fast.
So I'm taking down the awkwardly architected photo pages here, and they'll reappear in the new style soon. I think this will be a good solution.