Right now I have finished building the basic photo gallery, which I am hoping to extend to allow category support through a mySQL database. Currently the page takes images and thumbnails and displays them in a liquid-layout grid using php.

You can see what the code does here.

I’m working on an uploading script that will automatically create thumbnails, but I’m waiting for the php GDLibrary to be installed on the UCT server.

Basically I’m coding, a puzzle game where you pick up fruits and put them in the appropriate baskets. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Except, when altering individually named symbols that happen to have the same base, the code is spread between all instances; there is the abovementioned problem of no actual way of checking if the thing is tallying correctly; oh, and dropping an object on a differently named, but otherwise completely identical box does not produce the same results.

I am going insane here. Flash is ridiculous.

I have never encountered a more bloated and confusing system as Joomla in my life. What on earth is the difference between “Content” and a “Category”? Why does “Static Content” not contain elements that will remain static on the page? How come the only thing that seems to make some ounce of sense is the “Menu Editor”?
Frustration.

No matter how many times I try to actually remove content like banner adverts, rss feeds and polls (which are great for some sites, not for what I need) the elements stay static on the page, devoid of any substance but defiantly taking up space as if to spite my hasty deletion of their purpose in life.
In this manner, a site like Facebook (and WordPress too, to some extent) certainly has a good thing going. Relatively painless organising of elements and content on a page in a purely WYSIWIG format. Sure, the actual “guts” of the applications must be quite murderous, but that’s what a CMS is supposed to do, take the server-side, code-monkey work out of the equation; right?
I’d be perfectly happy to work in a solely XHTML environment (which I’ve already developed and could maintain), but that’s hardly practical for this site; at least for the news and updated sections.

I’m trying to get the WYSIWIG JCE Editor to work on this domain, but even that is proving near impossible.
If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for easy to use, effective, highly customisable CMSs that I could explore, I’d like to learn about them.

I’d post a link to the site I’m working on, but it’s not live yet and I’d prefer to show a finished product at the end of the day.

I do the majority of my design work at home on a PC, and it is increasingly frustrating that the “industry standard” of design, the Mac, completely changes the colour scheme (and thus the visual appeal of the site).
This article on websafe colours seems sympathetic towards the user, and encourages the exploration of alternative palettes, but completely rules out the fact that system standardisation is the key problem.

According to Amy Derr, I am one of these: “Designers who balk at it are only doing so because either they know with absolute certainty who their viewers already are, or they’ve simply failed to spare a thought for Web surfers with archaic computer systems.”

If Macs and PCs rendered a six digit colour code exactly the same, there would be far less need for websafe colours, since the same visual effect would be achieved regardless of the platform being used to view the page. It is frustrating as a web designer to have to take into consideration frivolous problems when creating a look-and-feels for a site. The software, file-types and individual 1′s and 0′s can all be identical, but a lack of standardisation creates an absolute minefield to negotiate for developers.

I will make a companion style to this called “Midday” which will be the same style, but with happy, warm, sunny colours instead of “Midnight”‘s cold colour scheme.

Getting the three column layout was a real chore, but thanks to this tutorial, I was able to get liquid-layout effects going on all three tiers of my site.

Now for content. The first of which is a report/analysis on a piece of interactive fiction or documentary online. I am delving into Aperture Science, a wonderfully mysterious “website” created by Valve software with relation to the game, Portal. Now if I can just remember how I used to get around in DOS.

Design comparison:

2007
2008

For this year, I’m going for a slightly more conventional design with my site, adopting a common, three-column layout with the center column’s content being the focus of the site.
I’m also trying to move away from my obsession with the dark and dreary, and embrace colour! While you probably think that designing in three colours isn’t much different from monochromatic colour schemes, it feels like a big step for me.
I’m sticking to my guns of a minimalist, uncluttered layout though, with a slight tang of the far east.

I eat, sleep, drink, breathe and subsequently excrete music out of every pore in my body. So it is only logical that my third year Senior Research Project for Interactive Media Production at the University of Cape Town involves music in some way.
While all the organs of the final proposal still need to be laid out on Dr. Frankenstein’s slab and be sewn together by the maniacal triumvirate that is my group, we are grave robbing thick and fast and have already got a very solid blueprint tacked across the wooden table. The lightning is pretty good too.

This blog will track the progress of the project, it’s pages serving as an online diary, a receptacle for relevant links and a dumping ground for any other information that may be pertinent to the project or otherwise.

Enjoy.