robotim.net
project documentation

currently

Fall 2007

• Design Workshop
• MC Magazine Internship
• Redial
• Show/Tell Studio

Cocurricular

• ITP Radio
• Stuff for Kids
• The Half Hour Cozy
• Thesis

archived

Spring 2007

• Designing for Constraints
• GUI in AJAX

Fall 2006

• Physical Computing

Other Projects

• Graphics
• Video
• Web

Search /projects

I have been working with Textpattern for the past two weeks to build a project documentation site to my liking and I am happy to report that it is 95% complete! (NB: robotim/projects calculates these figures with 5% accuracy.)

Over the past week I have:

• Finished my style sheet. It is organized and thoroughly commented. Therein contained are also some of my beauty secrets.
• Commented the code for the page layouts.
• Created a cool Error 404 page. Check out the inside joke for 8-bit Zelda fans.
• Styled the search results section.
• Created the footer and decided what to do with the sidebar.
• Had a minor panic attack because I thought I accidentally deleted my public_html directory. (I didn’t, by the way.)

Areas for improvement:

• I need to figure out how to make the descriptive blurb (the beige box that appears above all other posts,) only appear on the first page for each category. Right now, only 6 entries will appear on each page, and at the top of every page is the descriptive blurb, which I feel is unnecessary beyond the first page of each category. You will notice this once I have more than 6 posts in a category.
• AJAX-esque stuff: make the cute picture in the welcome blurb change when you select the different drop-down menu items. (Because I think this would be so friggin’ cute!)
• More stuff with AJAX: make the comment box on the article pages expand when you click to comment.
• I want to parse certain entries onto my robotim.net front page, such as articles that I categorize as “news” or maybe the most recent post for each category. That way only fresh and relevant content appears on my web site front page, and all the extra fun stuff stays back here for curious minds to explore.

But like I said, I’ve reached a point where I am happy to begin using /projects to start the documentation.

I have decided to use Textpattern to manage my project documentation. Previously I was using Wordpress. I prefer Textpattern because:

• It is not as blog-centric as other content management systems. This site is for my project documentation, it’s not my “blog site.” I am aware that to some this may seem like a semantic difference, but it is important for me to make this distinction because I do not consider myself a blogger. Or a frogger or a pollywogger for that matter. Although I like the way “pollywogger” sounds.
• It is simple, elegant and hard to break. I tend to break things… I’ve broken my iPhone twice now in my attempts to hack it.
• I like the backend structure. In addition to categories, sections can be created. What’s more, not only can articles be categorized but so can links, images and files.

What I dislike about it:

• Not as many cool plug-ins as with Wordpress. (Oh well, I guess I’ll have to just make my own… har har!)
• Backend could be a bit more usable when it comes to handling images. I want to see dimensions when browsing images! I want to be able to batch-upload images! I want it to spin straw into gold, dammit!

I didn’t like any of the templates so I decided to make my own. I have laid out the structure: a floating container that holds the title, a sidebar, the area for the article entries, and a footer. Now the styling madness begins…