Showlister : From the Makers of Wheatblog
The creator of wheatblog, the web API at the heart of this website (and probably hundreds of others) has an equally popular open-source project to his credit: a lightweight CMS, called Showlister, which is designed to easily integrate a performance calendar into a website. Pretty cool, and if I was ever to take my mandolin wanking on the road, this would certainly be a tool I’d use.
Well, apparently Mr. Martin trusts my design sensibilities, as I am neck-deep in the newest version of wB, and I was recently asked to throw a little of my “moojoo” at Showlister’s sourceforge site. Here’s what I came up with; anyone stopping in is encouraged to leave a word about what strikes you as good, bad, or ugly. This is open-source web development, of course, but I still like to be pixel-perfect when I can swing it.
The text formatting, font, and other presentational details are still in the works, but any thoughts on the design are appreciated.
◊
Update Thursday, 07/21/05
The navigation is up, using Malarkey's Image Replacement technique. It seems to work fine on IE 5+, Firefox and Opera 7.54+, but I've yet to skin over to icapture and check it out with Safari. Anyone who might have IE5/Mac, I beg of you, check it out and tell me if and how badly it implodes.
Update Saturday, 07/23/05
Officially moved development tree to http://showlister.sourceforge.net/new/. Decided on three-column layout, as the content fits well. Lots of work on dynamic content with SF's (somewhat clunky) RSS feeds. Some fleshing out of Email form and processing for user-adder.
Update Monday, 07/25/05
Well, I finally got all the RSS shenanigans taken care of: The News feed, The Project Info feed, and the DL counter are now all synced with a CRON job (SF actually had wget installed, which is very nice). To get around their request to poll feeds as little as possible, I devised a scheme to cache the feeds every 8 hours, and then build the actual markup blocks with scripts that run immediately afterwards. I also started an Email campaign to ask permission for the spotlight doohickey, and 4 people have already given a thumbs-up (Fair Use has me out of any real danger, but its good to ask anyway). I'm not happy with the menu at all, and will probably scrap it for something more legible. Some cursory work on the management ui for the userlist–but I am still trying to picture the best scripting-flow in my head.
Update Saturday, 08/06/05
The site is live.
13 Missives So Far
02 Jeremy said on Wed Jul 20 9:29:45 EDT
The design is great, clean and crisp. But there is no example of what it would look like with any kind of navigation?
03 josh said on Wed Jul 20 12:21:43 EDT
Thanks for the kind words, Clive. As for navigation, Jeremy -- well, its in the works. I have to figure out what needs to be linked before I lay down the how. :)
05 josh said on Fri Jul 22 1:36:13 EDT
Thanks man. I put some work in on the navigation, as well as on a form-based, automated
"who uses" list (with, funnily enough, an XML flatfile) to make Wheat's life a spot easier when it comes to adding and dropping names. I'm gonna sort out the code and drop it into a CVS module so you can look it over and add your thoughts to the docs, etc.
06 wheat said on Fri Jul 22 13:28:27 EDT
Wow, man. It's looking great. And adding the backend functionality for the list of users is over and above all expectations. Nice work. I can't wait to go live with it.
07 freak2532 said on Fri Jul 22 16:16:10 EDT
I agree with wheat, having that function is awesome... Can't wait for it to go live...
09 josh said on Tue Aug 2 14:45:41 EDT
Yeah bubs. It's a term d'art for my skills on the tatergrater. :)
12 josh said on Wed Aug 3 5:14:32 EDT
I think so. Thanks again. :)
Funny you say that, as I'm about to do something drastic to the stylesheet. ;)
13 josh said on Wed Aug 3 5:17:28 EDT
RE: wanking -- perhaps it has less of a contextual sting over here, but my friends and I have pretty much always called excessive riffing and self-indulgent play on any instrument wanking. You probably think it's pretty bizarre -- I gotta scan in a picture of me holding a mandolin, though, that'll make you laugh out loud.
Comments are currently off for this entry.