July 19, 2006Linked headlines and imagesChalk this one up to a "duh" moment. All of the headlines shown on roanoke.com should now be linked -- no more linked "story" -- as well as the photos paired with the lead stories. This should make it far easier and intuitive for users wanting the fastest way into the story. Apologies for not doing this sooner! July 14, 2006Sporting Life photo blog
A photo blog celebrating the sports we play and the competitive spirit that comes with them. July 7, 2006Revised and redesigned RSS feeds
If you haven't used RSS feeds before, or if you're unfamiliar with how they work, check out my past blog post on the topic. If you have used them however, here's a quick explainer about using this new index. Besides the obvious section redesign, you should take special notice of the "reveal/hide" feature underneath each section feed. By clicking on either the plus or minus icons, you can see additional feeds for individual subsections. This is courtesy the Scriptaculous JavaScript library, and the BlindUp and BlindDown effects. This is especially useful if you want to read a particilar columnist, such as Beth Macy, or want to receive only breaking news. Still under development are changes to the RSS feed's XML underbelly. Without getting to technical (since I've done that already), it's the code you see when you click the link for a given feed. Those changes won't be that evident, but will make the feed structurally sound.
July 3, 2006Improved photo galleries
The Week in Photos has now been converted from the older, Flash-based gallery, to the new JavaScript and XHTML driven model. Oh, and you can now buy most any photo you see in the gallery through a new service offering called Pictopia. But back to the galleries. The primary difference between the old galleries and the new ones is the way they are presented to the user. We used a Flash-based program called SlideShowPro through most of the past year with fairly good results. However the method for updating and building those galleries was time-consuming, and expensive -- Adobe's Flash software isn't cheap. We also wanted the ability to tie in the aforementioned ability to allow users to easily purchase photos from the galleries, something that would require significant modification to the Flash model. The solution, and the resulting new galleries, was handled through a mixture of JavaScript, XML and XHTML. Now we can control the look of the galleries to a higher degree, and still provide a fancy-pants transition like the Flash gallery. |
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