It has been long since I wrote here at all, especially about the upcoming fourth version of this website.

Two months ago, a prototype design of the Hypro theme for Powervortex.4 was completed. A preview can be found here. Unfortunately, I had to completely ditch this design for now and return to the proverbial drawing board.

Why? For a couple reasons.

1. My current site layout is too bloated and unnecessarily confusing. I mean, the various parts of the “main site” and having the blog on the side somewhat makes sense…but what the heck is up with the “gallery?” The site layout is too un-streamline.
2. Too much text. Everything on this site is pretty much text-based. This is the past. Looking at various other websites, namely Apple.com, websites today are much more visual. And I call myself a web/graphics designer. =D
3. The HTML/CSS/images currently are too heavyweight. On slower connections, the myriad images, especially in the blog, take forever to fully load. And the header strips on the content boxes are hard to read without the background images loading.
4. Hypro, the working title of the prototype PV.4 theme shown above does not at all fix any of the aforementioned problems with this site. More importantly, and more unfortunately, I one day opened the HTML in Internet Explorer and was shocked at how poorly the layout was rendered in IE (I’ll upload a screenshot someday). It displays fine under both Firefox and Webkit-based browsers like Safari and Konqueror, but it is butchered by IE.

As a result, I give you:

Mayfield is the name for the (second) new theme for the fourth version of Powervortex. It will be more minimal, simpler, and will focus on being more user friendly. It will present less reading, more seeing, with more visuals and less text. In addition, I will scrap the three-tier main site/blog/gallery site layout with one that makes more sense, is more streamlined, and is less confusing. However, I will not be joining the table-less sect of CSS design. I will continue to use tables until I eventually get a hang of making layouts completely with DIV tags and CSS. Mayfield will forcus on greater usability, a more streamlined experience, and compatibility with all of the popular browsers, including IE.

Dessicated world built on
past wrongs and ordeals
await the healing.

Well, I’m back after another long hiatus from blogging due to a myriad of priorities. Now for a few updates.

Powervortex.4 is still in development. A screenshot will be posted very soon. I am still working on the basic HTML components. Again, the new design is virtually devoid of tables and is a purely CSS-based design. The CSS-based design not only increases flexibility but also makes addition of AJAX components, such as K2 for the blog, much easier.

This blog and the gallery are in need of update. The yellow bar at the top of the WP-Admin panel is yelling “please update now” and the WP feed tells me that there are two subsequent releases of WP 2.3 since I last updated. Other than that, ZenPhoto 1.1.4 has been released.

In any event, the last of the Haiku.seasonals for the main site has been released. This is Haiku.renewal, the spring theme.

That’s all for now.

~DC

Well, I have not given anything about the upcoming version of Powervortex except an early logo I threw together in a brief fit of graphic design inspiration. I’ll give a bit more today. Here is the working (and possibly final) color scheme for the main site:

With the tentative design I am working on, there may not be a seasonal series like there was with Haiku that is in use now. More likely, there will be one flavor for the main site, one for the blog, and one for the gallery. With the design, this is doable, even with color variations. I am planning for the main site to have the above dark-green style, the blog to be blue, and the gallery to be (again) red. Otherwise, the new design will be slick, bold, and completely not modest the way the Haiku series is.

Functionality wise, the theme will be more free-form (no more control-freak tables like now…*cough contact form *cough) and there will be a lot more Web 2.0 stuff like AJAX. I am planning to implement K2 for the blog.

Well, thats it for now. I hope to produce a screenshot of the new look next time.

~DC

The gallery has just been upgraded to the recently-released ZenPhoto 1.1.3. This new release of ZenPhoto is much more stable than the previous along with many new features and security upgrades. Fortunately, I got the gallery up and running in no time after the upgrade as there were no major (actually, none at all) changes that needed to be made to the Haiku.Inspired ZP theme. However, much of the configuration were reset during the upgrade so there are still a bit of renaming, retagging, and reordering that I must do. Other than that, the upgrade went very smoothly.

ZenPhoto is a light-weight, easily customizable web gallery script that can be easily bridged with Wordpress and other blog software or can function as an excellent standalone photo album program. For more information and to download, visit ZenPhoto.org.

~DC

I am excited to announce that Powervortex:gallery, which is proudly powered by the gallery application ZenPhoto, has been featured in the ZenPhoto Showcase. The Showcase “is a selection of sites that make exceptional creative use of ZenPhoto either as a pure installation or in combination with others systems like Wordpress.” I am greatly honored that my website has been given such recognition and I would like to thank the ZenPhoto team for inducting my site into their Showcase and for developing such an excellent product.

ZenPhoto is a lightweight, efficient, Web 2.0-grade gallery software that is not only easy to use but also highly flexible to customize. It is a great gallery program for those of you trying to finding something to integrate with your blog that is not bloated like Gallery2. In any event, it is an excellent gallery script that truly “does have everything you need for your online gallery.”

~DC

Coming 2008.

Well, I haven’t really been here for a while. With the amount of commitments I have been in for the past few weeks (and right now) blogging has been put in the back burner.

As an update report, I have revamped some minor organization aspects of the site, including standardizing the top menu (Home, Blog, Gallery) and more polished the themes for the main site, the blog, and gallery. As you can see, I reorganized the sidebar here too adding a tag cloud and a box that tells you how much spam my Askimet has filtered. However, the ZenShow pseudo-widget is still acting arthritic and screwing up the mySQL connections of the rest of the widgets so I’m waiting for the people over at ZenPhoto forums to hammer out this flaw.

Other than that, a much belated Happy Thanksgiving.

~DC

I’m working right away to do away with Gallery2. The new gallery is already up and running. However, the only stuff there currently are my 2006 and 2007 photographic portfolio. The rest will come soon. Furthermore, it’d be great if a Wordpress plugin (sidebar widget and such) for ZenPhoto bridging will be released soon. There was one created for the old version of ZenPhoto, but it is doubtful that it works with 1.1.

Anyway, here we are: Powervortex:gallery

Edit: the :gallery theme is still the ZenPhoto default. The Haiku variant (Haiku.inspired) is in the works.

~DC

Well, as it turned out, ZenPhoto 1.1 was not released today…uh…yesterday (as I’m writing the rest of the post TODAY rather than at somewhere around midnight on 11/1).

Supposedly there are some “show-stopping” errors that need one+ more days to fix. That was posted on 11/1. As I write this around 9:09 PST on 11/2, these “show-stopping” errors apparently still have not been fixed.

Well, although I am somewhat disappointed by this delay, if it is worth making ZP better, it is definitely worth the wait. As long as the wait is not too long (*ahem..Windows Vista), the above saying holds true.

~DC

First of all, Happy Halloween! Due to various factors, I am again before (somebody else’s) computer screen in lieu of going out trick-or-treating.

Secondly, as another new month approaches (and another month passes permanently :\), I have ruminated about what’s coming up in the near future that I can look forward to. Here goes:

• November 1: Tomorrow, ZenPhoto 1.1 will be released (hopefully)! Finally, the subalbum-supported release is stable. I really can’t wait to set up a new gallery and not have to worry about any end-user problems, such as those that the bloated Gallery2 tends to have.
• November 3: WEEKEND!!! And especially the weekend after the completion of the (I will not go into details) heavy workload of this week. Even more so, I will finally be able to return the power supply and hopefully finally fix my computer.
• November 13: The second-generation Zune lineup is released. Although I am not getting a new Zune, I will have the highly-anticipated firmware update that gives my Zune 30 all the new features (as well as the sleek new UI).
• November late-20-ish: Turkey Day! I am still compiling the list of stuff I am thankful for (and believe me when I say the list is pretty damn long :D)…and there’s also the day-after-Turkey-Day shopping sprees (for me, its all the heavily- discounted geek stuff :]).

Anyway, just laying out what’s ahead.

~DC