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Yeah, I still like to make note of the changes I make to my applications. So without further ado, here are the recent portfolio changes.

Featured Project/Photo

I was on the fence with the “featured project” concept for quite a while. Being able to reorder projects was always good enough for me. But I found that I like to give special attention to applications that I feel deserve more than the first-in-line treatment. And the same goes for photos.

On the main page you’ll now find a featured project (which is chosen by me). There are two projects that I’d like to feature currently, but both are still in draft mode. However, they were the projects that drove the inspiration (er, motivation) to add the featured project functionality.

You’ll notice a few changes to the projects and photos UI, too. Now, the feature will be in the sidebar. “What? A sidebar?” I know, the old view neglected the sidebar in favor of a large view of thumbnails. Well, it was time for a change.

New Projects and Photos view

(meaning the view provided when clicking Projects or Photos from the top menu)

The original views were bland and didn’t fit within the design. I never liked that part from day one. It just took me this long to do something about it.

To aid this issue, I brought the white content area and sidebar into the mix, just like the rest of the site. I feel better about the changes and think it’s much cleaner.

If you forgot what the old view(s) looked like, you can check the screenshots in the portfolio project to see what I mean. They’re in there somewhere (screenshot 4 at the time of this writing).

Phusion Passenger

Both this site and the portfolio are now running on mod_rails. I was having several issues (you may or may not have noticed) with my site(s) hanging unexpectedly, and everything I knew to do wasn’t working. This site was actually down for over 2 days. In the end it was FastCGI that took the blame. But since making the switch, things have been running faster than ever, and I haven’t had a single issue for over 2 weeks. Passenger really is as good as the hype.

Other things

Bugs and improper error handling got the rest of my attention, but for good reason. I refactored a good bit of code, too, just because that’s how it goes when you make updates—there’s always something to improve. I also added a preview mode and a few other handy admin things, but nothing ground-breaking.

So, now I that I’ve done my 6 month code update to the portfolio, I can relax. Feedback is welcome, but again, I post this stuff to merely timestamp what I do and why I do it. The end.

Finally. It’s done. And here it is.

I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I cleaned up this site, but kept putting it off because I knew it would be a job. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy this stuff, but toward the end I just wanted to finish it. It’s bitter sweet I suppose.

The design will remind you of this site, but that was intentional. There are plenty of subtleties that make each of them their own, but overall they both have that left justified, white column, right-hand sidebar feel. Plus the colors are nearly the same. Again, it was intentional.

The part that I may have enjoyed the most about this whole process was getting rid of that last little bit of slop from the old portfolio (if you’d even call it that) that I had on this site. I removed like 12 actions, 2 models (and hence, 2 database tables), and tons of views and helpers. It felt good. I left it alone during the last cleanup because I knew I would be back in here once I finished the new portfolio.

Why Is There Still a Portfolio Tab?

Rather than eliminate the portfolio section entirely, I’ve decided to integrate the new portfolio using REST (courtesy of ActiveResource), so it’ll just automatically update itself. I didn’t go crazy or anything, though. I’m more-or-less just giving a brief listing of the projects and photos. However, I did put a notice at the top of every portfolio page to alert those ghostly internet wanderers that there’s a new sheriff portfolio in town.

IE Blows

And like always, IE drove me nuts. I think I’ve got most of the kinks worked out, but I’m sure there are plenty I’ve yet to discover. Probably the biggest annoyance during this whole process was the non-support for alpha-transparency in .png images. I think that’s all I used, so initially, IE6 looked ridunculous to say the least. The fix I’m using has a hard time catching every CSS background-image (especially concerning the response of an Ajax call), but it’s better than nothing. I’ve decided to let the petty stuff slide for now, but let me know if you see anything major.

RSS Feeds

There’s a project feed and a photo feed (which I’ve also linked up at the top of this site). Oh, and the feeds don’t give you per image descriptions, just per photo/project descriptions. And for a photo you’ll get the image itself in the feed and for a project you’ll get the first of many screenshots. But again, no image descriptions in either case. So to see everything you may have to click over to the site itself. Boo hoo.

If you’re seeking more details, I’ve posted the new portfolio as a project within itself. I believe there are 16 screenshots and I explain a little bit about each one. Check it out if you’re so inclined.

Over the next few weeks you should see a flood of content as I try to get caught up. I think I previously had 10-12 projects here, so I at least have that many right off the bat. Then there are a few that I’ve been neglecting for a while.

So that’s it. Feel free to post your thoughts. Goodnight.

I recently got a little ambitious and decided to make a few changes. The most obvious is probably the post headings. I thought they blended too well with the rest of the site, and felt they should stand out a little more. So I did just that. I’ve also eliminated the 100% stretch of the post header and comment form. I don’t know why I did that, though. A matter of personal preference I suppose.

The new additions concern the portfolio section. It’s far from anything professional. It’s a quick-and-dirty approach, but I like having a space to collect a few of the sites I’ve built. That’s nothing new, but this time I’m using attachment_fu to load multiple screen shots per project. attachment_fu is awesome if you didn’t already know.

Something brand new is the photography section of the portfolio. There’s definitely nothing tricky there, I’m just pulling in some favorites from flickr (that I took, of course). I love looking at photos, even if they’re my own photos :-)

Oh, and I’m using lightbox v2 to display the screen shots and photos in the portfolio. The mootools version is slightly faster, but Rails already integrates with prototype and scriptaculous very well, so that was the route I took. As far as I know, everything looks good (and works) in all browsers (I haven’t made it to a Mac, however, but I don’t suspect any complications there).