New Camera, New Homepage
September 11, 2009 / Tags: 5D Mark II, Jon, Kathy, OCPAC, Photo Outing, The District
Unlike some people, I'm not much of a writer, at least when it comes to personal blogging. For some time now, I have wanted to change my homepage to more of a photo blog, but I never could find the time to write the software. I tried evaluating Wordpress and other open source projects, but nothing was exactly what I wanted (duh). I did find some inspiration though, and with the arrival of my 5D Mark II, I figured now was the time to make it the switch. So a sleepless week later, I present to you ::drumroll:: my new home page.
The main features are a cleaner layout with nicer inline display of images
and better large image display. Instead of going to a separate page, large image display is done using a lightbox. (Click on the image above to test it out.) I wrote all the lightbox code myself -- it's based on the lightbox code I wrote for Arcadia Music, except instead of fixed display sizes, it sends the size of your window to the server and the server determines the optimal size image to send back. Oh, and it's written in JQuery instead of Prototype. I still like Prototype better, but JQuery appears to run faster, and it downloads a lot faster than Prototype + script.aculo.us. The HTML is also super-clean because so much of the heavy lifting is done by the javascript. The new software also supports pretty permalinks and tags. RSS support is planned, as is an open source release.
I'll leave you with a few test shots from the new Mark II. Some of these were taken at the park near my condo, some were taken at The District, and rest were taken at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.
This one is my favorite from the group.
P.S. I'll try to find time to back-fill the galleries from my old homepage.