The dev blog for Justin Duewel-Zahniser's Chapbook poetry sharing web app project. I'm going to post random stuff here that's too big for the dev list and hopefully get conversations going with testers/users.
I think RSS will be next. I did some paper prototyping for work the last few days and need a break from UI stuff. I’ll try to get feeds up for poem revisions, chapbooks and see if Disqus facilitates comments as well (probably).
1 year agoOne of my other goals with Chapbook (aside from encouraging people to write more and better poetry) is to reward users by helping them find a publication outlet. This is a really under-refined thought, but in general I know that the process of finding and applying to publications is a bit onerous and probably could be done better on the Internet.
I added that to the dev page. Meanwhile, I’m having trouble getting feedback on the Heroku list on how to use search, so that continues to languish. Maybe tonight, as a goal, I will bang out RSS support.
1 year agoI’m happier with the layout. I’m only wondering now if I shouldn’t use a brigher shade of blue. I don’t know if I so much need more color as I just need the page to be less drab.
The new size of the poem text is much better. I also ditched my custom comment code for Disqus integration. My own comment code wasn’t bad, but there’s more value in me spending time on poetry-related things. Disqus provides threading, reputation, email subscriptions and more that I don’t have to rebuild in yet another way.
The big outstanding items are:
I couldn’t hold out. I’m not adding more color, but I am adding more shading. I’m trying to make better use of screen space and improve the response to font scaling. I will also make the actual poem text much larger.
So far, I’m happier with the layout than I was before. I need to paper out a few more existing screens, fix them, and then paper out the chapbook organize UI.
1 year agoNot sure what to do with it yet, but I’m not happy with the placeholder design. You might say, well, it’s a placeholder design. It bugs me nonetheless and the best way to get back to coding is to stop the design from bugging me.
So, I think I might do some paper prototyping. Here are the principles that I’m going to try to work from:
I’ve been increasingly wondering if the tag cloud in Chapbook is at all relevant. Tags, certainly, because people should be able to classify poems according to user-generated schemes. But, are you really going to look at a pile of tags and go find poems to read based on those?
Maybe. But, I’ve never used the Flickr tag cloud and I do fine. I mostly look at “top photos” and photos from friends or find photos via relationships or tags from other photos and not from a cold start. Tag clouds add a nice discovery aspect, intellectually, but I don’t know how much they’ll be used.
I can always leave tag clouds in and take them out if no one uses them. One of my goals, though, is as little clutter as I can get away with because any given written piece should be the most prominent text on the screen. Flickr doesn’t have this challenge as much because large photos inherently stand out.
Okay, back to my day job. That was good curry.
1 year agoIntroduction: Chapbook is a web app I’m building in response to the shittiness of current Facebook poetry apps. Originally, it was going to be a Facebook app, but now I think it might be independent (with API for integration).
Anyway, the point is to build a site which let’s people revise, share and collect poetry. A good poetry site should make it easier to care about other people’s poetry and should participate in the writing and learning process itself.
That’s pretty much the mission.
I have $0 in funding. I have no monetization plans, really. I like poetry.
1 year ago
