Hypercompendia

After a quick look at the stylesheet for the basic golden grid, I think it would answer some of my questions about setting up a cleaner css for what I want. It may point out the obvious way to apply attributes and values such as border style, text color, etc. that are uniform to the wider designation of positions without each having this list of properties.

Even though I’m not currently thinking along the line of the visual reasoning of the golden grid, I’ve already got nine positions that I think are pretty basic: left, center, right, top and bottom for each–not allowing for three positions vertically since most screens are still pretty short and wide–and a wider (400 px) version of each of the three main positions which will obviously not be used at the same time unless I want overlap.

It’s nice to look through the stylesheet, even (and maybe especially) in its overwritten condition and understand what all that stuff means.

It’s no good; I can’t just transfer the damn thing into html and make it any better with color and fancy design. It’d be like putting the cardboard back behind a work of art in a frame. Just don’t have it in me to cut the wrong corners when it counts.

So that’s what’s holding me up right now–as well as keeping me busy while I wait for more hypertext story–editing the somewhat sloppy language in Paths that I thought was so great at the time. That, and trying to figure out how to get the image of Jesus Christ from showing up as the representative frame of Recycling on You-Tube. No offense or sacrilegious intent meant, but He’s scaring readers away.

Finally did so on the old Hypercompendia site at Typepad since I’m getting spammed over there and also find that the search engines likely still bring folks there (where for some strange reason, even while I deleted all files the posts are still available on the server I guess) rather than here.  So if you’ve not rebookmarked (how quaint) or updated your feed, for all intents and purposes I’m lost to you.

Haven’t quite had the guts to cut the cord to Spinning at Typepad yet, but getting itchy on that one as well. Typepad was a wonderful service and home to me for over five years but I needed the capabilities that WordPress gives me to expand. The only thing Typepad didn’t allow me to do was an automatic redirect so the sooner I establish the new weblogs on their own, the better.

Even as I settle myself in for a nice hypertext write, I wonder where it all is going. Even I still have some dislikes of the medium in the reading of it, but then, there’ve been quite a few changes incorporated into hypertext work now. Even as I write in it I need these ‘changes’ to keep the groove, namely, to see the visual presentation and that for me usually means some color if not graphics.

This is also likely why I’ve still not bothered to master interactive fiction, as in the old text-interplay of Photopia, et al. It’s not visually exciting. Particularly when seeing “There’s no such thing” a few zillion times (I happen to be certified directionally dysfunctional). When I first got into IF and then hypertext via Storyspace, my mind zoomed ahead to a combination of the two–never the concept of IF alone–and with images and sound as well.

Now I’m not quite a senior citizen but I’ve been raised in the era of television at least, so I’m used to the visual saturation of the senses–though books were still a big, big part of my list to Santa. It makes one wonder how the younger generations, brought up on laptops rather than mere laps in a rocking chair, feel about these forms of story when they can get film clips on their phones for goodness’ sake.

A couple of years ago I played around a bit with Chris Crawford’s Storytron, in beta form, more on the authoring side of things than on the reading and playing of the prepared story.  At that time, unless my mind is deceiving me, there was a very promising graphical interface that was highly sophisticated to go along with the program. When I checked out Storytron in the last couple of days after its launch of a fully useable program, I was surprised to see the same old Sponge Bob Square Pants figures (faces?) in the play areas.  While Storytron is sort of halfway between IF in its decisions and hypertext in its manual use of clicking menus, it doesn’t do much in the way of eye-appeal. Same thing with the promise of Facade, which hasn’t progressed any from its intial output and primitive visuals.  Why are some of these great concepts not really accepted by a much wider audience?  Somehow I believe it has something to do with needing to look as exciting and interesting as the content should certainly be.

Like I said, I may often opt for the classics in their physical text and creamy-paged form and a quiet corner with a soft-cushioned curl-up-type chair, but I still have come to expect some visual stimulation when it’s just my Mac and me. In this hungry-eyed era I would think that aside from story and good solid writing another major consideration needs to be presentation.

…the publication of Steve Ersinghaus‘ new hypertext Poem, That Night, in the 10th Anniversary issue of  Drunken Boat.

Congratulations to a fine poet and friend.

Just totally absorbed in this and must learn to solve issues more quickly as new stories are banging around in my brain. Focusing on fixing the little quirks such as individual space link color changes and other niggley bits even as I wonder if it’s better at this point to switch to Tinderbox from Storyspace or if that process will just take me too long to learn. Same thing with Paths versus a hot new idea on an apocalypse like none other, almost an anti-human nature movement and a new-thinking Big Brother-type regime. And a new website and stories and poems  all need their own space in time.

Quickly, quickly; I need to move on.

Course I couldn’t go to bed wondering if all my work in the last two days was wasted so I Filezilla’ed the test story over here and was happy to see that despite the lousy structuring and story, everything works properly. Even in Internet Explorer which I’m on now.

So I’m happy ’bout that and all…but…I’m not so sure I really like the boxes moving around so much. It’s sort of distracting. Of course I’m not reading them but just link-hopping and this is just a dozen or thirteen writing spaces, whatever I needed to try out all the different attributes, but still…

Well that was easy. Just added a middle position vertically for each of the three (left, center, right) horizontal positions by making a “leftm” etc. though I’m sure it would be better to make it obvious with a “leftmiddle” designation. And of course, new questions come from this move.

First, with a Mac Book I’m not sure I want a lower or third level position. Now with my husband’s monitor which is 19 x 19 approximately, it’d be fine. So that’s a stop and thinker.

The other thing of course is that while it’s easy enough to copy and paste the whole rigamorole including borders and widths and paddings and just change the position throughout the stylesheet, I’m sure I missed an easier way–or rather simply a cleaner way of coding it. Probably under an umbrella of some sort. That’s what you get for skimming the textbooks or not listening. Then again, I am learning more about how things act and it’s not like I’m expecting to get a job out of this.

Then it happens; I remember that I should be testing all this in IE or other browsers as well.

Who’da thunk that I’d ever have gotten into the underlying structure of composing and presenting hypertext narrative? I loved Storyspace because it didn’t require much of me aside from twiddling a few dials to set up a very elegant looking hypertext so that I could concentrate on writing story. The drive to present that story online, however, led me into the whole code thing. It meant setting up a weblog that could allow for offering the pieces online, and that meant moving from Typepad to WordPress and setting up two new homes. Then learning css and html to export from Storyspace into the sites. From there, the imagination goes wild but it’s a fun learning process and each baby step I make (or elderly shuffle) is both an accomplishment as well as a treat.

Obviously, when one adds another element into the equation there naturally comes a need for variables.  With the major step of background image comes consideration of text color. On the last image, while I Photoshopped to make a dark text readable, there are other things to consider such as the links.

So I grabbed another image out of my garden files, one that in reality was hot coral California poppies and sun-drenched green leaves. I was going for composition knowing that the color was a big no-no. Ended up with this (below) and still, the original link color of cream is not going to work. But that’s fine. All I have to do is work out how to change that in a working narrative for the future.

In most projects you come to a point where the trail of thought diverges and there are several ways of doing the same thing as well as several directions in which to branch out. This is truly a hypertext moment.

With some ideas in mind of what I’d like to be able to do (positioning of lexias), even without getting into the golden grid method yet I may have other options of accomplishing what I want to do. This is when the old “a little knowledge is dangerous” becomes a possibility.

I’ve already likely gone the long way around to manage the postions already: left, leftlarge, leftlargea, center, centerlarge, centerlargea, right, rightlarge (no rightlargea). The left and leftlarge are 285 and 400 px wide, or roughly allowing for a 3 column position versus a single fixed. The addition of “a” on the leftlargea is the designation for the image background rather than the designated color. All work; all are, I’m sure, more elaborated and sloppy css than necessary but remember, I’m not classroom-taught here and my own mind works in “next step” and “try it and see” ways. All time-consuming, yet more fully understood because they come from logic rather than instruction or rote.

Now as I ponder my next move, I’m guessing that a placement of “top: 150 px;” code would likely give me the vertical positioning. But then, I’m going to have a css that’s going to cover every possibile combination of positions and colors and text and sizes and then, only then, will I be smart enough to go back to the books and find out a shorthand method of coding it all in.