We’ve been adding ‘Click on the image to see a large version’ above photos that were being displayed through our impressive FooBox image handler.
We thought, “There’s got to be a better way.”
Inspired by sites like Jalopnik, we’ve worked with Brad from FooxPlugins (who has been so helpful it’s been a dream) we’ve now just made code live on OnTheWight that fades in a magnifying glass in the top left corner of an image when the reader’s cursor is placed over it.
Pleased with the results.
On Christmas Eve we (very) quietly released our dedicated Mobile version of OnTheWight.
For many years we’ve had an Responsive Website – ie it automatically resizes depending on the width of the screen looking at it. It worked well, but after a chat with Joseph Moore, we felt there was more to do.
Joseph’s approach was ‘Strip it all back and just deliver what’s needed for that device at that time’. His fantastic efforts on it have given us a mobile experience that loads near instantly. It’s highly impressive.
WhatsApp share button
Last night – as our first use of the new Github approach to coding – we made live our latest tweak to the mobile version – A WhatsApp share button to join the others that are ever-present at the bottom of the screen of a mobile.
We’ve been running separate WhatsApp trial for distributing our News story, but this lets the reader share the story themselves to their friends.
Thanks to the generosity of Joseph Moore, giving his time to help/make us understand the philosophy and practical steps of using Git, in particular Github, we now have a structure to the development of our WordPress template code.
If those words – Git, Github – don’t mean anything to you, they might well do in the future.
Control over changes
Git is a way to strictly control changes over things. I use the all-encompassing ‘things’ because it not just code (Git’s roots), because graphics and other files can be included. It’s also not just code. Git is also expanding beyond its familiar use in code, to other writing as well, as demonstrated by GitBook.
We’re using it to control the version of code and graphics that make up our WordPress template – and hence the display of our publication to the public. Initially our mobile-specific WP theme.
It brings the discipline to ensure that any changes made to the template are incremental, while bringing added advantages like you don’t litter the code with changes comments. It also brings the advantage of a central backup of the code.
Branching
‘Branching’ is intrinsic with this Version Control (which Git is an instance of), meaning that code can be safely developed by more than one person, in more than one location, without those distributed changes overwriting each other.