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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
gaekwad wrote #340264:
If we’re doing videos, we’re doing videos properly. Self-hosted, cookie-free, bullshit-free, ad-free. And we can do sound. We can narrate. We can avoid background music drivel.
Wonderful!
Yiannis
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
When hosted locally you can also control video quality, and not settle for Google slop. Handbrake does an excellent job…
Video has its charm, but is a pain to prepare and composite.
An easy alternative is Shifty (which took longer to gather thoughtless screen grabs than it did to code).
Feed it more images, get more variety. Change the size of images, get ‘zoomed-in’ and ‘zoomed-out’ mixed together (they are currently all smallish in size).
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340267:
When hosted locally you can also control video quality, and not settle for Google slop.
Rest assured, Señor giz, there will be no slop – Google or otherwise!
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
(The GSAP hero animation is proceeding nicely, but I’m taking a break from it and focussing on other aspects of the redesign).
Development Notes
- I’m currently working on localhost, using a copy of the sass and a html clone of the homepage as scaffolding.
- When I have ‘above the fold’1 styled, I’ll publish it to dev.all-sorts.biz so we can discuss its pros and cons. Rinse and repeat until the page is complete and we have a reasonable level of consensus.
- I’ll then need the keys to textpattern.com to make the changes, and will set up a new dev template so it can be tested and tweaked without interfering with the public site.
1 As I’d like to give mobile users parity, banner changes will need to apply across the site. I started with adjustments, but soon hit a wall; the css logic is utterly different to how I work, and cramps any attempt at enjoyable productivity on my part. My interim solution is to simply add another stylesheet, with resets on problematic selectors, so I can layout things using a clean slate. I’m leaving the production css as a problem to be solved later ;-)
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340281:
- I’m currently working on localhost
- I’ll then need the keys to textpattern.com to make the changes
Wouldn’t a public repo and a pull request towards the current project imply less security considerations and more integration of eventually interested third parties?
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
wet wrote #340282:
Wouldn’t a public repo and a pull request towards the current project imply less security considerations and more integration of eventually interested third parties?
I’m not sure what you mean. I find git & grunt utterly confusing, and keep them out of my workflow where possible.
I’ll be working in design mode for a while yet, figuring out whats needed and how to swing it in css (I don’t have the head-space for more complication). Pull requests (whatever they are) can come later; some hand-holding will be required…
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340283:
Pull requests (whatever they are) can come later; some hand-holding will be required…
Pull requests are contributions to a source code repository that uses a distributed version control system. These are a common method of collaboration among geographically distant developers of a software thingy.
Let me be outspoken to an extreme degree (this is what I am known for ;) ): I would have less trust in a critical product (like a CMS) if its core distribution channel was wide open to anyone who social engineers its developers with CSS gifts /s.
Sorry for being blunt, but that’s how I feel.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
giz wrote #340283:
I’m not sure what you mean. I find git & grunt utterly confusing, and keep them out of my workflow where possible.
I’ll be working in design mode for a while yet, figuring out whats needed and how to swing it in css (I don’t have the head-space for more complication). Pull requests (whatever they are) can come later; some hand-holding will be required…
If I can manage it, you certainly can :-) You’re already using GitHub for some of your plugins and theme frameworks, and I think your atomic sass / atomic docs also needs a task runner of sorts to compile (gulp it seems from your source code), so you’ve had some exposure to them already.
For your own projects and purposes, you don’t need git, but for collaboration it’s the ideal way to slot into an existing project. Your basic principle, when you get to it, will be to:
- fork Phil’s GitHub repo on GitHub to your own account, then clone your fork to your computer for your working copy.
- make a new branch in your working copy to hold your changes / amendments, and check that out on your computer so it is the currently active branch.
- Now add your changes to the working files.
- Commit your changes using whatever tool / command-line commands you use for Git. Ideally you’d try and make your (batches of) changes as self-contained as possible for better understanding for others of what you’ve done.
- Push the branch with the changes to your remote GitHub repo.
(Fellow txp-ers, please add or correct if I’ve forgotten/misrepresented anything.)
Now you have a public repo with your changes in a separate branch. GitHub automatically detects that you’ve made changes are asks you if you want to make a pull request to integrate your changes into the original repo. Phil can then assess / peruse them, and any implications that may have for the rest of the Textpattern sites.
FWIW: Phil has considered having separate CSS for the homepage, which may be a practical approach to reintegrating you changes.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Thanks for the pointers, Julian.
I tried to install Grunt on my Mac a few years ago, and ended up with nothing working; I had to do a complete reset / reinstall of the OS. Never again ;-)
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Ahem; I missed reading wet’s comment. It didn’t go down well, particularly as I’ve only just started this venture.
I’ll be blunt, too; it has put me off the project entirely.
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
It would be a pity for the energy behind this to fizzle. Probably stating the obvious here, but working together in existing systems is always more difficult than doing things one’s own way. Add to that that the “playful tinkering” exploratory problem-solving mindset of designers / architects isn’t always the same as the more structured approach typical of programmer’s git commits. At least that’s often my inner conundrum: I’ll play around a lot offline, then try and structure my changes into sensible blocks of code updates.
Phil and Pete have working systems for the upkeep of the sites and have tackled a lot of the problems involved, for example in making the header bar work across different sites. It will need to work for them, but my pointer to Phil’s issue offers a potentially practical half-way house that might also be applicable for the header bar.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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#35 2025-08-26 14:09:42
- Algaris
- Member
- From: England
- Registered: 2006-01-27
- Posts: 580
Re: Textpattern's face to the public
@Giz as Jakob mentioned, it’d be a real shame if your enthusiasm for this project started to fade away.
I also totally agree with Jacob that there’s a reason why we work the way we do, especially in a collaborative environment. Git is definitely the way to go. It gives everyone in the Textpattern team a chance to review your code and provide feedback before anything is committed to the main project. As the Core Designer, I’m sure Phil Wareham will also be involved at some point as well.
Regarding Git tools, I’ve been using Tower. It’s subscription-based, but has a really user-friendly interface. I only use the command line when I need to, otherwise I just use the GUI. There are probably plenty of free alternatives to Tower, but I haven’t tried them out yet.
On a slightly different note (sorry if this is way beyond what you’re looking for), but I wanted to share my sympathies regarding your experiences trying to set up your development environment. After trying to get things working for a couple of years, I realised that it was too much of a hassle. I felt like I was stuck between creating my ideal development set up and the operating system. So, I decided to start running my own virtual Linux servers. Now, all my web development tools are separate from my operating system, and I set up a Samba share to the www directory where I can save files as if it were a regular drive attached to the computer. This makes it so much easier to manage everything without any conflicts.
Anyway, please don’t give up! The effort you put into learning how things are set up and work within the Textpattern project will be a great learning experience for you. Keep up the good work!
Last edited by Algaris (2025-08-26 14:16:38)
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Re: Textpattern's face to the public
Thanks for the positive vibes, jakob & Algaris.
The thing is, I’m not only aware of the rationale behind Git and community projects, I’m keen to learn its implementation (when the design is complete and ready for such things).
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No one has anything to say about wet’s take on my intentions with the project? He simultaneously dismissed Design as ‘CSS gifts’, and heavily implied I have a hidden agenda against Textpattern’s best interests.
If I’m a ‘social engineer’, I’m a particularly inept and inefficient one (as I’ve been ‘at it’ since joining the forum in 2004).
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My prototype, where I left it.
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