
I have this bad habit of launching my personal websites a bit prematurely so I can at least have something up. This website is a prime example. I only have a content management system for news and the lab, and it’s been that way for over a year now. I have most of v2 finished and it’s definitely ready to post, but the CMS is not. I’ve been working on it when I can, focusing mainly on news, but the rest shouldn’t be as tough. I’ve been really excited to show something regarding the progress I’ve been making.

I’m trying something new in terms of form UI. There won’t be any input boxes, only textfields. Each textfield for inputting information is enabled and disabled using a label to the left of it. When the label is blue, it can be clicked to edit that field. As soon as content is filled in, it changes to a dark grey and the field itself can then be selected. For boolean elements such as image frames, clicking the label switches between true and false. The standard variables for each post are at the top (title, date, tags) and the rest is left up to either text blocks, images, or SWFs. The date can be specific as shown or phrases such as “now,” “yesterday,” “last saturday” can be used and understood.
To the left of the labels are actions for closing and moving elements. Clicking the move button highlights the element, allowing it to be moved with the arrow keys. The post is previewed in real-time on the right side of the window, displaying it exactly as it would be seen on the website. I use my own markup language for all the content seen on v2. It’s a refined xHTML that’s more specific to my needs. Images use the “
” tag, but SWFs follow the same look and use “.” The backend handles the conversions so it can be inputted once, but appear in the formats of both the current site and v2.
I have plans for fine tuning the CMS a lot more so it does things like highlighting links and tags in edit mode, but they aren’t necessarily priority. My aim is to have a fully-workable version finished before launching v2. With my final critique tomorrow morning, I’m certain I can hope to have it launched before the New Year. Keep an eye out.