WebSite 5.0 New Feature List

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What is the vision for this website you may ask? 

My first goal or hope is to cause the viewer to love nature. I believe when people love something, they are inclined to care about its protection and preservation.

Who do I believe will find this content interesting? 

I want to provide a tool for the under-informed members of society, or for those looking to expand their awareness of nature. There are some great websites such as Audubon Society and Cornell Labs, providing great detail on birds. I don’t have the budget or the desire to replace or compete with their efforts. I would hope to bring a few scholarly elements into the discussion, but my real love is capturing images and sharing my experiences. 

I have done a lot of travelling and explorations into natural places, and I plan to do much more of that in the near future. I want to have a tool that puts my images into the context of the locations I visit. I feel the inclusion of maps in this version of my website delivers that context, in a meaningful, relevant way. I want my images to show the subtle beauty of the creatures around us, but more than that, I’d like to have these images help us learn more about the natural world, and understand the importance of preserving what we haven’t already destroyed, and repairing the damage we’ve done (or at least *try*). I hope that by displaying attached information (metadata) with each image will help present the bigger story, and not just a pretty picture.

We’ve kept much of the look and feel of WebSite 4.0 intact, but the engine under the hood has been souped up and many new accessories have been added:

  • Menus
    • The menus have been developed to allow deeper penetration into the contents of the site
    • Hover your mouse over each menu element and it triggers the next layer of links to pop out
      • Note the “>” to the right of the item label indicating the presence of more selection options
    • The “Galleries” menu has been updated to access every element of each album and gallery with a direct link to those pages.
    • The “Photo Blogs” menu now delivers direct links to my blogs and associated galleries and are organized by region (states) and dates (by year)
  • Search
    • This not a new feature. It just works much better than before
    • This feature can generate a list of pages, posts, galleries and albums based on the criteria you enter for the search
    • Entering two or three words in the search pane will cause a search for content matching any of the words
    • Placing quotes around multiple word searches confines the results to matches on the complete phrase
  • Breadcrumbs
    • These are links at the top of the pages that show the trail of linked pages back up through the pages that lead to the page currently displayed.
    • These assist with site navigation and let the viewer select previous pages or pages several levels above the one currently displayed
  • Maps
    • Maps associated with galleries of images display location pins for all images in the gallery
    • Clicking on a pin will reveal which image or images are associated with the location shown
    • Clicking on the “more” text link or the Title at the top of the display, will deliver an “Attachment Page” (see below)
    • Maps are “Scroll-able”
    • Maps are “Zoom-able”
    • There are three modes of map viewing available
      • Flat map (2-D) with typical label indications of roads and towns
      • Terrain map with contour lines layered over the Flat map
      • Satellite map (with or without the labels of the Flat map)
      • Maps can be toggled to full screen
      • Maps can be zoomed down to street-level views (only in urban areas)
  • Albums and Galleries
    • Albums are collections of galleries and other albums.
      • The thumbnails that trigger display for Albums are labeled with information about the contents and show
        • The album name
        • The number of galleries and albums in the album
    • Galleries are sets of images
      • The thumbnails that trigger display for Galleries are labeled with
        • The gallery name
        • The number of images in the gallery
        • The number of subjects are in the gallery
        • Example: An America Robin is a subject, a Blue Grosbeak is a subject, a picture of a mountain is a subject, and so on
  • Lightbox
    • When a thumbnail in a gallery is clicked on it brings up the full size image into a slideshow view and displays metadata information (e.g. Species ID, Descriptions, Camera data, File name, Copyright, etc.)
    • If the “More” text link or the Title at the top of the display is clicked, it brings up the “Attachment Page”
  • Attachment Pages
    • These are pages for the full display of the selected image, and show:
      • All related metadata
      • Six clickable image thumbnails of other subjects captured in the area nearby the displayed subject
        • Hint: Refreshing this page will cycle through the available images from nearby, and display a random new set of thumbnails
        • Clicking on of these thumbnails will generate a new Attachment Page for the selected thumbnail
      • A large scrollable, zoomable map with a pin noting the location where the displayed image was captured