Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Online Exhibit Preparation Update

I have now gotten both OpenCollection and OpenCollectionAccess (a nice front end for OpenCollection) working on the site. I figured out how to add metadata elements, including Dublin Core. I also figured out lots of other things about how to organize stuff in OpenCollection, which I hope will add ease of browse and functionality to the Online Exhibit.

I also started working on changing the look of OpenCollectionAccess to what I want the Online Exhibit to look like, with some help from my friend Jesse. My friend Maggie pointed out that I need to make sure that the Online Exhibit is obviously a different place than the main site. I think that one of the ways to do this (other than my plan for a top nav and a different break in space for the nav) is to make the roll-over color for images different. The idea is that the color will be the roll over color for "Online Exhibit" on the main site and the "Main Site" link on the Online Exhibit will be blue. I'm thinking about going with a green, since so much of OCA already uses a green color and green is a good sno-ball color. So, the final product will probably look something like this (but I think the green will be darker):
design version 6a

I've uploaded and catalogued about 20 images so far. I even re-purposed one of the OC fields to link to a Flickr image of the object, and only show up on display if I've uploaded the image to Flickr. And I figured out how to make Flickr link back to the Online Exhibit. I'm really excited about this as I hope people will use either Flickr or email to let us know more about the pictures that we know almost nothing about.

As of right now, everything is locked up because I don't want people seeing an unfinished product. I hope to be able to launch everything in a week to a week and a half.

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