Welcome to
Mark Neath dot com
Nature Photographer and Tech Head
Welcome to my website, an eclectic collection of images, computer programs and various information. As with most websites, development is an on going affair. The main purposes of this site is to :
- show off and improve my programming skills. These skills include
- PHP
- Ajax
- Javascript and JQuery
- HTML and
- show off my photos
- increase my knowledge of Australia's natural history
This site is still under development and is evolving into a powerful content management system (CMS) where very large collections of images are catalogued into a tree structure for easy access by the end user. Currently the only collection displayed is my animal photos. The same code can be used to produce a text tree, as is used by the current page. I didn't want the site to have an old-fashioned 'Web Feel' where the user is constantly confronted with long page refreshes, instead I use the Ajax methodologies to give the site a pre-loaded feel. I am very proud of the result.
Content Management is currently done via an application I wrote in Free Pascal. This is a very stable program but does give new meaning to the word 'Fugly'. Also my ISP blocks remote access to the MySQL databases which limits the programs usefulness (Currently I edit a local copy of the DB then upload the entire DB to the server. This is a less than optional solution!) . So the next stage of development is to make a web based editor using PHP/Ajax. I hope that the end result will make the maintenance no more painful than using a simple editor. Once I am happy with the code base I intend to publish the full source code.
Current/Future Tasks
- Incorporate editing functions into the site.
- Complete the content of the animals section.
- Make the menu system fully DB based. The menu will use the standard DB structure. This page is the first step.
- Add a technical section explaining the site architecture and the coding methodologies used .
- Add photo specfic text, eg, location, camera and a short description.
Known Issues
- In most browsers the first image of a gallery is automatically displayed. However Opera leaves the image blank until the user selects an image via clicking on a thumbnail.
- In Chrome sometimes the main image is not resized properly
- In Chrome sometimes the thumbnail image is not resized properly
- Menu animation does not work when tree is displayed. Open the contact page to see the animation.
