Resources
Gone through the generator and the FTP tutorial, but still feel lost? These links might be able to help.
Generator History
Hopefully, as the generator progresses, i'll remember to keep a changelog and some old versions here. Not every version, but hopefully the milestone versions that incur large changes. While it's partially for you, it's mostly for me. I'll also keep plans for new versions, but keep in mind that new versions may be months away.
Plans
Past Beta 4
The generator is looking pretty nice, so the next project will be to revamp the CSS section, which hasn't really been rebuilt from the very earliest version. I'll probably change the layout to just a single wider section instead of having two side by side. I should probably finish up a few more templates.
v1.0 ?
I'm not sure when i'll call v1.0 - but it won't be a big change from right now. Basically, if i do some rigorous testing and i'm fairly sure that i won't need to change the HTML of the generated pages anymore, v1.0 will essentially be a feature lock. If i wind up wanting to change the html, i'll put a link to v1.0 someplace promenent and call it v2.
While i have a few ideas for some features, i'm not really motivated to implement them. Stuff like a generator for cast pages and the likes, or a custom CSS generator.
I'm not real sold on a CSS generator because the designs would be fairly limited, since you couldn't change background pictures. While i can see the demand for a cast (or whatever) page generator, it sort of belies the idea i had in the beginning, which was to provide fairly frilless templates that were easily customized.
Changelog
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Beta 4
Beta 4 changes a few things visually, switches the location of a few forms, and the internal structure has been changed a bit. You'll first notice that now the warnings are much more visually prominent with their new dashed border on black look - which wasn't really a big deal to implement, but should get everyone's attention faster. I've also put together the title and username fields on the first page so that things didn't feel so cluttered. I'm going to keep my eye on this - it's visually better, but the old version was very simple, and told you exactly what to do. One change that's really nice is now there aren't a bunch of random links at the end - you just click next again.
- Back button notice now at top of all generator pages
- Two new notice types - info and warn
- Notices have more visual impact
- Slightly changed required form colour
- Re-wrote most of the text
- Swapped position of logo and date checkboxes
- Changed the positioning of the form fields from centered to the left
- Seperated the links generators into easy links and ones you have to make yourself
- Hid the links you make yourself, and added a few warnings
- Added new warning form container
- Changed the news section to show only the easy options of todays_notes and using a blog - the opther options are now hidden
- Code copy section now has instructions for Textedit on mac
- Also made the pictures and text boxes much smaller
- New ending redirect system - only shows you the boxes you need, and then redirects to CSS page when you click next.
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Beta 3.7 and earlier
Since i didn't have a changelog until beta 3.7, i'll try my best to remember everything beforehand here.
The original generator (beta 1 and before) was simply a gigantic form that spit out code when you hit a button. Beta two was really the first version that would be useful to the general public, and i think thats the version that i first let the public know about. It did not have the step by step function, and instead showed the entire form at once. It also didn't have near as many features. Beta three is the first one that i've kept, and unfortunately, it didn't get kept very well. While the generator works, the original CSS files got replaced by their beta 3.7 versions. While there were numerous bugfixes between beta 3 and 3.7, the most evident changes are the new features and revamped look, so i'll talk about those first.
The theme was changed to blue so as to better fit with other comicgenesis stuff, and the forms were spread out on the page and better explained. A large part of the redesign was to make the entire process into a sort of tutorial, explaining each feature in simple terms.
Technically, the major changes were what amounts to an finishing what essentially are the final features, and taking the JS out of the HTML and into it's own file. Besides that, there were the usual bugfixes.