Tesserae From Here on Out March 20, 2020

Been a solid two months since I last worked on Tesserae, but it was going really well, so I’m returning to it.

Before I stopped last time, I managed to get the basic HTML section totally rewritten. In my opinion, it’s kinda the most important section on the entire site, and I cheaped out hardcore on it for Tesserae 1.0. I’m really happy with it now though, and my beta readers seem to agree.

Right now, my focus is on the new introduction section. This was something totally missing from Tesserae 1.0; I’d send people the site and then spend a good amount of time just explaining where to get Notepad++. Therefore, I’m adding this introduction section to define terminology, get people to grab another browser to test in–get them properly primed to start learning HTML.

My goal currently for Tesserae is to release something soon. Not the full site–Christ, if I wanted to release the full site in one go, you wouldn’t see it until September at the earliest. No, I’m gonna defer bits of it for now, most likely every section except the intro and the basic HTML pages. That means it’ll have less content than what was on there previously, but it’s worth it. Quality over quantity, less aggravation for me.

I’ve been undergoing a big mindset shift these past few months, that of trying to have smaller, but more frequent updates to my work. See, my natural inclination with a project is to not let anyone see it until it’s “done”. Problem is, I take on big projects. Stuff gets overwhelming. I do my best work (read: any work) when I’m not so overwhelmed as to be turned off to the whole thing.

A good example of this was Tesserae 1.0. I remember starting it way back in October 2018, in my morning film class on a copy of BBEdit when I should’ve been working on projects. And then, frequently, I’d hide in the dark control room with the old polycarb iMac up there and work on it until mid-afternoon. This process repeated for months until it finally came out January 1 of last year.

Mind you, it was still unfinished, even then, and I then proceeded to not update it ever. Naturally, the thing withered. That’s ignoring how unsatisfactory the writing was, or how much I botched “modern design” (I don’t do modern leaf me alone umu).

Instead, I’ve been looking over what I’ve got started (and there’s a lot!) and trying to break everything down into the smallest and most manageable chunks possible, releasing each bit by bit when it takes me. I think it’s working–like I said, motivation’s come back strong lately. For Tesserae, this means you’ll be seeing an incomplete version of the site much sooner than anticipated, but I’ll be able to add on a page here and there when I feel like it. It’s just plain more efficient and helpful than leaving the old, crap version of the site up for another couple of months while I rewrite everything.

With all that said, here’s some screenshots of the rough outline of what I’ve got planned for all six sections of the site. Much to read, much to write!

Tags: Tesserae, Web Design,