Tooling around with illustrator, it took me about an hour to make this:

Click for larger version.

Not the worst thing ever, but it took me an *hour* to do it. Coming from Photoshop’s paths, Illustrator is really messed up. Take for instance the yellow bits of hair: In photoshop, I would simply make the head shape and the hair lines, then make a subtractive selection from them. I’m sure I’m doing this wrong, but in Illustrator I had to copy the head and hair twice, and then make a clipping path for each side (in the process making about 4 useless layers). Ugh.

I’m sure I’ll crack the Illustrator learning curve soon, I’ve only had it for 2 days, it’s just frustrating when you’re migrating from a inefficient but usuable art-production method to something much more unfamiliar and convoluted.

On a side note, I’ve started working on a new version of LJI. It’s mostly a user-interface update so far, but if you have any feature requests, you can leave them here.

So the newest version of the LiveJournal Image Feed snuck in under the door. Read about it and all its new stuff on my LiveJournal.

Sadly, LJI3, has some problems that still need to be worked out:

1. There’s some problems with the images and thumbnailing. Specifically, the system does not fail gracefully if the image cannot be found.
2. .gif images aren’t thumbnailed correctly, although everything else works with them.
3. Comments with quotes aren’t submitted to the database and therefore aren’t for some reason. So, uh. Don’t use contractions ~_~
4. The header is the same thing for everything. Although it doesn’t break anything, some of the links like ‘Fetch Again’ are only useful for one page.

Instead of doing a workaround for those mostly piddly bugs I’m going to go ahead and get cracking on a new version. LJI3 was my first experiance with coding a WordPress-style template system, but it was only really a partial success. I’m going to concentrate on designing this new version properly from the start, instead of throwing in half-working features every so often like how I’ve been doing it.

Coding a new project from scratch each iteration has become my standard practice. Arco.Log went through three such re-codes before I switched to WordPress, each version immensely better than the last. It’s time-consuming, but since I’m not doing this on a schedule or for money (thankfully), who cares? ^_^ It makes a better program.

So, I’m not sure what I want LJI4 to be. It’s going to keep the *chan style discussion, I’m pretty satisfied with that. The main problem I see with LJI is its unclear layout, which is reflected in the nasty only-sorta-decentralized speghetti code. I think I can fix this if I develop a clear design for the code before I start actually writing it.

Exciting stuff, huh? ~_~
~ LittleZephyr

I’m working on the LiveJournal Image Feed right now, instead of doing what I should be doing. I guess any work is good work though.

I’ve reverted the main URL back to the stable regular version, and will start working at a new url for the time being if you want to watch my progress.

It’s becoming more of a *chan style board. The main page will be the standard list of the latest images like you’re used to, but you’ll be able to recommend images. The images will then be moved to a “favorites” image board where people can comment and vote on it. Hopefully, the new version will also feature a better interface and some other random features.