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By Moristotle
In case you haven’t noticed, the sidebar now includes a table of images representing each of my cousin Billy Charles Duvall’s artworks that have been presented in his son André’s column, “Father’s Art.” The images are not just for decoration; each of them links to the original image in the “Father’s Art” column it appeared in. All you have to do is click on the image.
The table looks just like the one shown here, and you can get to it in either of two ways:
- Click on its link in the Sidebar Directory, or
- Scroll down to it (quite a ways, because the sidebar contains lots of elements, concluding with the entire collection of #tags associated with Moristotle & Co.).
The table of artwork images came about, because…Well, I’m not entirely sure now, because it was a while ago, and I actually got bogged down at one point and finally decided to just forget the whole thing. But within 24 hours my muse graced me with an avalanche of ideas for taking a better approach than I had started out with.
Originally, the ratio of each image’s height to width (H:W) was the same as the artwork referred to. The problem with that was that I had to have a separate table for each row of images because their column widths varied and they wouldn’t stack into regular rows.
My muse presented me with the bright idea of just forcing the images into cells having set dimensions, but in either portrait or landscape orientation. Still, virtually all of the images would be distorted somewhat from the artworks’ real H:W ratios. But guess what? For the purpose involved, that didn’t matter! If that seems incredible to you, examine the table more closely and click on a few of the images so you can compare them with the originals….
Besides my sense of accomplishment in finally completing the task, three other rewards came from it:
First, I derived a sense of technical accomplishment from creating a very easy procedure for installing each image in the table – even a sense of pride, which is no mean thing.
Second, I learned some useful coding techniques, especially when it came to the three cells containing the title of the table: “André Duvall’s Father / Billy Charles Duvall’s / Art.”
Finally, Billy Charles told me how useful he thinks the table is: “It helps me find a particular art piece quickly when I want to read what André and I said about it.” After all, that’s the main function of the table, isn’t it?
Originally, the ratio of each image’s height to width (H:W) was the same as the artwork referred to. The problem with that was that I had to have a separate table for each row of images because their column widths varied and they wouldn’t stack into regular rows.
My muse presented me with the bright idea of just forcing the images into cells having set dimensions, but in either portrait or landscape orientation. Still, virtually all of the images would be distorted somewhat from the artworks’ real H:W ratios. But guess what? For the purpose involved, that didn’t matter! If that seems incredible to you, examine the table more closely and click on a few of the images so you can compare them with the originals….
Besides my sense of accomplishment in finally completing the task, three other rewards came from it:
First, I derived a sense of technical accomplishment from creating a very easy procedure for installing each image in the table – even a sense of pride, which is no mean thing.
Second, I learned some useful coding techniques, especially when it came to the three cells containing the title of the table: “André Duvall’s Father / Billy Charles Duvall’s / Art.”
Finally, Billy Charles told me how useful he thinks the table is: “It helps me find a particular art piece quickly when I want to read what André and I said about it.” After all, that’s the main function of the table, isn’t it?
| Copyright © 2023 by Moristotle Early in his years at IBM, Moristotle was a computer programmer, mainly coding programs to load and update data files. Coding the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for the visual index described above reminded him of those years. |
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