RJP43
commented
6 years ago Customizable Media Player Resource 1 [Github Repo]: https://jonathantneal.github.io/media-player/
Customizable Media Player Resource 2 [Github Repo]: https://ghinda.net/acornmediaplayer/
Project Updates Since Last Report:
SVG Editors
Becca and I have spent a good deal of time investigating SVG editor software that we can use to manipulate the graphics for the podcast website. I've been creating a lot of graphics in Canva and Microsoft Paint but I haven't been pleased with the resolution and the resistance to scalability you get when you make graphics in non-SVG editing software. We played around with Inkscape which, theoretically, has all of the features we want in a drawing tool/editor but lacks user-intuition and I'm still trying to decide whether the time spent working out the quirks of the tool is time we could be spending doing something else for the podcast. I'm still in the process of working with the editor, which oddly resembles GIS (??), to see how my graphic design style and techniques emerge in an application I was, until now, completely unfamiliar with but we're also on the lookout for other SVG editors to play around with for this element of the website.
Researching Jekyll Sites:
As I said in my last post, I took it upon myself to see what a site created with a Jekyll framework could deliver in terms of aesthetics and interactivity. I am happy to say I was pleasantly surprised and found that many of the examples from the consolidated list of Jekyll sites run out of GitHub Pages execute really interesting website designs despite using a mostly static website generator. That being said, there are plenty of sites on that list that are extremely plain and serve a very singular purpose, but I think there is something to be said for a platform which enables-perhaps not an expert coder or developer-to create a site that is functional and appealing to a public audience. Just because a website isn't performing backflips the moment you open it doesn't necessarily mean the content contained there isn't worth coming back to. As a new convert to the world of computational studies, I am still overwhelmed by the amount of documentation and actual code that is open access and available for us to reference as we make progress on developing our own Jekyll framework site, and I love that we are making our process public and can participate in this greater conversation surrounding development and design.
Requirements for the Project:
Link to GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/RJP43/PlainTextPodcast
Project Description:
Adapted from our original elevator pitch.
Our goal for our project in DIGH 402 was to design and prototype a static website out of GitHub pages to host our podcast, Plain.txt. The episodic nature of the podcast lends itself well to the use of a static HTML generator along the lines of Nieky's lecture on 02/30/18, because while the content will change episode to episode we envision the episode pages to be technically identical. It will be ideal to come up with a system of updating the podcast website with a new episode and its content without having to hand-code the HTML/CSS/JavaScript every time. In addition to the convenience a static website would bring, we want to be sure we are conforming to level Double-A of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. We feel that if we spend enough time developing a static website using the principals of universal design and adhering to the WCAG AA standards, it will help ensure consistency in the podcast's accessibility.
In addition to this primary focus on creating an accessible, static website, we have started discussing other ways we can incorporate programming into the regular functions of the podcast. An aspect of the podcast we are both interested in harnessing to its fullest potential will be its social media promotion and engagement. In this regard, we are interested in mining Digital Humanities and Computer Science tweets for themes/topics that can be incorporated into the podcast's episodes. In addition to scraping other people's tweets/conversations, we are interested in the idea of creating a Twitter Bot on behalf of the podcast that helps generate conversations that simultaneously engage the larger Twitter universe with the podcast's production and provides the DH cohort with relative, themed material to respond to in the podcast episodes.
Project Tech:
To wireframe the website we are using Just In Mind.
Web development and hosting will be through GitHub and GitHub Pages using a Jekyll framework.
The team will be using a combination of R and Python to scrape social media sites (primarily Twitter) to generate conversation starters and talking points for the podcast.
We are still investigating the technologies required to create a Twitter bot which will spark interactions with the Plain.txt podcast community on social media.