Yes, my pixel art graphics might seem a little bit ‘cheesy’ but, as I kept on working at it, I did draw a couple of pixel art buttons that I actually really like. Those two flowers are my favourite ones of the bunch. The rest is not half-bad, and it goes along to give a fair demostration of what the program is capable of, and it’s better than just opening the program to a completely blank screen. It’s set up to work like a clipping art from another window, just look through the file menu and you will find the button for that.

The system doesn’t work only exclusively for the pixel art package that I have included, it is designed completely to allow you to do the exact same clippable artwork setup with your own artwork buttons. That way you can have a strip of buttons open in a separate window and just click them to put them in. It makes it very easy to make copies and re-use your work.

I hope that these buttons which I have pre-made will be interesting enough that you will enjoy using them. There is no copyright or limitation, just use them. Maybe this will inspire you to search through the program to find some clippable button code, which is available in various places, you just need to read some of the tooltips, and probably you can find the code. Most of the time it’s going to the clipboard, and then you need to paste it back into the button click area. It’s found in Tab I and then down there somewhere it says ‘code’, there is a little tab that says ‘code’. That is where you will find the spot to enter the button click code.

I hope you enjoy this program, I will get back to working on it later, right now I have a large project that I am working on at home, and I can’t wait to finish it. So, my contributions to the code for this project will be minimal for a while, until I can complete my work here at home. Some types of projects you need to complete before the cold weather comes…

Wish me the best!

-DCKIM

Finally we are fully in business with all twenty pages of this HTML drawing program ready to be used. The only thing that we don’t have just yet are some graphical starter packs. That would really help a lot because you wouldn’t really need to draw very much, or figure anything out, you could just start right away putting together some fun webpages. The interesting bug that I caught recently was this one: When I would switch from one level to another, and try to use shift + enter to open the window so that I could test animations, there was something wrong. I didn’t have the animations menu showing up like how it should, so, it would obviously be very difficult to pull code.

Who cares what was wrong, because I fixed whatever it was, and I’m not sure I even remember what it was from yesterday until today. The important thing is that it’s no longer an issue. So, since then I moved on to another problem which was the cross over from my desktop computer to a mobile telephone screen or any other screen size. It was showing up way to big! So, the solution to that was to use the same setup numbers that we would have used for the ‘VW conversion’ saves. Those were normally used for single file outputs for someone who is interested in making their own single file programs. So, we are now getting a double use from that same system. When you save your webpages in a ZIP file package, then whichever size you chose will become the natural 100% width. That way we can get a lot better usage across different devices.

So, now it’s basically set it an forget it, then just go along on your merry way drawing whatever website pages that you like.

Check out the new file menu

It might make things easier to use, and make commands easier to find… maybe? I’ll keep working on it, and get some more things into there, maybe that will make an improvement to the program. That way maybe you will know how to use more of it? It’s kinda tricky sometimes, and that is half because of bad programming, and half because I haven’t done all of the work to tell people how to use it just yet…

Best wishes!

After seeing the result of some little changes, thanks google, I’m starting to think that it might not be so great, and I’m thinking a hard reversion might be in order. If you think about it, what was everyone doing before social media anyway?

Recent changes are now adding a Sitemap, and an RSS feed to the mix, along with OG-images to boot. The next step would have been to make a way to enter your domain name information so that it would become functional… but wait, why are we trying to align this with the norms required for social media integration anyways? Isn’t that what this project is the antithesis of? Wasn’t that the design direction from the outset?

Don’t get me wrong, you could always easily strap that on afterwards, or we could make it an option but, my feeling is to leave the defaults as just a minimal HTML drafting program. Just output the minimum of formatting and let the user decide the rest. Don’t make them do work to remove what they never wanted/needed.

If ‘discoverability’ is what you are after:

You can still get that yourself, there is no loss here.

I really just liked it better before, and if you wanted an SSG(static site generator) you should just go ahead with setting it up, it has all of those thing handled automatically.

But this program is supposed to be the artistic/fun program.

If everything is going to change (possibly for the better), maybe this program should be on the right side of it, and almost completely ignore the presence of social media. That means we don’t need metadata as the default. For a lot of users, I can see this as being a good choice, and a broad preference. Metadata, sitemaps, and RSS feed are really only for people who want Google to read and index their pages.

If you don’t care about SEO or Indexing, then who cares?

If you are drawing your website for yourself or your own friends, then you don’t need any of that fancy metadata. You can just send the website link to your friends, and that’s how it can work. I feel pretty strongly about this, and unless you are in the business of advertising deliberately, and you want attention from ’the internet-at-large’(strangers), you really don’t want metadata/etc anyhow.

Wish us the best for reverting the changes and taking metadata out of the equation for now.

Looking at setting up parameters for a blogging format.

To me it seems like a fairly good plan to work along through the additions or changes which I would like to make to the ‘HDUB Pixel Art Edition’ program. Then, at the same time I should write a blog post about what is motivating the additional codework and then link to some example page which are made using the new tool. That way it will satisfy several interests simultaneously.

Most likely I can just recycle a lot of the imagery that is directly part of the ‘HDUB Pixel Art Edition’ interface, because that is what I will be talking about anyhow. So, in theory, this could be a pretty good thing to start doing, improving my personal workflow greatly and crossing together all of the necessities of both coding and advertising for this new project at the same time.

This might also help with my own personal motivation, pushing myself to continue to work through whatever new challenges I might face, though, the majority of the most difficult parts of the program are already done.

This is more like the icing on the cake.

The most important decisions about the program, and the most difficult point in the code have been finished for quite some time, and since then I have been trying to ‘zero-in’ on the most crucial additions that can be made to enhance the program for a beginner.

The best thing about this program is that it is a ‘one-stop-shop’ in the sense that you can now save a complete 20 page website as a single zipped package. You even get a sitemap and an RSS feed happening right away, which is crucial for SEO if you want to get picked up on google. Aside from that it is also very important to have the RSS set up so that someone else can have a very lightweight method of following your new posts.

I could make it somewhat tutorial in nature.

This new format could help to give a more interesting, and less ‘dry’ form of insight into how the program is used. That might be helpful for someone who is not an ’exploratory learner’.

As the first order of business, I will draw a little example that will show which button to press when you want to save your entire project. Maybe that will help? Then that way I can also test whether the RSS feed and the sitemap is really working or not.

Wish me luck!

Oh wait! I don’t have a convenient way to link between the pages.

So, I will try to write the few lines of code that will make that happen easily. Maybe that should be the first thing that I draw up as part of this new coding/blogging format? Sure, why not…

Finally I can link the pages to each other.

The only problem now is that there is no way to have a valid sitemap/rss unless I have a way to enter the domain name into the program… where would that even go? There’s no room left in the menu! Maybe I’ll need to fit it into there somewhere.

That’s a job for another day… Right now, I guess they are just there symbolically. They don’t really do anything… BAH!

I suppose, ultimately, I’m going to need to have everything that any other SSG needs as input. I guess I should just try to use that as a model.

Here is the link to the set of pages that I have been trying to get working.

Simple Two Page Project Example with links

Try navigating to https://earlyweblinks.com

This is a wonderful directory showcasing plenty of real websites from all over the internet. I know what you’re thinking and no, these are not all neocities websites, although there seem to be a few. There are, reportedly, more that 12000 websites in this amazing modern internet directory.

When I said modern, I guess I should have rather used the term ‘current’, because there is nothing particularly modern about this website. That’s exactly how I like it. The original spirit of the internet is palpable on this human curated website. I like knowing that real people actually wrote those websites, and I like knowing that the directory itself has also been assembled by an actual human person.

Actual Human Written Websites Should Be Regarded as Premium.

The sad reality is that projects like this one are typically ignored in the mainstream, and rarely get any significant attention. That’s why I’m writing up a little article to tell you all about it.

I really like it, and it’s just sticking in my mind. There is someone out there willing to take their own time to pull together a curated directory for your enjoyment, and I just think that’s a noble public service. You can see from the comments that the response, even though modest in number, is overwhelmingly positive.

Everybody loves this website. A lot of that love is because we know it’s pointing us to real website made by real people. It’s very hard to compete against that in my books, especially when you see how fake everything has become. We’re in a big commercialized mess of algorithm that the little guy can hardly break through.

Most small personal website never see the light of day. Someone just writes it for their own satisfaction, and I just think that’s great! If there was some way to connect all of that and chalk it up into some sort of mish-mashed system, just to get some interactivity through that, I think we’d be on the right track.

Neocities only has a system to track it’s own subdomain sites.

That’s where this thing is different in a positive way. It’s not only part of one thing. We can see websites from anywhere, and they are all listed here, curated on the basis that they are written by actual human people.

To me, that’s a really good thing, and a thing worth checking out.

Give it a whirl, maybe have a look at the ‘Site of the Week’, or get crazy and try the ‘Random Site’ button.

Best wishes, happy surfing… Where has this been?

https://earlyweblinks.com

The other defaults that we have will give fairly good metadata on each page, that way you can link it immediately through social media, and hopefully the previews will look 100% top-notch, just how you designed it. Just make sure that you use the load button to get your custom OG-image. Otherwise you could switch it out after the fact but, it’s much easier to do it in the program because then when you save the project (using ’s’) you will have that OG-image still there later…

Middle mouse scroll

This is now the default mouse behaviour in the outgoing pages. It can be changed if you don’t prefer it. It’s set in the footer, which can be changed on a per-page basis. So, all of the pages can be very unique but, I wanted to make sure that the initial default setup was a very common one. It needs to be something that everyone’s going to understand and hopefully you agree, AND I think that it covers off something that most people might find difficult to implement on their own. This way it’s just always there, and the outgoing webpages feel almost identical to how it is while you are working the program.

I feel like these are pretty good defaults

I’m not sure if there are any other good defaults that I can set up so that it’s even easier and a better fit for what people would like to see. This isn’t intended to be a complete replacement or even a competitor to standard SSgs(static site generators). Those are great, they do a wonderful job. It’s just that it’s very restrictive, and everything is in completely defined boxes. So, this is actually totally different from that, you can put the boxes wherever you want, and you can even write your own code into it if you know how.

There is a lot more freedom here

With more freedom, you might find that it’s not as streamlined as Hugo, for example. But, then, there is no real comparison between those two things. Hugo doesn’t end up with a whole lot of wiggle room in the formats. They’re pretty much button-down and set. That’s exactly what you want for a standard blog/news style format, and you-know, all of the other stuff that it does, it’s Great.

Just throwing some images into the page in a highly graphical composition, that’s where we are at with this program.

Looking ahead

The current stage of the program is pretty good, and of course next I will need to test it out. The capability to save a single file vanilla program still remains. The versatility hasn’t been reduced. There is a lot to try in this program. The goal, initially wasn’t to make an ’expert-only’ style program but, instead to make something that was easy to use and ‘for-everyone’. Basically that is all accomplished in the defaults. Having effective and easy default settings is what makes the difference between an ’experts-only’ and a ‘for-everyone’ program. Most of those things are already on board with the program. The majority of the defaults are good but, we haven’t reduced the possible specificity of the configuration to the point that you cannot anymore have a near full control.

Anyone who knows a little bit of HTML CSS and Javascript will have an absolute field-day on this program.

Anything you know will have a ten-fold effect within the program context.

Listing them

• a quick way to make up a link to one of the twenty pages(click a button to input the link), probably just use the standardized button maker already included in the program
• make up some special functions to give better ’end-points’ for the user to be able to interact with the program code and potentially code their own functions for the program and extend the program that way, expand on that thought…

Write up some good user accessible functions

For an hobby Javascript efficianado to be able to interact with the program a little bit better, I should write up some custom ’end-points’ that will make interacting with the program code more fun, and a lot simpler. You would have thought I would have done that earlier for myself but, I wasn’t sure what the final product was going to be. So, I’m going to try to think of some very basic ones to help people to extend the program themselves.

It’s a working program, you can absolutely make a functional artistic/hobby website with it. Even so, it’s basically experimental at this point, and serves as a proof of the concept. HTML can be treated graphically, and it’s actually very nice to use that way.

Yes this is now the default, and it feels a lot more like any other static site generator with respect of that. We are now getting a generated index.html, and most of the metadata is taken care of for our pages. Keep in mind, however, that you don’t need to stop at 20 pages. The page number is not a limit, it is just the number of pages that you can save in a single project. You can always have multiple projects and therefore extend the website through that method. The only thing left that I would like to still add is a way to make easy links between the pages but, this is a pretty solid advancement for a couple of days work (google really helped). I really hate writing computer code, and there is absolutely nothing ‘cutting-edge’ about this, so I went right to the google prompt and tried whether it could just fix up some of the things I wanted to add. Of course, I needed to clip it in manually but, it seemed to work very easily this time. No major problems, didn’t break any of the code (that I know of… yet)

I put some other stuff in there as default

Just like I mentioned in a previous post, I made a default that will basically make sure that the webpages will have the ‘middle-mouse-pan-action’ just like how the program does it. So, it brings everything together very nicely now.

The last thing to do today is to finish a post for the blog

What’s the point of making a significant change to the program if I don’t tell anyone about it? Let me know if you found this, you can drop me a line somewhere on Mastodon, and tell me what you think of the project thus far. It’s not a commercial project, and it’s fairly simple to use. There is documentation. The main page gives the links to the documentation and the program.

Save the program with CTRL + C

Yes, the whole program can be saved as a single vanilla file directly in the browser. The only other thing that I can think of that I have missed is that we can’t actually set the location metadata yet, so everyone will think you are all in Toronto Canada when you save your website.

It would be easier if I just change it, either that or you could move to Canada. (that was a joke… or was it?)

Sup everybody, welcome to this new blog. It’s basically a casual way for me to post some articles and try to get feedback, or maybe even just post the latest update news for the website.

This one is for HDUB Pixel Art Edition, which is basically the main program that has been produced by the project thus far. The stage we are at: We have a fully functional proof of concept, demostrating that HTML design can be treated exactly like all other 2D graphical art programs. It’s way more fun that way, and you can so much more control that with other methods. SSG(static site generators) are sort of boring to use, and after setting it up for this blog, and for the HDUB documentation (dckim.org), I am starting to think… “Yeah, Pixel Art Edition is actually a fun program to use!”

Static Site Generators

These are actually very boring to use. They have their strong points, when you want everything to be very regimented but, the drawback is when you want to put in some of your own custom buttons… and then it’s like “How can I even do that here?”

I’m not even sure it’s possible, and if it is, it’s hardly worth it. SSG is great for very straight forward News/Blog/Etc websites, 100% the best.

HDUB Potential Upgrades: “How about saving 20 pages at once?”

I’m thinking about it, and have been for a few weeks while I haven’t touched the code for a while. Now I am thinking about adding in the last few ‘kickers’ just to make sure this is a top class, untouchable gem of a program.

On the table, I have a few ideas. How about instead of saving only one webpage in a ‘zipped’ format, we save all twenty (20) levels at once? To me this seems like a ’no-brainer’, of course do it. Then the other thing that I have been thinking of is to make the first level become an index pointing to the other 19 pages… So it will just have some default links to all other pages, maybe itself too. That way the user has all of that default setup immediately.

That’s mainly what I’m looking at, and then maybe making the default footer give a ‘middle mouse scroll’ feature to the pages. So, because you can customize the ‘footer’ of the page, you can always change this, if you prefered the ordinary scroll.

That would really change the whole feeling of your pages.

Middle Mouse Scrolling

This would give you a really strong ‘world-building’ feeling to your webpage drawing experience, and then the viewer of the webpage would have the very same feeling while they navigate around your artwork in the pages. So, what I am really looking for here is to install some pop-culture defaults, which everyone would instant love. So, the above proposed changes are strong candidates.

Taste of North York isn’t just at Mel Lastman Square.

The festivities are actually going on all over the area, and are promoting all of the amazing restaurants that are available in this wonderful region of Toronto.

While I was walking through the square today, it didn’t look like there were any specifically Halal food setups but, I am sure there are some in there somewhere. If you aren’t finding anything Halal, you can always go for the vegetarian options in the square. Always remember, when in doubt, just ask what the ingredients are, and maybe, just maybe, bring your own spoon.

The spoon is just in case there are some novelty iced-cream flavours available which come in small amounts but are all on a single order. I have no evidence that this is not the case.

Various Cultural Treats will be showcased.

That is an absolute certainty but, we can only truly confirm the state of affairs by investigating the situation manually. There may be cakes, and other confections, having various types and densities. It is entirely possible that there might be specialty cookies present within the festive areas.

Here are some places to get Halal food.

• Shawarma MAX, always a good choice, always Halal
• Villa Madina, always Halal, super good food
• There’s actually so many good places that are always 100% Halal, I don’t know anymore why I started a list but, there is no reason to abandon the list and then reformat this section because it’s just a casual blogging style of writing over here at DCKIM toronto tech blog.

Best wishes to everyone who is enjoying this festival. Always consider how fortunate you are that you have been blessed with safety and other wonderful things which you cannot provide for yourself but, only can be provided for us all from the creator of all things, Allah(SWT).

Maybe when I get around to it, I will install the big paper sign again? Hey, why not. It got some attention last fall, and now HDUB Pixel Art Edition is hitting the streets.

I can hardly believe that last years sign stayed up on that community sign-board for as long as it did. For a simple paper sign made out of bristol-board, four months is a long long time. Every time it rained, I wasn’t expecting it to make it through the week. I actually made three more which all were ripped off by wind and rain. The only one that lasted was the first one that I placed near the Famous Owls Meat Shop. I have no idea why it lasted, maybe it’s not a very windy location. Some-how, some-way, it stayed up on that post for such a long time.

I don’t know when it actually got torn off. Some time through the snowy brutally cold winter, that’s my guess. Good thing I had a backup set of letters, so making up the new signage wasn’t too much work. I just need to paint up a little more to finish it out: HTML Hobby (above) and Craft HTML (below). Hopefully it will be similar to the little single page flyer design. I really like the flyer.

HDUB Pixel Art Edition is out already

In reality I haven’t touched the code in a few weeks but, maybe there are a few last tricks to be pulled to make this thing even a little bit hotter. Still, from what I am seeing, there is nothing even remotely similar for making Artistic HTML websites. Everything seems to be geared towards Static Site Generators (SSGs) like this one (HUGO). Those are great for blogs and news websites but, for more Artistic stuff, you need more freedom, and it has to be more about the graphics than the text. You need more control over the positions of your imagery so that you can have the freedom to overlap components and design the way that you decide.

That’s what HDUB is about, freedom. It’s main focus is making it easy by letting you treat the HTML pages in the same way that you would treat any artistic canvas.

The absolute best thing about HDUB as a piece of software is that it works completely offline, and your intellectual property and artworks remain completely yours. You don’t need to sign-in or sign-up to use it. Just download the little file (~1.5mb) and the program is yours forever.

This one doesn’t do anything funny like updating itself etc. and it doesn’t have anything built in to track you or send any of your data etc. to a company. That’s because HDUB isn’t even a company, and there is no corporation which has control over it. It’s just a clean piece of Canadian Software which works for the user.