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A prose "gallery"?
18 years ago
General
Zjonni asked the reasonable question of "what would a gallery that treated prose 'properly' look like?"
Well, while this is starting out by answering the question in the negative -- what you probably *shouldn't* do -- here's what's mildly irksome about Fur Affinity's approach here (taking it as relatively common):
* While this sounds obvious, you can't generate a thumbnail from prose. Yet it's going to be the thumbnail on a gallery site that attracts people's attention. This is the least solvable problem because in the use cases gallery software is designed for -- image management/display -- it isn't actually a problem at all. Stories and poems are going to be served better by a different display paradigm.
* For stories, your option appears to be either to upload them in a file format which can only be downloaded (i.e., not viewed within the browser), or in plain text. This again isn't entirely the gallery programs' fault; the vast majority of web apps really suck for displaying long swaths of text, in part because so few people designing them really have much clue about typography and layout. This leaves two sub-optimal options: upload stuff as PDFs, like I am, forcing people to download the file and then come back here if they want to comment (significant groups will drop out at both 'stages' there), or upload it as plain text. And I know I sure wouldn't want to read 10,000 words laid out the way this journal entry is. :)
* Something that's easily fixable, but it's a frequent oversight, as it is here on FA: the only tagging taxonomy available is keyed toward *art* subjects only. It'd be easy for me to tag a picture as "female cat macrophile mature audiences," but "romance comedy" or "horror mystery," not so much.
As to a positive answer, hmm. Off the top of my head:
* Have descriptions on the front page (not tool tips, thanks).
* Allow grouping of 'chapter' files into 'books.'
* Allow association of illustrations with books.
* Allow reading online with attractive typography.
* Have a meaningful tagging system.
* Allow searching within stories.
Well, while this is starting out by answering the question in the negative -- what you probably *shouldn't* do -- here's what's mildly irksome about Fur Affinity's approach here (taking it as relatively common):
* While this sounds obvious, you can't generate a thumbnail from prose. Yet it's going to be the thumbnail on a gallery site that attracts people's attention. This is the least solvable problem because in the use cases gallery software is designed for -- image management/display -- it isn't actually a problem at all. Stories and poems are going to be served better by a different display paradigm.
* For stories, your option appears to be either to upload them in a file format which can only be downloaded (i.e., not viewed within the browser), or in plain text. This again isn't entirely the gallery programs' fault; the vast majority of web apps really suck for displaying long swaths of text, in part because so few people designing them really have much clue about typography and layout. This leaves two sub-optimal options: upload stuff as PDFs, like I am, forcing people to download the file and then come back here if they want to comment (significant groups will drop out at both 'stages' there), or upload it as plain text. And I know I sure wouldn't want to read 10,000 words laid out the way this journal entry is. :)
* Something that's easily fixable, but it's a frequent oversight, as it is here on FA: the only tagging taxonomy available is keyed toward *art* subjects only. It'd be easy for me to tag a picture as "female cat macrophile mature audiences," but "romance comedy" or "horror mystery," not so much.
As to a positive answer, hmm. Off the top of my head:
* Have descriptions on the front page (not tool tips, thanks).
* Allow grouping of 'chapter' files into 'books.'
* Allow association of illustrations with books.
* Allow reading online with attractive typography.
* Have a meaningful tagging system.
* Allow searching within stories.
The Catch-22 for a writer, though, is, well, that there are so many blogging, journal, and message board sites out there. FA, for better or worse, has the network effect going for it: even if you have your own web site, even if you're using other gallery sites, even if you don't particularly like FA for whatever reasons, you're almost certainly going to end up with an account on FA if you're a (visual) furry artist. You simply miss out on too much audience otherwise.
The problem for writers is that there's nothing comparable to FA for us. Posting a story on a message board or journal site is easy enough, but which message board and which journal? Are any of them going to get the number of eyeballs that FA will? Probably not. Unfortunately, FA isn't very optimized for writers, so it's not optimal, either. But setting up a site which can develop into the "FA for text" is a non-trivial task.