Yesterday I posted a blog post about responsive images and Jekyll. Aside from it being long, there was actually a lot of work I needed to do before I could publish that blog post.
When I began redesigning my website, my first priority was project pages (case studies). But when I began developing it, I started with the blog. By design, there is a lot of overlap with the experience in both sections. And by focusing on the blog, I find the areas where my system will fail earlier.
So, I’m working out the kinks and identifying gaps as I go. If something isn’t essential right now, I won’t do it. For example: I don’t have an archive page. And I don’t have a thorough navigation system. There just isn’t enough content to worry about those things yet. I have ideas, but they can sit on a shelf for now.
As an example of doing things when they are needed: Until this last weekend, I did not have code snippets and syntax highlighting set up. The version and style I used in yesterday’s post has a few weaknesses. But it’s good enough for now.
I also finished adding the ability to have “additional resources” at the bottom of my posts. That section is one part of several extra components I’d like to have to support a variety of blog content types. And eventually, case study types.
Design and development philosophies around ‘just in time,’ and ‘just enough’ are ways to commit to incremental progress, and reduce the mountain of work to something more approachable.
Something I have discussed as important in the past.