Website Update

Dusting the Pelican!

After a few years, my Pelican has become a little dusty. So it needed a bit of a brush-over.

‘Pelican’ is the name of the blogging software that I’m using. It builds the website on my own computer, as static html pages, incorporating the rules that are set in its (custom) templates and settings, and the articles and images that I write, or that are submitted by users of the Bookart Generator.

When the website files are ready, which usually takes a few minutes for a full rebuild, I sync them to my webserver, and they become available for anyone to read.

The Pelican software that I was using, with all the settings and customizations tailored specifically for this blog, had become quite outdated, and, as also the Python (programming language) that it used had become deprecated, I had to finally start working on the update.

Updating the software

Updating from Python 2.7 to Python 3.8 and from Pelican 3.6.3 to Pelican 4.5.3 meant that I also would have to update my custom plugins. And while I was at it, I’ve also run some (automatic) accessibility tests, and adjusted and polished the web pages in many places.

This means that VektorRascheln.de now features:

• larger text with fewer characters per line
• new icons in the article info section
• a new ‘back to top’ button, so you can quickly navigate back to the start of the page
• updated Javascript libraries
• updated official Pelican plugins
• improved keyboard navigation
• CSS and Javascript minification and versioning
• a version hint for Inkscape and a ‘Last modified’ date in the article headers
• new link structure without ‘.html’ at the end (redirects are in place, so this should not be disrupting your bookmarks)
• Atom feeds include a ‘modified’ date, too, so I can keep my articles up-to-date, and – depending upon your feed reader software – you can get a notification about that
• many small CSS improvements, bug fixes and accessibility improvements

Updating the articles

I’ve also resumed updating my website’s articles, so the information in them matches current Inkscape versions.

So far, I’ve reviewed and updated the following articles for the current Inkscape version (for the last few updates, I’ve even been using the development version of Inkscape 1.1, which is due to be released in a few weeks):

• Einladungskarte zum Richtfest
• Butterfly 3D Paper Picture
• Creating Book Art
• Desktop-Publishing unter Linux
• Inkscape for Noobs – Part I: The Basics
• Inkscape für Einsteiger – Teil I: Grundlagen
• Inkscape for Noobs – Part II: Practice
• Inkscape für Einsteiger – Teil II: Praxis
• Animated Screencast GIFs: Making-of
• Inkscape für Entdecker: Einleitung
• Farben ändern mit Mausgesten
• Schraffuren
• Unsichtbar…
• Beispiel Webdesign: Farben übertragen
• Farben erhalten
• Perspektive: Ein Paket beschriften
• Pfade elegant verformen

To be continued …

Next, I’m going to write a follow-up to the article about installing multiple Inkscape versions on a single computer, which people commonly need for testing the development versions, or when unmaintained third-party extensions become outdated.

Enjoy!