Hello, humans! Today I am publicizing a big site update in which has been in the works for a while. A whole bunch of pages have been updated, as well as entirely new pages being introduced! I am very excited to show you everything I have been working on for this past while, although there is so much that it’s not all entirely done yet!
NEW PAGES
Graphic Design (and sub-pages)
After many months of waiting, a page dedicated to my graphical works has been published! This page acts as a portal to sub-pages showcasing my graphics such as icons, logos, original character assets, and more! Certain graphics will also be able to be downloaded once the page is completed.
At the time of writing, the only sub-pages able to be viewed are the iconography pages, Software Icons and and System Icons.
Entomology: What and Why?
This page describes what entomology is as a field of study and why it intrigues myself and others so intricately, what entomology means to me, and even my own sense of ethics.
Sound Schemes (and sub-pages)
This new page acts as a portal to allow readers to listen to and download my custom computer sound schemes, including Aurora for Windows.
NEW FEATURES
Navigational Buttons
Every page now consists of at most two buttons, one which brings the reader back to the top of the current page, and one which returns the reader to a portal page if the current page is a sub-page (such as species-specific pages in the My Favourite Insects page, for example).
Here are the buttons:
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These buttons are emoji, meaning they will look different depending on the platform used to browse the site.
Tips from Windy Windows
Certain pages, such as the home screen for example, will now have exclusive sections where yours truly will explain something important, provide additional context or information, or state an interesting fact! Most of the time these will be located below the content of which the tip is relevant to.
This feature was implemented to make the website friendlier for newcomers and to make the website easier to use and understand.
UPDATED PAGES
Home Page
The Home page has been majorly updated with lots of new content, deeming it much more useful than it was before. Now the page displays a list of new or updated pages with links to and descriptions of each, site features, new blog posts, and other media such as new photographs front and centre. This makes it much easier to discover new and interesting (although the latter is subjective) content on the site as before it was only the sidebar which displayed new content. Tips from Windy Windows are also now primarily shown off here too!
Entomology Portal and Species Pages
The Entomology section is a very important part of the site as a whole, as it was one of the original reasons I began this site. It has been updated, more specifically the Entomology Portal page and the species pages found under the My Favourite Insects page, which has also been updated.
ENTOMOLOGY PORTAL PAGE
The portal page has been updated to be both more visually appealing (and less generic) and useful. The page now contains a detailed list of every page on this site relating to entomology, providing descriptions for each page. Links are also categorized.
MY FAVOURITE INSECTS
While minor, this page has received a visual update which spreads out the Order list and their respective silhouettes across the entire page, rather than the previous layout where they were formatted to the right of the page. This update makes the list easier to read, makes it look more professional, and makes it look less cluttered. Since not every item in this list is an insect order (Chilopoda, containing the centipedes, is an entire separate class, for example), the taxonomic rank of each listed group is stated before the name, with the name being bolded.
SPECIES SHOWCASE
Every single page showing off my favourite species within an order now not only contains species profiles for every species listed, but also a general introduction to the order as a whole, as well as a chart containing the taxonomic information for the order and the list of families (and description of the family if available) within it.
USER INTERFACE CHANGES & UPDATES
As of this update, the navigation bar, sidebar, and footer have been reorganized and have gained some new content.
NAVIGATION BAR
The navigation bar has been reorganized, with certain menus being moved into other menus, thus becoming sub-menus, as well as a few new options!
The „Social Media” menu has been moved into the „Information/Social Media” menu, which name was also updated to reflect this change.
A new menu option, the „Downloads” menu, has been added, which adds quick access to downloadable content on this site such as sounds schemes, icons, and graphics.
The contents of the „Entomology” menu have been put into new submenus, known as „Insect Information” and „Personal Study and Research” respectfully.
SIDEBAR
The sidebar has gained two new sections, Insect Fact of the Day, which simply displays the insect-oriented fact of the day with a link to the Insect Fact of the Day page to view more facts, as well Featured Species, which displays a picture of along with the name and relevant information of a insect species I want to show to the world. If the species is featured elsewhere on the site, clicking the name will direct the user to the that respective page where they can learn more.
I feel that the Insect Fact of the Day page was either useless or heavily underutilized due to the nature of its contents. Most people will not go out of their way to simply view a small fact spanning a few sentences. I figured having the most recent fact displayed on the sidebar suits the nature of it more as the fact is situated in a dominant component of the website where it will always be seen rather than hidden in a sub-page. Not only that, but having the fact in the sidebar intrigues readers to the IFotD page, where they can read more! I decided to put the entirely new Featured Species section in the sidebar for a similar reason.
FOOTER
In order to better promote the open-source and free-cultural nature of the website and all of my works, a new section has been added to the footer displaying the respective Creative Commons and GNU General Public License models that apply to them, along with links to each license. I can’t stress enough how important having everything I create be completely free (both monetarily and constitutionally) and open to everyone is to me, as well how much I value and respect the open-source community and strive to promote it.
Those are all the new features and content I’ve been working hard on for the past couple of months. It may not seem like much to some, but it was a lot of work that is, believe it or not, no where near done, as I’ve yet to implement everything I have planned. Since most people have at least a bit more free time these days thanks to COVID-19, I have been graced with more time than usual that I can spend on my hobbies and passions, which in due time reflects onto this very site. I must admit I am eager to go back to classes and into a relatively normal world.
I hope everyone enjoys the new features and updates I’ve worked hard on, but most importantly I hope that you and your families and friends have been safe and healthy. Thank you, and stay tuned (and safe)! 🙂
Windy Windows' Blog 
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