After a slow year, I’m now working on Aviamagazine again. Some minor layout changes will be made, but more important, functionality and content will be expanded.

Social connectors

The most significant change is the integration of social connectors. Facebook and Twitter will be integrated on all content pages which makes it easy to publish the page to both social networks. On the technical side, jqeury popup modal windows will be introduced and bit.ly urls as well.

The existing comment functionality which can only be used by members will be made public. To make the comments more attractive, gravatar will be integrated in the site.

Layout

Some changes will be made concerning layout. The red main color will be replaced with a more brighter red. Page section titles will be changed to a web 2.0 style title. All box titles (tabs) will change.

The interaction column (now placed on the right side of the pages) is moved to the left navigation column providing more content space.

Content

And finally, lots of changes on content. I still have trip reports to Japan, Australia, China, Canada en the US on the shelf. This year the content will gradually be published. Also the Out of Service section we be expanded with a special on Datachang and Davis-Monthan.

When

I’m using a phased implementation instead off a big bang. First of all, some layout changes will appear followed by the social connectors. Content is changed throughout the process.

Since the beginning of this year, news on AviaMagazine was running slow. We simply lacked the time to update the news more frequently. Well, finally I had some time to build a definite solution for the problem. I’m now completing the new build homepage which features automatic news feed integration provided  by Aviationweek.com. New AJAX techniques were used to get the feed data asynchronously. The new homepage of which you see a small peak on the right will be online shortly.

Questions I hear a lot this days:

- Why?
- What’s it about? 

Good questions, I asked myself that question for several weeks now. Why? Just because I can.  Friends were interested in the story behind skylark-creative and all its related activities. What is the address of your blog others asked. Finally, here it is.

The second question is even better, what's it about? It tells the story of the skylark brands, the design, photography and dj activities and off course AviaMagazine. That’s the business part of it. The rest is just a reflection of my opinion on common things, like for instance the brilliant invention of the combined (pre-mixed) salt and pepper jars. A Nobel prize for that guy!

So I hope you enjoy my blog and visit it often. Feel free to comment on any of my posts and address the nation as well.

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