Devlog 2

script.js is the new addition so here’s what it’s actually doing! It holds all the material data (steel, concrete, timber, etc. actual specs, pros/cons, use cases) and it builds the registry cards from that data instead of having every card written out individually, it also runs the boot-sequence typing effect when you open a record and fills out the detail page when you click into a material (title, seal, dials, the whole thing) and handles switching between sections! including moving the gauge fill to wherever you’ve navigated

so basically, it’s the part making the site do things instead of just sitting there looking nice. which, to be fair, was kind of the previous situation. also noticed a few other things while going through the files. so update! the nav labels got renamed to something a little moodier. Registry is now Compendium, Application is now Instrumentality. apparently we’re doing terminology now (I hope it does sound better though). The landing page kicker changed too, from the previous plain version to “The Seventeenth Record” which raises the fairly obvious question of where records one through sixteen are. WELL, let me just say.. I don’t know! probably somewhere above my pay grade

there are also two fonts being imported that aren’t actually used anywhere in the CSS yet. they’re just there in the import line, loaded in and ready to contribute absolutely nothing. honestly, good for them anndddd just to be clear, none of the stuff from the last devlog i noticed are fixed yet. We got an absolutely broken mobile responsiveness. This pass was mostly about getting things organized rather than fixing anything. one thing at a time though! we’re not building the interstate

Devlog 1

Alright, first one of these so let’s keep it honest instead of doing a highlight reel. ARCHIVE-7 is a materials reference site I’m building that’s skinned like a terminal from a sunken Art Deco engineering archive. Steel, concrete, timber, that kind of thing but presented like you salvaged the data from underwater instead of scrolling a normal database. That’s the pitch anyway. Where it actually is right now is a bit messier than the pitch.

The nav is a pressure gauge and I’m still into that idea. Instead of a normal navbar there’s a vertical gauge running down the left edge! A tube with five stops on it, marked in fathoms instead of section names (0, 22, 48, 76, 110). Click a stop, in theory the fill level rises to meet it and the whole thing feels like you’re descending deeper into the archive. In practice, right now, the animation just isn’t firing. It snaps to the new state instead of settling into it so at the moment it’s basically a fancy-looking list that skips the part that made it interesting. That’s next on the list to actually fix not just assume is working because the CSS looks right.

The landing page has a hole in it. This one stings a bit to post but whatever, that’s the point of a devlog. The cover page is supposed to show a facility summary and a featured specimen pulled from the real data. Something that gives you a reason to be on that page instead of just a title. Right now both of those sections are rendering completely empty. The header text up top is fine, the sign-off line at the bottom is fine but there’s a big gap in the middle where actual content should be.

Small thing but noting it. There’s a thin vertical line + rotated readout sitting on the right edge, purely there to balance the gauge visually so the page doesn’t feel like it’s all weighted to one side. Right now it’s sitting a little too close to the scrollbar for my taste. Minor but going on the list.

So that’s the state of it. Visually the parts that ARE rendering look like what I want. The palette, the type, the gauge shape but structurally there’s real stuff not working yet. Next devlog is hopefully “the gauge moves and the cover page isn’t empty” we’ll see!