New gallery style a la Boston.com's "The Big Picture"

[wellman]

I've come to love the big, vertically-scrolling goodness of Boston.com's The Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/scenes_from_the_zoo.html). Any chance we could have something similar as a new gallery style?

[Andy]

Thanks for the FR!

[scwalter]

I agree that is a good idea. If you do add this, please also enable the keyboard shortcuts "j" for next and "k" for previous (in addition to the arrow keys of course).

-Scott

[omonra21]

I agree that is a good idea. If you do add this, please also enable the keyboard shortcuts "j" for next and "k" for previous (in addition to the arrow keys of course).

-Scott

I'd actually prefer to have Gmail's nomenclature - ie j previous / k next :)

[darryl]

I *love* that style. I especially love how they number the photos so you can send a link and say, "I really like #7!"

It's totally old-school , but it works. And *whoa* -- I had no idea about the keyboard shortcuts. That rocks!

[colourbox]

I'd actually prefer to have Gmail's nomenclature - ie j previous / k next :)

Which is actually descended from professional video editing conventions (JKL navigation keys).

[darryl]

Which is actually descended from professional video editing conventions (JKL navigation keys).

Uhm... I don't know if I buy that.

It's true that the Avid/1 mapped what used to be custom keys (on an analog tape editor) to JKL (reverse, stop, forward). It came out in 1989.

(References: http://blogs.creativecow.net/blog/766/how-do-i-spell-relief-jkl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avid_Technology)

BUT...

HJKL (for left-down-up-right) goes back to Unix and vi dumb terminals where those arrows were inscribed on those keys. We're talking 1975-6.

And note how on Boston.com J moves you "down" and K moves you "up" like Gmail (as omonra21 mentioned), which I believe was lifted from vi (which again, owes the directional-key assignment to the Lear-Siegler ADM3A terminal that Bill Joy used to write vi.)

(References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM3A)

I'm willing to bet that the geeks that probably wrote the Boston.com hack are more familiar with text rather than video editing, and the j/k combo is a tribute to vi.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to kill 15 more minutes at work not working. :-}