Roads to Joy

This is fun! After a somewhat restless sleep, spent half-awake, half-dreaming about a persistent problem with some web pages I’m sharing responsibility for, I awoke with a simple idea. Why not use emojis as the icons to indicate the various types of files I wish to serve from within cells of a table?

They’re small but immediately identifiable, and so don’t crowd the table with multiple words of text that otherwise might run the risk of bumping into each other, or reaching the end of the available page space. A truncated table wouldn’t do anybody any good.

I didn’t know if I could link emojis to a target file just like text, but so it proves. For my last success, I managed to find a way to compel our WordPress format to serve files for download only, not to immediately open an application (like a pdf viewer or an mp3 player). Each little success elicited a soupçon of delight, a modicum of joy, from this cheerful nerd. Even though I’m really quite old, as I’m reminded on a daily basis when I look in the mirror, there’s life in the old dog yet, it seems.

While the clients of the web pages I’ve been working on will have a chance to consider our efforts, I’m delighted to have got a step further on in what will be served for the next term. It’s all a lot of fun, and even though I’ve doubtless invented a wheel that’s been recognised for many years now, it’s all news and gratifying to me.

I can only hope it will be a delight for those who must try to decipher the new language when they come to interrogate the table I’ve set up. Thoughtfully, of course, I’ve provided a legend to the icons, for the avoidance of any doubt.

And on these laurels of joy, I might just rest for the rest of the day.