March 2021 Development Roundup (Patreon)

Hey all! March was probably the busiest month I've had in a long time, as I moved to a new state and started working for XDA Developers. As a result, this will be another short development log.

PhotoStack

PhotoStack currently uses the Bootstrap framework for the interface (buttons, menus, popups, etc.) with a custom dark theme from Bootswatch on top. Bootstrap v5 is now in its third beta release, so it's now stable-ish enough that I'm starting to transition PhotoStack from v4 to v5.

PhotoStack on Bootstrap 5 (WIP)

This is a bit of a tedious process, but there are definitely some worthwhile improvements, like improvements to drop-downs and form elements. There's also better support for the Bootstrap icon library, so assuming it doesn't conflict with offline support, PhotoStack will use more icons after the switch — you can see them in the Import/Export buttons in the above screenshot.

Bootstrap v5 no longer requires the JQuery JavaScript library, like v4 does, so PhotoStack should be able to go without JQuery once it's updated to Bootstrap v5. That will only be a ~14% reduction in the amount of JavaScript code that PhotoStack uses, but hey, that's still an improvement!

Wii Shop Channel extension

I rolled out an update to my Wii Shop Channel browser extension, which plays the famous Wii Shop Channel theme in the background when you visit a shopping website. The new version switched to a higher-quality music loop, and it fixed a bug where switching to a shopping tab to a non-shopping tab didn't stop the music.

The extension also now detects many more websites as shopping sites, thanks to code contributions from others. I'm planning to add an actual control panel to the extension at some point, with a track selector and some other settings, but it's not a high priority for me right now.