Website Update: More Photography Lessons, Photographer’s View, and Tool Repairs

Since my October 11 update, I’ve expanded the Learning Center, added another way to explore photographs, and continued repairing the website’s learning tools. There are new pages and improvements to try, but the work needed before reopening online sales is still underway.

More lessons in the Learning Center

The Learning Center now has 60 lessons. I’ve added 40 lessons for beginner, intermediate, and experienced photographers, with diagrams, practical examples, and quizzes. Topics range from choosing a camera mode to understanding problems such as rolling shutter and flickering light.

The new lessons include 40 quizzes with three questions each. Search and level filters help narrow the list, and links to the Photography Lexicon let you look up terms while reading. I’ve checked search, filtering, quiz feedback, resetting answers, and opening and closing a glossary definition on the published page.

I’ve also changed how the lessons display on phones. Some diagrams were too wide, leaving important text outside the visible area. The mobile layout now includes readable, stacked explanations alongside fitted diagram previews. You can enlarge a diagram, zoom in, fit it back to the screen, and return to the lesson.

All 60 lessons were checked for horizontal overflow at the tested phone width. That is a useful check, though testing on a physical Android phone and at additional screen sizes remains part of the work ahead.

Photographer’s View

I’ve published Photographer’s View, a page that presents a photograph in a camera-style display. You can switch between the rear-screen view and the viewfinder, then follow links back to the source gallery and related photographs.

The photograph itself remains unchanged. The display fits the whole image rather than cropping it to fill the camera illustration. I’ve also revised the camera artwork and checked switching views, enlarging the photograph, and returning to the page.

I’ve also published a revised enlargement that gives the full photograph more room while retaining the viewfinder markings and readings. I checked the phone-width layout in the site editor and confirmed the published enlargement loads and closes correctly on desktop, including returning keyboard focus and restoring page scrolling. A separate public phone-width check and testing on a physical Android phone are still pending.

October featured photographs

The October Featured Photography page now contains 30 photographs. I’ve checked that all 30 images load, that the enlarged viewer opens and moves to the next photograph, and that the page fits the phone-width layout tested. Links back to the source galleries are also in place.

Repairs to the learning tools

Several tools have received corrections during the sales-readiness review.

In the Camera Simulator, I’ve published corrections to the shutter range, an astrophotography challenge, and the handling of reference settings. I checked the astrophotography challenge in the owner preview; broader browser and customer-access checks are still needed.

In Field Planning Studio, resetting the depth-of-field calculator now keeps the distance units consistent. Several invalid-input cases that previously left old results on screen now display an error and clear those results. I checked representative cases, including switching between feet and meters, resetting, and recovering from invalid entries.

In the Exposure & Histogram Lab, I’ve corrected how the exposure preview is calculated and improved the warnings for individual red, green, and blue channels. A strongly saturated color should not receive misleading advice simply because the combined brightness looks low. Loading an invalid replacement file now clears the previous analysis rather than leaving an old result on screen. The preview remains a simulation based on an already-rendered image; it cannot recover lost RAW data or predict a camera’s result.

In the Focus & Sharpness Analyzer, I’ve corrected how the strongest detail response is selected. A uniform image now reports that there is no detected response, and equally strong areas are identified as ties. Those results still need to be interpreted in the context of the photograph; they are not a complete diagnosis of focus.

The Composition & Reframe Studio has also received repairs to image loading and crop calculations. I’ve checked a sample crop, the response to an invalid image, and recovery when a valid image is loaded afterward. Download verification remains unfinished.

For the Editing Decision Challenge, I’ve corrected two sets of answer choices and made the difficulty control and previous-decision label clearer. Customer access still needs verification before sales reopen.

More page repairs

I’ve corrected duplicate or overlapping headers on the Photography Lexicon, Exposure Triangle Lab, and Gettysburg Battle Maps pages, with desktop and phone-width checks. The Battle Maps page still has extra space at the top that needs attention.

On the Gettysburg page, I’ve repaired the Story and Info panel’s behavior after opening the map and returning. Its automatic closing behavior resumes correctly in the tested sequence, while keyboard focus inside the panel keeps it open.

Search and loading review

I’ve also reviewed page titles, descriptions, and page addresses across the known public routes, and run initial loading tests on the homepage, Photographer’s View, and Learning Center. The simulated mobile tests identified loading delays that need work. These are a starting point for repairs; they do not establish everyday performance on visitors’ phones. Some desktop results were incomplete, and search-engine indexing and real-user performance remain unverified.

Work still underway

Online sales remain paused. I’m still checking membership inclusions, customer access, downloads, and the remaining tool behavior before treating the products as ready for sale. Public phone-width checks, physical Android testing, and broader keyboard and accessibility checks also remain unfinished.

There is also more gallery and sharing work to do. The Barns page now offers a gallery-level sharing link, but that does not complete the wider Facebook-sharing work described in my last update.

Development of the Companion app remains paused while I concentrate on the website. There is no new public app release to announce in this update.