Tessisamess

large preview | referential
Hey guys! I'm absolutely thrilled to announce the newest project to add to the collection. This was a long time coming, honestly. After making Casting Call last year, I kept thinking off and on about how much I wished we could have a character directory with support for multiple filters on IJ without needing any programming languages, like in the Icon Directory.

The thing is, I did know exactly how to make that happen; I just worried about building it because I thought people might look at it and assume it was EXTREMELY complicated to use. So I put it off...

And put it off.

...and put it off.

Until I couldn't anymore, because I knew it would be really fun to make and, if I just documented the hell out of it, people would be able to use it like pros, headache-free. And now here we are, three weeks of building, styling, testing, debugging, and documenting later! You can read all about it on referential, but let's go into it some here!

What is this? In its simplest form, it's a code where you can visually list characters or anything else you might want to be able to list and filter. You tag your characters with class names to correspond with the filtering sidebar and, unlike using journal tags, you can narrow your results based on more than one section of filters.

Why did I make it the way I did? A few reasons! I wanted us to be able to:

1. Use more than one filter to narrow results, of course.
   
2. Be able to lock the directory, which meant building it into an S1 Generator layout was out.
   
3. Alphabetize without needing to rearrange entries based on posting date, which would just be a hassle. (Your entire directory is one journal entry!)
   
4. Have the ability to display one thing to non-friends, and another to friends. (You can set this up to show the former a splash page and the latter your directory!)
   
5. Create more than one directory if needed and sort them by journal tag.

With this, we can do all of that! My weirdly exacting needs had been met. All was right with the world.

And now I get to release it to you guys! It's really cool, so go take a look for yourselves; come back and let me know what you think! 💖