Gallery Update
I wasn’t satisfied with the way the galleries were working, and so I changed them. The initial page of image thumbnails is gone; it was slow, and as the number of images went up it just got slower. Instead the gallery page itself will appear immediately (and rapidly) in a small size, though still big enough to be useful. You can make the gallery bigger by clicking either the “expand” button or the “full screen” button (see the Gallery Help page for more information on the various gallery toolbar buttons). The images initially displayed in the gallery have their sizes limited so they fit in the available space, but many of the images are much larger and can be zoomed in. The gallery pages are now much faster to load and (I hope) easier to use.
The image information section of the gallery (at the bottom, just above the thumbnails) has changed significantly. There was never enough space to show the descriptions as I wanted them, and the popup image information window was awkward and confusing. The information area now only shows the beast name and a short description, with the Image Information button below. There is usually lots more information to see in the window that pops up when you click the button. The window is now split into three sections: Description, Source and Copyright; you can switch sections by clicking the tabs. The Description section has more information about the beast and about that image of the beast; the Source section details where I looted pillaged respectfully acquired the image from and the manuscript or book it belongs to; and the Copyright section provides a copyright declaration for the image, which is sometimes required by the image “owner”.
To give the galleries something to work with, I have added or updated a lot of images from manuscripts. There are almost 1800 images available now in the Beast, Manuscript and Encyclopedia gallery pages. Many of the existing images have been updated with higher resolution versions; the new images are all high resolution. In some cases zooming an image will make it slightly fuzzier, but even so it is usually easier to see what is going on with those crazy beasts.
I have also added a lot of manuscripts. Some have little information; I’d swear those libraries and museums don’t want us looking at their manuscripts. As usual, I have entered all the information I could find, and I will add more as I dig it out of the murk that is the average library manuscript catalog. Several of the added manuscript entries are linked to full or partial online facsimiles, and to additional descriptions.
Several of the existing beast entries have new information, and there are a few new beasts, mostly pillaged from encyclopedia manuscripts where the odd is the norm. There is also a new section in the beast pages, “Reality” where I attempt to explain where the idea of the beasts came from, what we know of them today, and provide “interesting” trivia about the beast and the modern world. Only a few of the beast entries have a Reality section, but I will be adding more.
I have made updates to the Bibliography and the Encyclopedia, fixed many spelling mistakes, fixed a few broken links, and, as usual, squashed those bugs and improved that performance.
The Medieval Bestiary site now has a security certificate (that’s SSL for the nerdy readers). That means your browser won’t be warning you about how unsafe the site might be (it’s not) or putting rude icons in the address bar when you access the site with https://bestiary.ca the way Google intended (note the HTTPS instead of HTTP). With some browsers (Firefox, for example) there is also a setting that will force your browser to use an HTTPS URL if there is one (there is) and only use the “insecure” HTTP URL if it has to.
I leave you with a fish from Jacob van Maerlant’s encyclopedia Der Naturen Bloeme found in the manuscript Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, folio 111r. I don’t know what it is, but it is one of the many peculiar “fish” that came from the idea that every land animal should have an equivalent sea animal.
Now that’s not something I would want to find on the end of my fishing line!
Filed in What's new 8 Comments so far
Wonderlandia on 21 Apr 2022 at 3:03 pm #
Hi, I was wondering if the Ashmole bestiary images, which are longer on the website, were removed due to copyright issues and if you plan to re-add them. Thank you! Sorry for any inconveniences.
Beastmaster on 21 Apr 2022 at 8:52 pm #
The images disappeared mysteriously. They will be back with the next update at the end of April.
Wonderlandia on 23 Apr 2022 at 1:53 pm #
Thank you! Did the same thing happen to MS. Douce 151, MS. Douce 88, MS. e Mus. 136, MS. Bodley 602, MS. Laud Misc. 247, and MS. Douce 308? I know that’s a lot to process, but they’re gone too. Sorry if this seems excessive.
Beastmaster on 23 Apr 2022 at 10:55 pm #
Thanks for reporting this; some of those I knew about, but not all.
Yes, those images are gone too, though MS Laud Misc. 247 will be back next week. I think this must have happened while I was recovering my corrupted database, when a few things got lost. All of the images will be uploaded eventually. Some of the Bodleian “facsimiles” are just scattered cuttings, scanned (badly) from photographic slides; I have given those a low priority since they are very low quality. Anyway, the next update will have several hundred new and updated images, so you will have plenty to look at!
Wonderlandia on 25 Apr 2022 at 10:32 am #
Sorry I’m back again. I’m curious to know if some of the updated images are going to be from the Harley and/or Rochester bestiaries. Thank you for for taking your time to answer my questions by the way!
Beastmaster on 25 Apr 2022 at 10:45 am #
Those two have not been updated yet, but they are on my to do list.
Wonderlandia on 25 Apr 2022 at 2:02 pm #
I’m sorry for coming here yet again, but I believe I have found more missing images, specifically several manuscripts from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. I thought I’d just let you know in case you didn’t already.
Beastmaster on 25 Apr 2022 at 4:05 pm #
I will be adding missing images to manuscripts as soon as I can. There are many that do not yet have any images or have rather poor images; I will get to them eventually – I hope!