Gamma release—eHammurabi

Major improvements in gamma

The eHammurabi^γamma release focused on content additions; that is, providing images and text for as many of the 282 laws as possible. An important albeit secondary focus was usability on mobile devices. With a data-rich interface, we spent lots of time trying out different configurations, most especially with respect to the side menu, owing to its length. To remedy these challenges, we implemented an interface that allowed readers to navigate to another law within two clicks and minimal scrolling time. To encourage assistance from the public, we have included a section on the page that lists our entire technology stack. More work needs to be done in several important respects, as the following section shows. 

What's next

Several key improvements are on our roadmap for the next version of eHammurabi. Because several portions of the original artifact are damaged or otherwise obscure, the full index of 282 laws is incomplete. We hope to secure additional translations and artifact images in order to fill said gap. Most importantly, we hope to address the technical challenge of speed; or, loading times. The side menu renders slowly because of the processing time required for each data object. We are therefore focused on implementing technologies that will allow us to cache the contents that are complete. The same is said of progressive loading for the cuneiform images. Finally, we hope to add social sharing options and copy-and-paste functionality for each law, alongside its citation. By the time we ship the delta version, we hope to include all these features–and much more.