Albums Master

The Albums Master was an icon library and file organization scheme, employed by the Dozerfleet founder during the Cormorant era. It is considered a project in the history of Dozerfleet Labs. It was used from 2003-2006, and was later replaced by the Dozerfleet Divisions and Windows / Mac / Linux Libraries.

Motivation
As the enterprise that is Dozerfleet began to grow more sophisticated during its Cormorant era, and more of its contents went digital, an advanced means of file organization became necessary. Simply developing the folder structure didn't seem like it quite cut the cake. Folders were given unique icons based on their content. Given a general lack of differentiation on Windows 98, which was still the OS in use by Dozerfleet until the fall of 2004, the need for an Albums Master seemed like a big deal then. After seeing what was possible with Mac icons, the Dozerfleet founder wanted to implement something like that for Windows folder icons.

Main icon
The Albums Master's main icon was a multi-colored life preserver with a silver ball in the middle, one that had a big letter "A" on it. Since then, the open source Chrome browser's icon was modified by Google to make the icon for Google Chrome. Google Chrome's icon looks very much like that of the original Albums Master, but with the orange and brown stripes removed.

Icon sets
In its time, a few different versions of the Albums Master set were made.

Version 1.0
"Cardstock" was the original edition, created in the summer of 2003. It aimed primarily at machines running Windows 98 SE, especially those with CRT monitors incapable of resolutions higher than 1024 x 768. It was very crude, but did a lot to enhance the look and feel of Windows 98. The look and feel of Cardstock was set to fit in mostly with the Windows 98 environment. It was very low-res, which images never intended to be displayed in icon sizes above 32x32.



Version 2.0
"Plastic + Cardstock" was of a higher resolution, and became the new standard for an Albums Master fairly quickly. It was made with images at 72x72 pixel resolution, although these didn't scale down particularly well. Dozerfleet Labs, at the time known as CormDev, didn't at first have access to software to create proper multi-res icon files. Eventually, access was discovered to a primitive program that could render multi-res. That led to Plastic + Cardstock being able to render multi-res versions of the icons at 72, 48, 32, and 16 resolution sizes, the highest supported by Windows 98. The brown Cormorant "All-in-One" album type was eliminated in version 2.0. It was replaced with a Web Library folder icon, for creating website shortcut repositories for websites stored offline on a PC.



Version 3.0
"Sheet Metal" was created in the summer of 2004. On August 11th of that year, the ICO files were converted via a program found online into ICNS files for Mac OSX Panther use. This marked the first time that any Dozerfleet property had ever been released for Mac users, and the first venture into Apple development of any significant kind at Dozerfleet. AM-Mac icons were rendered to 128x128 resolution, a significant climb in size from the tiny 32x32 icons of the original.



Version 3.1
"Wood" was an abandoned project for another variant of the 3rd generation of the Albums Master, experimenting with skinning in addition to basic iconography. The files were never properly converted to ICO or ICNS format, and were instead BMP files forced by the OS to behave as ICO. These bitmaps were drawn on August 1st of 2004, and developed alongside the bitmaps that were used for creating Sheet Metal. However, their full implementation into a set never saw the light of day.



Version 3.2
In keeping with the version 3 theme that tiles should replace folder icons, "Black Kitty" demonstrated the possibility of theming the Albums Master around a Halloween theme. This was the second-to-last attempt to make a Windows-side Albums Master, as new folder icon options developing in Windows XP, as well as new icon themes for project icons happening elsewhere online made the general concept and purpose of the Albums Master obsolete.



Version 4.0
An abandoned project was AM-4, an effort to replace the complex icons with simple color-coded recolors of basic icons. Two variants were experimented with: color-coded Windows 98 folder icons, and color-coded Windows XP icons. Project custom folder icons became the new standard beginning with the rebranding of Cormorant to Dozerfleet in May of 2006, and further Albums Master development was entirely scrapped.

Cormorant era Albums Master scheme
The Albums Master managed files in a sort-by-project first, then-by-type fashion. The Windows folder "My Pictures" housed only miscellaneous pictures not necessarily pertaining to a project. My Music housed mostly MP3s that didn't pertain to projects also. Inside of "My Documents," every project had a root folder. That root folder contained subfolders with the customized icons, each for specific file types relevant to the project. Each subfolder was labeled an "album," and contained contents of a particular set of file types. Icon sets were usually rainbow color themed.


 * Text Albums got a "T" for "text," inspired by the "T" used for the Windows Fonts folder. This type of folder was intended to host Microsoft Word and Publisher documents, and other similar text document office files.
 * Video folders were next. Since a film strip was used in the blue picture album icon, a VHS tape became the symbol for video.  Any video or animated GIF files fell under this category.
 * Miscellaneous items were given a yellow folder. These were files that didn't fall under any traditional category.
 * Audio was next, getting a green folder inspired by the green music note on the CD icon for iTunes 4.0.
 * Pictures, the first group to get a custom icon, had a blue folder, in keeping with OS X blue folders.
 * Labels Albums were purple folder icons, designed to reflect that they held label templates for use with Avery DesignPro label sheets, particularly in the ZDP file format.
 * Maps Albums were black folders, and the icons indicated that maps were to be stored in here. This could also mean game files, if able to exist outside of the main game directories.  Images could also be stored here, if they were of a map nature.  Interactive maps also belonged here.
 * Web Albums were set up as folders for hosting offline websites and their content. They were similar to an All-in-One album, except with the emphasis being on web content.
 * Games Albums were intended to be folders where games or game files were stored.
 * All-in-One Albums were brown folder icons, designed to invoke folders where all the content had to be in one folder.

In addition to folder icons for albums, Library directories with their own icons were set up, to contain shortcuts to all the albums of each project. This was intended to be an implemented feature add-on to Windows that could function similarly to the color tagging system pseudo-folders in macOS builds.

Dozerfleet current scheme
The current organization scheme lists content by "Division," which is where the divisions of Dozerfleet are most relevant. In other words, files are sorted first by type and then by project. This is a complete reversal of the Albums Master, which sorts first by project and then by type.

The Dozerfleet Literature folder houses a project folder for every piece of literature pertaining to a Dozerfleet project. Most of these are located inside of "Verse" folders, such as "Gerosha Multiverse" and "Stationery Voyagers Universe." There are separate folders for projects pertaining to school assignments that were deemed worthy of keeping on record. Another separate folder, titled "Generic Business," handles important office files such as the most current resume. A "Memoirs" folder handles essays and articles of interest that aren't truly a part of Dozerfleet Literature. The Literature folder contains a subfolder for the song lyrics of works in Dozerfleet Records, including songs by Every Ape and His Brother. Actual audio files are handled under the My Music folder.

The Dozerfleet Comics folder handles all picture albums for Dozerfleet projects. This sometimes includes animated GIFs, which overlap with video. All video and video editing-related files are located in project folders inside the Dozerfleet Studios folder, except for Ferris and SWOCC videos. A Dozerfleet Graphics folder handles division logos. "Comics" and "Graphics" are both located in the My Pictures folder, with Dozerfleet Studios and other video project folders in the My Videos folder. A separate folder handles all Dozerfleet Labs content, with subfolders for such things as DzMD.

Even so, these folders are often not dealt with directly. Windows 7 introduced its "library" system, which can be tweaked to work as a sort of Albums Master unto itself. This renders an actual Albums Master system obsolete.