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This term in flash we’re working on these mini applications built entirely in Flash. I’m rather proud of the work I’ve done on them, so I thought I’d stick them up for people to enjoy.

Drawing Application

This one was a lot of fun to make. The logic came pretty easily and it was just a matter of figuring the best way to do things. The one area i struggled with was in making it so that when one clicks the mouse in the “toolbox” area, no line is drawn. I found a solution for that problem and there are still a couple of odd things that happen involving it, but overall I’m pleased.

Oh, and for your amusement, this is the first creation of mine on this drawing program. Ah, the joys of simple pleasures.

and crab hands, apparently…

Curve Generator

Having created the drawing program with relative ease, I was given a harder assignment of creating a curve generator that would draw curves. So, one clicks the draw curve button, then clicks in two different locations. From there, a curve is generated to help one decide where one wants the curve to lie. This assignment had a few more logical challenges than the previous, but I found the order by which I wanted to create it fairly quickly. After that it was a matter of troubleshooting as to why the curve was not actually being drawn. All in all, I was pleased when I got it in the end!

This site is what has been eating my time for the last several weeks and the launch date is almost here.

Please look forward to it!

Nothing feels better than showing off your final project to someone, only to notice the several errors in it that you can no longer make right.

In any case, I’ll fix them before uploading my flash project for all to “enjoy.”

In other news, I’m looking into creating some “welcome” posters for the DD09 class at VFS. In my experience so far, folk seem to think that the different rooms are this giant barrier between the classes and that folks from one class can’t interact with the other. So! I’m going to put together a few welcome posters that will get dropped on the temp drive on each of their computers as a little “surprise.” Thus on the first day when they learn how to use the temp drives, they’ll find these posters and take some amusement from them. Also, I hope to encourage them to get to know each other more by spreading the different versions on different comps.

This project has been my primary focus for this week. By friday, I want to have all of the heavy navigation and layouting coding completed so that the project is completely usable. Content will likely be put off until next week when I have time to really gather and process information. But so far so good! All that doesn’t work at the moment is the final, play section. Hopefully tomorrow will bring inspiration to figure out how to code it as I am not entirely sure how I will do it. We shall see indeed.

As I have said to a few people recently, the only difference between weekends and weekdays is that on weekends I can stay at home and work where there is “free” food, comfort, no classes and not having to listen to other people’s stuff. Other than that, I spend the rest of the time working….

Let’s just say I’ll be happy when this term is over and more specifically May 1st. Then things will be better. I think.

In the mean time, here is a sneakpeak at my Flash Journalism Project. I’ve spent 3/4 of the weekend on it so far and it looks fairly decent. There isn’t any content and only the “home,” “parts,” and “navigation” areas work so far, but the frameworks are getting there. I’ve foght quite a lot with making certain things happen like I want to and Flash has respended in kind by making me frustrated and wanting to bang my head against the wall. I ended up needing to take out one feature I planned on including because the coding was hurting my brain and I figured it wasn’t that important to the overall site to spend the time figuring it out. In any case, I hope you enjoy what works so far! It is kinda big for a flash file (430 kb) but hopefully I’ll be able to reduce it somewhat over time.

Dear websites like nintendo.com, bellmobility.com, and others,

I should first describe my situation. I am a Mac OSX user who, after extensive browser testing, decided to use Camino as my web-browser of choice. It renders websites like Firefox does, but as it was written native for the Mac operating system, it is much faster to load and use. Unfortunately, it is a “small” browser in that most browser detection scripts don’t recognize it. As a result, I get caught in the “unsupported browser” subroutines. This annoys me every single time.

Bell Mobility’s Browser Check

In reading through Bell Mobile’s information, I found these little gems,

* We monitor browser usage on a regular basis and support browsers that the significant majority of our customers and visitors use to surf bell.ca
* Should we detect a significant change in our customers’ browsers of choice, we’ll take the necessary steps to officially support the new browsers.

and

Unfortunately, bell.ca does not officially support the Mac browser and operating system combination. Currently, the overwhelming majority of bell.ca customers and visitors use Internet Explorer 7.0, Internet Explorer 6.0, Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 1.5 on a Windows XP operating system.

Basically I have just been told that the designers of this website couldn’t bother to make sure that my browsing experience would work. They don’t care because I am not in the “majority” of their users. Clearly it is my fault for using an unsupported browser and they are not going to do anything to solve the problem besides telling me up upgrade or deal with the consequences of a potentially faulty website. I see this as both a failure of the company and of the web authoring company that put it together.

Web development takes lots of money. On big websites like bellmobility, I’m sure it cost a great deal. Thus, a company wants to save money as much as possible and if that means not making sure the site works on the “unsupported” browsers, then sites are often willing to do that. The web developers simply code for W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards and leave it at that. This is not enough.

Ideally your website will be able to serve 100% of your users, regardless of 3rd party plugins (like flash), javascript (some people don’t enable it), physical limitations (like individuals who are blind), screen size (even if someone is using a 800 x 600 browser, they should see everything important immediately), and browser type (be it IE, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Shiira, Opera, Konqueror, or Lynx). Being able to fulfill this goal can be very difficult, but it should be of primary importance because in the end, what is the purpose of the web? Is it to be a place for big companies to tell you what to do or is it a place for every single person equally?

This year, Time Magazine’s choice for “Person of the Year” was “You.”

Link to the article on time.com

The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.

The point of bringing this up is that the web isn’t about you, big corporations. It isn’t about making a super flashy, astounding website. It is about individuals; people who are just trying to get from place to place and get the information they need. The easier this is done, the happier the end user will be. The more obstacles you throw in their way, the less likely they will return to your website and the more likely they will give you negative word-of-mouth publicity.

Ultimately, what does this all mean for a big company website in terms of browser checks (where this got started anyways)? Basically, there are several ways a company can deal with different kinds of browsers and operating systems.

1. Keep track of all different rendering engines to make sure that your website works on them. By this I don’t mean browsers, I mean rendering engines. If it works on Firefox, it will work on Camino because they use the same engine. If it works on Safari, it will work on Shiira. If it works on IE, I’d be amazed (kidding). Check the rendering engine if you are going to check anything. The browser name does not matter.

2. Instead of redirecting people to a website where it says, “we can’t guarantee that this site will work with your weird browser so you can’t blame us if it messes up,” put a bar at the top of the website. It doesn’t have to be much, just something to let people know.

   

   Original Home Page

   

   Updated home page with notice bar at the top. I’m sure it is possible to make this look more elegant, but I was aiming for the idea rather than spending time on it.

3. Just don’t worry about it. The people using browsers you can’t identify are generally doing so for a reason. I selected mine through testing and personal preference. We like what we chose, so let us be and they are prepared to deal with improperly loading websites as a result, even though the site really should work.

The more accessible the web is, the happier it will be. This doesn’t mean to go to the extremes of black text on white backgrounds or the like, nor that flash should never be used, just that websites should be designed with all the end users in mind, not just the highest ranking ones. Remember, just one annoyed or angry user can have a major impact. Keep that in mind next time you want to save money on a website.

Shoehorn your forms into small spaces without sacrificing accessibility; serve your site to a plethora of devices regardless of screen size using adaptive layouts.

Found at A List Apart, this quote describes the way that anyone who is anyone should design websites. No longer are we forced to use completely bland website design to let everyone see the site nor can we go completely over-the-top and create a website that only a small percentage of users can actually see. Instead, we will find a proper balance between the two that gives a quality experience to high-end users while not alienating low-end users. To this end, I endevour to create content accessible by 100% of my audience. Some content, like videos or flash documents may, unfortunately, be beyond some browers, but I will not turn people away at the door simply by the way I design the page.