One of the frustrating things about this project is the fact that are so many directions in which I could develop the mapping interface. More Functions,More Interactions, More Behaviors or Better Graphics each has its benefits and each could takes a while to develop to the point where I am satisfied enough to publish the application to my website.
Development can be a slow process so when your on a roll, you run with it. Unless of course you have to get back to work on other things. In my case I have to continue producing content for my site. So for I have decided to publish the first prototype of the mapping software "as is" and use it as my research piece. The other developments I have chalked out will have to wait until after June.
Ill post a link to the maps when I have finished compiling the xml lists for flash and Dreamweaver. I'm goning to name it "Ziggy 1.0".
Friday 18 January 2008
Tuesday 15 January 2008
Building Interactivity
Perhaps the most important aspect of this project that must be done well in order for this widget to work effectively for users is the interactivity that it allows.
First set of fundamental interactions:
1. Scroll wheel zoom.
2. Drag and Drop.
3. Up down,left and right pan with keyboard arrows.
4. Double click on node to go to external hyperlink.
1. Given the potential size of the maps generated in the node maps the user must be able to zoom in and out of the generated image. To accommodate this I have built a zoom control into the mouse scroll wheel.
2. When the user holds down the left mouse button anywhere on the map they can drag the map within the window to recenter areas of interest.
Combined with the scroll wheel zoom function users can recenter the map then zoom in on a new location (like google earth)
3. some users prefer to use the keyboard as their primary method of input. To accommodate this I have Incorporated simple motion controls using the arrows on the key board. in future versions I plan to include more "keyboard shortcuts" but that will have to wait until i have decided on all the "fundamental interactions".
4. One of the limitation with using flash as a development tool for user interfaces is the fact that flash does not allow you use the right mouse button or "right click" to control a swf. So in order to create a "intuitive" interface I decided to go with the other obvious interaction the "double click". This allows the map to sense when the user presses the left mouse button twice "quickly" and then opens up an external browser window to a designated web page.
This is where i hit my first big programming road block!
Each of these interactions individually is relatively simple to achieve in flash using actionscript 2.0 the problem arises when you combine them together and have to ask flash to handle multiple different "events" and distinguish between them.
In order to do this you need to create things called listeners to listen for events when they happen and inform the program so that it can respond.
Remember that each of the nodes in flash are movie clips. Well in AS2.0 there is node way to create listeners for mouse events that work directly with movie clips. A simple work around would be to convert the movie clips into button objects in flash and use button listeners but with the potential for over a hundred nodes on screen at any one time manipulating them as buttons in flash would be extremely cpu intensive.
To solve this problem I had to use actionscript 3.0. With AS 3.0 you can use event listeners for any object you want (movie clip, button ,sprite) as adobe has moved actionscript over to an object oriented language.
Of course this meant I had to completely over haul the prototype i had developed in AS 2.0 and rewrite it for AS 3.0. so preceded another week of debugging and hair pulling until i had worked around a number of road block that AS 3.0 introduced.
But the good news is that the new features that AS 3.0 brought with it allowed the code to node only compile faster it runs way more efficiently in the flash player. As it runs conditional statements such as "IF this do that" and "for" loops much quicker. Since the majority of my code is comprised of such elements it meant a vast improvement. To add to that adobe introduced the "sprite" which is like a slimmed down "movie clip" object that has only one frame. It has all the functionality of a movie clip but is way more CPU efficient to manipulate in the player using actionscript.
so all in all a necessary step but man what a pain in the butt. Total time spent developing this project so far 4 weeks solid!
First set of fundamental interactions:
1. Scroll wheel zoom.
2. Drag and Drop.
3. Up down,left and right pan with keyboard arrows.
4. Double click on node to go to external hyperlink.
1. Given the potential size of the maps generated in the node maps the user must be able to zoom in and out of the generated image. To accommodate this I have built a zoom control into the mouse scroll wheel.
2. When the user holds down the left mouse button anywhere on the map they can drag the map within the window to recenter areas of interest.
Combined with the scroll wheel zoom function users can recenter the map then zoom in on a new location (like google earth)
3. some users prefer to use the keyboard as their primary method of input. To accommodate this I have Incorporated simple motion controls using the arrows on the key board. in future versions I plan to include more "keyboard shortcuts" but that will have to wait until i have decided on all the "fundamental interactions".
4. One of the limitation with using flash as a development tool for user interfaces is the fact that flash does not allow you use the right mouse button or "right click" to control a swf. So in order to create a "intuitive" interface I decided to go with the other obvious interaction the "double click". This allows the map to sense when the user presses the left mouse button twice "quickly" and then opens up an external browser window to a designated web page.
This is where i hit my first big programming road block!
Each of these interactions individually is relatively simple to achieve in flash using actionscript 2.0 the problem arises when you combine them together and have to ask flash to handle multiple different "events" and distinguish between them.
In order to do this you need to create things called listeners to listen for events when they happen and inform the program so that it can respond.
Remember that each of the nodes in flash are movie clips. Well in AS2.0 there is node way to create listeners for mouse events that work directly with movie clips. A simple work around would be to convert the movie clips into button objects in flash and use button listeners but with the potential for over a hundred nodes on screen at any one time manipulating them as buttons in flash would be extremely cpu intensive.
To solve this problem I had to use actionscript 3.0. With AS 3.0 you can use event listeners for any object you want (movie clip, button ,sprite) as adobe has moved actionscript over to an object oriented language.
Of course this meant I had to completely over haul the prototype i had developed in AS 2.0 and rewrite it for AS 3.0. so preceded another week of debugging and hair pulling until i had worked around a number of road block that AS 3.0 introduced.
But the good news is that the new features that AS 3.0 brought with it allowed the code to node only compile faster it runs way more efficiently in the flash player. As it runs conditional statements such as "IF this do that" and "for" loops much quicker. Since the majority of my code is comprised of such elements it meant a vast improvement. To add to that adobe introduced the "sprite" which is like a slimmed down "movie clip" object that has only one frame. It has all the functionality of a movie clip but is way more CPU efficient to manipulate in the player using actionscript.
so all in all a necessary step but man what a pain in the butt. Total time spent developing this project so far 4 weeks solid!
Formatting Nodes & Node Connections
once of the most important aspects of the design of this mapping system is its ability to improve the readability of the information presented on screen. To do this clusters of nodes must be easily distinguishable from each other as well as parent and child relationships. To do this without overloading the user visually will require subtle but intuitive formatting of the node and thier interconecting lines.
children are scale down in size compared to thier parent nodes
this is inherited by all successive nodes so that sibling nodes are automatically put in relation to thier parents by association with a child node.
The inherited scaling is also cumulative so that children of children of children have the postential to become extremely small. This allows for the clean and clear representation of nested nodes. In addition the distaces between the nodes is also scales in proportion to its parent child status this has the effect of auatomatically making sure nodes fit in the available space thus reducing the possibility of overlap when displayed on screen.
Following the tree analogy each time the node map branches into a child the thickness of the line connecting the nodes is made thinner. This visually reinforces the relationship between chains of siblings and the relationship between parent an child bracnches.
Another optional enahcnement is color coding the connecting lines or node themselves to highlight group clustering. one option is to use the colors of the rainbow to create an intuitive scale ie (ROYGBIVW) like a thermal color scale to denote heirachy.
Although I have set up the map to do this I will keep the initial maps a single "theme" color / For example green for dreamweaver, red for flash, gold for fireworks and so on.
children are scale down in size compared to thier parent nodes
this is inherited by all successive nodes so that sibling nodes are automatically put in relation to thier parents by association with a child node.
The inherited scaling is also cumulative so that children of children of children have the postential to become extremely small. This allows for the clean and clear representation of nested nodes. In addition the distaces between the nodes is also scales in proportion to its parent child status this has the effect of auatomatically making sure nodes fit in the available space thus reducing the possibility of overlap when displayed on screen.
Following the tree analogy each time the node map branches into a child the thickness of the line connecting the nodes is made thinner. This visually reinforces the relationship between chains of siblings and the relationship between parent an child bracnches.
Another optional enahcnement is color coding the connecting lines or node themselves to highlight group clustering. one option is to use the colors of the rainbow to create an intuitive scale ie (ROYGBIVW) like a thermal color scale to denote heirachy.
Although I have set up the map to do this I will keep the initial maps a single "theme" color / For example green for dreamweaver, red for flash, gold for fireworks and so on.
Connecting The Nodes
With all the nodes appearing on screen sucessfully the next important step was to build a function that can draw the lines interconnecting the nodes. each connection has to be draw independently so that it can be formatted independently in the future. This meant that i had to draw line between nodes using the id numbers to guide the pen to each location. So if a node matches its group id with the id of a parent node then a line is draw from that coordinate to the child node this contines for each match untill all the nodes are conected in one way or another.
Positioning Objects
Once the coordinates have been calcualted and stored in an array the next job is to buld a function in actionscript that will create the graphic for the nodes. The easyest way to do this off the bat is to create new movie clips then draw shapes inside then and add text fields and images. once this is done the movie clip called is then told where to position itself iniitally on stage using the coordanate stored in the coordainte array. This is the starting position for the node in the map.
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