Last week my partner Edward and I found out about how sometimes it takes two people working together to figure out all the little details necessary to make a code work. Though out this week we contradict that method entirely and show sometimes it takes one person driven to the point of exhaustion and near madness to make things work.
So this past week Edward went to work on finishing his own custom date/time modifications as well and making sure the visuals were to adjust themselves properly based on the size of the table and controls while I got the multiple source coding integrated in and then started working on getting the User guide up for public use.
So this past week Edward went to work on finishing his own custom date/time modifications as well and making sure the visuals were to adjust themselves properly based on the size of the table and controls while I got the multiple source coding integrated in and then started working on getting the User guide up for public use.
(Multiple Sources Working properly)
Adding multisource capability was pretty simple in itself. I was able to harvest the same general coding idea used in WattDepot visualizer in order to get multisources easily and without all that extra mess with queries and source name mix ups. There was some minor issues with how we were handling the code this time but overall it worked in our favor and we were able to get multi-sources up before our regular meeting with our professor to check up on our progress.
After finishing that I tried to help Ed figure out the issue with the ability for the gadget window to adjust automatically to the proper size. For several days we were staring at the code looking at other code and searching high and low on the internet for the problem. While Ed continued to fine tune what he had done he and I both were looking to answers to this great anomaly.
One of the greatest problems with this issue was the inconsistency of its occurrence. Searching tech forums like the Gadget Help Groups and other places for information we’d even find claims that were contradictory to our own problem: We could get a perfectly working representation in Internet Explorer but there were no reasonable results in FireFox or Safari, and the internet would say things from the ability to adjust not working at all, to working only in Safari and in almost every combination. Ed tried several different ideas along the way to get the auto-adjust to fix but we couldn’t’ get it.
After all the searching Ed ended up finding the solution on his own in a forum post about a similar issue using the Google API. After a lot of searching from both of us we got it working, but Ed’s focus was able to do it without much of my help. I took the time to clean up and rearrange our code into a simple system of dependent, processing, and utility code so that anyone coding after us will have an easier time.
Then came my challenge which was processing out the User Guide. User Guides are very fickle creations. The idea behind them is to simply provide instructions on how to use an application or gadget so that anyone who comes across will be able to get results on it. The thing about this that makes it hard is that because of the medium we using (still medium, no motion) it is hard to convey the exact instruction without a large amount of care given to ever detail.
Resigned to this fate of details I began working. Now the balance is to try to find just enough words to make something make sense without having too much to confuse the reader. This problem is one that even occurs here, so understandably the guide took a look of care and attention to work on.
In the end I could say that I’m proud with how the guide came out. While far from perfect it provides a lot of information that is structured, provided visuals, and hopefully made something that people could understand. I would have liked to find someone to run through the guide for me but time is of the essence and I could not find the time to get it checked.
You can check out the User Guide I wrote here (It has way more pictures since that took a lot of time). And our whole project is hosted here. With Ed and I working as a team we are doing what I believe is good progress. Unfortunately I’m not quite sure what’s next. We both aren’t sure what will happen, if we’ll get moved on or if our professor has an ace challenge up his sleeve for the creation of visualizations. Milestone review is up tomorrow and depending on how that goes maybe next week’s blog will sound totally different. Till then cheers.
Adding multisource capability was pretty simple in itself. I was able to harvest the same general coding idea used in WattDepot visualizer in order to get multisources easily and without all that extra mess with queries and source name mix ups. There was some minor issues with how we were handling the code this time but overall it worked in our favor and we were able to get multi-sources up before our regular meeting with our professor to check up on our progress.
After finishing that I tried to help Ed figure out the issue with the ability for the gadget window to adjust automatically to the proper size. For several days we were staring at the code looking at other code and searching high and low on the internet for the problem. While Ed continued to fine tune what he had done he and I both were looking to answers to this great anomaly.
One of the greatest problems with this issue was the inconsistency of its occurrence. Searching tech forums like the Gadget Help Groups and other places for information we’d even find claims that were contradictory to our own problem: We could get a perfectly working representation in Internet Explorer but there were no reasonable results in FireFox or Safari, and the internet would say things from the ability to adjust not working at all, to working only in Safari and in almost every combination. Ed tried several different ideas along the way to get the auto-adjust to fix but we couldn’t’ get it.
After all the searching Ed ended up finding the solution on his own in a forum post about a similar issue using the Google API. After a lot of searching from both of us we got it working, but Ed’s focus was able to do it without much of my help. I took the time to clean up and rearrange our code into a simple system of dependent, processing, and utility code so that anyone coding after us will have an easier time.
Then came my challenge which was processing out the User Guide. User Guides are very fickle creations. The idea behind them is to simply provide instructions on how to use an application or gadget so that anyone who comes across will be able to get results on it. The thing about this that makes it hard is that because of the medium we using (still medium, no motion) it is hard to convey the exact instruction without a large amount of care given to ever detail.
Resigned to this fate of details I began working. Now the balance is to try to find just enough words to make something make sense without having too much to confuse the reader. This problem is one that even occurs here, so understandably the guide took a look of care and attention to work on.
In the end I could say that I’m proud with how the guide came out. While far from perfect it provides a lot of information that is structured, provided visuals, and hopefully made something that people could understand. I would have liked to find someone to run through the guide for me but time is of the essence and I could not find the time to get it checked.
You can check out the User Guide I wrote here (It has way more pictures since that took a lot of time). And our whole project is hosted here. With Ed and I working as a team we are doing what I believe is good progress. Unfortunately I’m not quite sure what’s next. We both aren’t sure what will happen, if we’ll get moved on or if our professor has an ace challenge up his sleeve for the creation of visualizations. Milestone review is up tomorrow and depending on how that goes maybe next week’s blog will sound totally different. Till then cheers.
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