[tcaudilllg]

I've all but finished a component of Worldyne: an icon-driven console editor.

Try it for yourself. :)

I know it (STILL) has bugs, ...if you have seen any besides the drag-n-drop issue that lets users drag HTML elements into the console editor (and causes a huge mess besides), please let me know. It's a pretty complex interface with a lot of interaction possibilities, and it's difficult to nail them all down.

BTW, it doesn't work in IE, because of a bug somewhere. Try Firefox.

http://unitedinfinity.atspace.com/Projects/DHTML/Demo/Worldyne/WorldyneConsole.html

I'm not going to tell you how it works... hoping that it's intuitive enough for you to figure out for yourselves. :)

[Terry]

[XMark]

yeah, I have absolutely no idea whatsoever even what general aspect of game development this is supposed to do anything with.

EDIT:
Also, none of the buttons do anything, except when I press Apply the icon becomes a broken link.
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Mark Hall
Abstract Productions
I PLAYS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!

[LeoDraco]

I have said it before, and, given the author, I am quite likely to say it again: your code, dear Galbalan, is not good. As, I think, you are not getting the message, perhaps I should use some of those frilly font attributes to make myself clearer?

Your Javascript and your HTML are not Good!

Classes, Galbalan, classes! They truly make one's life more simplistic! You know those silly constructor functions that you abhor? You can get rid of all that name = "" nonsense in CreateEditorVector by having a common base-class for all objects that need a name attribute, have a constructor for that class which sets that attribute, and then utilize inheritance to dramatically cut down the amount of source needed to set that attribute.

Methods would also help cut down what are, currently, two to five line long statements in some of your functions. Accessors and Mutators are always a fantastic thing to have, as they allow for both encapsulation --- information hiding, which is profitable due to clients external to an object not needing to be reliant upon that object's internal representation --- and for dramatically smaller source. At the very least, use some temporary variables! (For reference to your offending code, I point out AddPaletteIcon and InsertPaletteIcon, both of which should, by the briefest of inspections of your source, be methods of whatever object the passed Destination argument is.)

In several places in your Javascript, you directly modify the innerHTML attribute of some object. While this is a permissible offense, it should really be avoided. (Caveat: it seems that someone has performed some benchmarks that show that innerHTML is faster than the method I am about to propose. Even if the figures are true, innerHTML is still not the proper mechanism for affecting the DOM hierarchy.) The preferred method should be directly affecting the DOM --- if for no other reason, simply to ensure that your pages are standards compliant. Several sites exist which fully document the DOM; they have proved themselves to be quite helpful in the past.

Along with the above: as one can directly modify the DOM, document.write should be avoided! The DOM functions are more than powerful enough to update --- in real time --- the contents of a document without resorting to that particular method.

Now, about your actual application: beyond the system (A) not being intuitive at all, and (B) not being functional at all, there is at least one problem with the way your application is set up: that "save" button --- I assume --- makes a copy of the image on your server, right? Most of that would be better written --- executed, etc. --- by some server-sided language, such as perl or php. Which would imply that your form would be a form, and all that silly, useless javascript would not be needed anymore.
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"...LeoDraco is a pompus git..." -- Mandrake

[tcaudilllg]

Chaotic Harmony: quit acting like a jerk. I specifically said that was a bug.

...The Add and Save icons work. Oh nevermind, morons.

I did prepare a bug-free version last night, ...but fate intervened in the form of my CD-RW's refusal to burn the file, and most of my floppies (except for the one I left here at the library last night by mistake) are riddled with errors of all types. (Scandisk doesn't help, thank you LeoDraco)

So you'll just have to wait till later. I can't believe you can't figure this out though. Really, I can't.


LeoDraco: may I remind you: energy can neither be created nor destroyed. I have actually carefully scrutinized most aspects of my code, and I've determined that I don't need to implement the mechanisms you suggest, because I am only using a handful of cases of each variable. The price of less source is, in this case, further obfustication of code that is already remarkably complex.

[Terry]

Right, my hand is raised.
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http://www.distractionware.com

[Modanung]

Probably our minds don't work similar.

I wonder if he saw what Leodraco said. :)

[XMark]

just enlighten us already, please. What the hell is this thing supposed to DO?
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Mark Hall
Abstract Productions
I PLAYS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!

[Nephilim]

[RuneLancer]

You're not being attacked, you're being given advice. Advice you should heed.

When people are being shown a demo, they expect it to be partly functional and to get a taste of what to expect once the real thing's done. However, what we're being shown is riddled with bugs and, quite frankly, barely seems to work (if at all? I use IE, so it doesn't work for me, and I definitely am not going to switch browsers just for this) Yet when people complain (hardly unexpected!) and give advice on how to fix or improve it (as opposed to simply bitching and moaning), you turn them down, say it's supposed to be bugged in its current state, and ignore whatever help and advice you're given.

That code probably wouldn't be so "horribly obfuscated" after some effort to maintain it and rewrite parts of it following the advice suggested in this thread and the other one (has it been abandonned...?). After all, if you posted here, it's for feedback, no? What's the point of feedback if you're going to get defensive and vehemently ignore everything you're told? You might as well tuck the project away and give us a final product once its done if that's how things are going to be...

This is your project, and how you manage it isn't up to us, nor am I trying to lecture you about how to do it. But quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with showing a little humility and accepting the advice others give you. It could do your project a lot of good. :)

It obviously isn't as intuitive as you think (wasn't this brought up in the previous thread as well?), so telling us what's what, what works, and what doesn't may help us judge your project appropriately instead of complaining about all the bugs. Don't you agree?
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Endless Saga
An OpenGL RPG in the making. Now with new hosting!

[Nephilim]

The first time I tried clicking on your link, nothing happened - I couldn't even make a connection to your server. This time, I tried it, and a page came up, but nothing seems to work; none of the buttons seem to do anything.

Exceptions: I do get a box around the character icon when I click it, and it goes away when I click it again, and the three links next to it toggle between links and unclickable when I click between them. But I can't seem to do anything useful with the app.

I'm using Safari v1.3 under OSX 10.3.9. Any standards-based DHTML / Javascript application should work fine in it, since it supports DHTML through the W3C DOM-2.

(If you're encountering breakage across many browsers, I'd take a second look at your interface to the DOM. Your best bet is to abstract your application away from the particular DOM, and build accessor classes that sit between the DOM and your app. That way, you can deal with whatever vagaries a particular browser introduces with its DOM by swapping in different accessor classes.)
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Visit the Sacraments web site to play the game and read articles about its development.

[Verious]

This is the error I get when I go to the page in IE, which you mentioned does not work. :(



However, I get similar errors in Firefox and Netscape.

[Mandrake]

[tcaudilllg]

The IE bug is fixed, although there still seems to be an issue with the print function. (?) That's M$' fault (for being non-standards compliant), but I'll fix it anyway. For its part, Firefox has an issue with with link color changes that I had to tackle.

(specifically, if you set "onmouseover" to change the color style property to one color, and "onmouseout" to change it to another, then if you turn the display style property to off, then the "onmouseout" change doesn't occur, because "onmouseout" doesn't fire.) I've had to deal with a host of these. LeoDraco, when you try to tackle crossbrowser work that truely pushes the limits of what a modern browser can do, then you run into these kinds of issues. To wit, it's much easier to debug one instance of something, than a formal system that takes on an existence of its own. Classes and methods are good for publishing bug-free work--that's why they were designed, you know, to formalize the spread of code en mass--, but for creative purposes it's best to get the ONE INSTANCE to work first. After that, THEN you can generalize and spread your technique, and classes are hands down the best for that. (just look at the dominance of Java classes across the net, and the growth and impact of C/C++ APIs)

What I'm saying is, YOU'VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE. Before Einstein could develop the theory of relativity, an INTP had to describe the classical field equations, and an INTJ like myself had to ascribe the equations to the electromagnetic field, by first piecemealing all the properties of the electromagnetic field together through research and experiment. If you want to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, LeoDraco, then peruse the Scientific Journal of James Clerk Maxwell at your local library and see for yourself what a painstaking process scientific discovery and APPLICATION is.

Anyway, how this thing works:

First, write something in the text box. Anything. Say, "foo". Click Save. Then, clear the text box. Write something else. ("bar") Click Add. Now double click the first of the icons that appeared in the lower image bar. (called a "palette") It appears in the top palette. Good. Now click the second image from the left on the top palette. It should be highlighted. Now click the second icon on the lower palette. It should be highlighted. Click it again, and a copy of it will appear in the top palette underneath the highlight there. Great. Click the Main link and see what comes up. Now click Add. Highlight the new icon and click the Preview link.

Except the Add function isn't working in that context... gah. Anyway, instead of clicking add, highlight the third spot from the left on the lower palette and click save, then hit the Preview link.

Doubleclick anyone of the top icons to activate the insert mode, which allows downsort/upsort insertion and deletion of icons. Click the highlighted icon again to reverse it.

[Nephilim]