Interaction Designer Craig Dennis » Shoutbox

Visual Programming Spreading To The Web

Craig — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:21:23 +0000

MaxMSP is a great tool for creating interactive experiences using a method of programming similar to a flow diagram. You simply position the objects on the canvas and connect them in order to accomplish a goal. I used this program to create the Shoutbox application.

Recently I have discovered Yahoo Pipes which is a web based program allowing you to create a custom web 2.0 application using a library of existing APIs and filters from Google, Yahoo, Flickr and loads more. The surprising thing is that it also uses a visual programming style in order to simplify the experience and open it up to developers who are not as well versed in the various development languages.

I have only just starting using it but I will post whatever it is that I make. Check it out for yourselves at http://pipes.yahoo.com/

Beta & RC1 Problems / Solutions / End Result

Craig — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:12:04 +0000

Needed to do today:

Need to ‘bang’ through a single number without it constantly updating.
Send messages from Flash to Max.
Playback from collisions in Flash.

To start with the Beta that had been the focus of our efforts had ‘broken’ as certain tweaking had meant that a few files had been edited for the worse.

After much painstaking research into how to only bang through a number once, the help of Stewart was enlisted and he helped us understand the logical way to do it, then we helped him understand why that wasn’t possible in Max. So together we overcame the ‘single number bang’ issue and the project was then able to progress. (See 1 Below.)

Thankfully sending of information from Flash to Max didn’t appear to be a difficult one but the reference was less than comprehensive. The problem was not sending the information as we could ‘print’ the information in the Max window to confirm that information was transmitting, it was getting that information into the patcher window and then doing something with it.

It was the [remote] function that was needed and when turned on allowed a receive object reference in the Flash actionscript to receive a message. Further problems arose when Flash tried to send the ball number on collision as you can just insert the variable so 10 different functions needed to be created to send each number when called. (See 2 Above)

This linked to the playback patcher in Max, which was straight forward linking to the already existing playback setup.

Here is a video of the RC1 in operation in its proposed display space.

ShoutBox Dedicated Blog :D

Craig — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:59:15 +0000

Today the subdomain http://shoutbox.craigmdennis.com/blog was setup and a fresh install of WordPress was thrown in there. Now each member of the group their own login details and shows as posting separate entries. This is a great way to show some sort of gauge of what people have contributed.

This remains a personal blog detailing the overall progress of the project and the subdomain will chart the research and individual contributions.

So far so good.