I got an assignment to create a website that looks like this. I have all of the images but I am stuck.
I am a pretty rusty coder.
Some of the things I can't seem to get are.
Image cropping: how do I make it so that it shows part of an image.
Moving objects around: do I use float or grid or flex?
Overall just feeling overwhelmed. Help?
Good test project I would recommend you get you requirements on this down first, like ACVM stated then you have to also consider your strength on this requirement the break down to sprints and chunks/milestones before you start coding.
Language I would recommend for easy development:
php - to handle mailing and contact us
html5 and css5 - creating the layout/design (preferably bootstrap check wrapbootstrap.com and startbootstrap.com)
Related
I am new to coding and wanted to get some hands on practice with a project I have in mind. Here it is:
Let's say you have blank page and on the side of a screen you have several items you can choose to draw on the blank page. For example the background can be mountains, the ocean, a forest etc. On top of that you can place a house, a church or another selectable element. Whatever you like.
It is like a picture editor where you can put together a picture with different pre-given elements. Or like in video games where you can create your own character.
What would I need to build a web application for that kind of thing?
This link should get you started but it won't be the complete answer to your question - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/08/how-to-use-html5s-drag-and-drop/
Essentially, you can achieve your image dragging and dropping using similar techniques. It will require a bit of Spike work from yourself, and looking into how HTML5 can handle drag and drop. I discovered this resource fairly quickly and I think the solution you want isn't as complicated as you may think, it just requires a bit of know-how regarding drag and drop operations within HTML5 :-)
Also, there may already be some JavaScript based API's that do this sort of thing easier but I'm not too aware - I suppose starting this way could be a great introduction for you and you may wish to expand once you've done some work for it :-)
Hope this helps you and your coding journey!
![enter image description here][1]please I need some help, this should apparently be something very simple and basic to do, but maybe I'm missing something.
I'm quite newbie to Unity3d, I had no much problem with creating a somewhat flashy 2.D scene (I mean 2D with different layers in Z level), scripts, etc. But I'm having trouble to create a "UI Slider" object: when I create it, it just shows nothing on screen. How can I make it visible? I just need to create a very simple, plain slider whose value can be controlled at runtime by means of a script.
thanks.
Well.. since you give nothing to go on, I suggest that you take a look at a tutorial for the UI:
https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules/beginner/live-training-archive/using-the-ui-tools
If you have troubles after this tutorial, come back with an example of your problem to make people more willing to sacrifice their time in helping you.
Hope this is somewhat useful
Take a look at the Unity3D docs here.
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-Slider.html
It should have what you are looking for.
I realize this is not strictly programming related, but hopefully you will let me get away with it.
My group is trying to put together a very short (2 minutes or so) "film" about a new feature to our product. The feature is trying to solve a particular problem a lot of our customers have. We do not want to go with live action for displaying the description of the problem we are trying to solve because we feel that the production value of anything we could come up with would be incredibly low and turn off our viewers. So we would like to make an animation (basically floating clip-art that is animated moving from place to place) while we have someone narrate the problem description.
While flash seems to be a good solution I have some problems with it:
I need to capture this in a movie format like avi
It needs to be captured in 1080p, 720p and regular TV def.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a piece of software that can get me where I need to go?
Free is good, but I think I could get my boss to lay down some scratch for this.
Thanks!
For just some basic here-is-the-screen-this-is-a-slide kinda thing you could use Windows MovieMaker, free and standard.
And here you have some tips on how to create your own screen-captured-AVI file for input.
I'm going to be going to be meeting with a number of programmers and custom software companies to get bids on creating a website for a company that I'm involved with. My question is this: What should I prepare for the programmers so that they can give me an accurate bid, timetable, etc. for the development of the website? I have a clear picture of how I would like the site to work and the features that I would like to have included.
I'd suggest using something like balsamiq to put some simple sketches together as suggested elsewhere.
Quite often the act of putting your requirements down on paper in a way that represents the actual site will flush out all manner of issues you hadn't considered before, and will give you a much clearer understanding of what you're after.
Also consider the sources of the data you're displaying. From a functional spec aspect, simply saying something like 'show this figure here' is easy. From a programming point of view, coming up with the figure in the first place is often the hard bit.
The best you can do is to put the end-user's hat on and describe what you'd like the system to look like / work.
Imagine all pages and create a new frame for each one. Make as many annotations as you can so all bidders know exactly what you are expecting.
I'd also add at the end if it's likely the site's requirements to change during development, so everybody's warned in advance.
Details Details Details.
You might think you have a clear picture, you don't. You need to write every single step down no matter how trivial. You will see there are things you haven't thought of.
Try to write down as much information as you can think of. Go through all the scenarios a user would when using your site. Use steps such as
1) User clicks on Buy Button
2) Screen shows up with 4 items, Link to details, price, quantity and a 32x32 thumbnail.
2a) If User clicks on thumbnail full resolution image i s displayed
etc etc.
Don't try to gloss over the "simple" stuff and you will get the most accurate bid possible!
Basically draw out what you want (ie textboxes, drop down lists, controls, etc) in very simple manner. Then add little numbers around each area that has some functionality. In the margins or on another sheet, describe each point you numbered on the controls with simple instructions on how that functionality should work.
Think of it as a skeleton to describe the application you want.
Not a complete list, but here a couple of thoughts:
Do not forget the back button.
Back button behaviour is an issue on every site I've ever worked on. Specify exactly what you want to happen on every page if the user gets to that page by hitting the back button. Often it's easy, but sometimes it is not at all trivial.
Security:
Do people need to log on, how, how do you create accounts, reset passwords etc. What pages need you to be logged on, what happens if you hit those pages without being logged on.
You could read Joel Spolsky's Painless Functional Specifications for ideas, but I've just tried to summarise what that means for web software too.
I usually do this in 3 stages:
a list of contents, under the headings they'll appear on the site. Get this firmly agreed by all parties before doing any wireframes;
a greyscale functional wireframe in plain HTML/CSS, using examples of real-world content and dummy static pages for dymanic content, with everything where it should be. This is the first thing programmers want to see;
a purely visual graphic mockup of each type of page - this is the next thing programmers like to see, as in 'show me how you want it to look and I'll make it happen'.
I've been admiring StackOverflow's default quilt-like profile pictures (which I notice are also on the Fail Blog) and am curious what program both are using to generate them.
But what I really want to know is: If you were to design the system to create default profile pictures, how would you do it?
I'm looking for ideas on what algorithm you'd use, as well as things like how you would related the image to the user, be it related to their username, or some portrayal of their progress (ie the image gets more complex, or larger, as they gain reputation).
FWIW, the default pictures are generated by gravatar, which is why you'll see them on more than this site.
It's called an Identicon. On Stackoverflow it Gravatar uses your IP address to generate the image.
This is an editorial, not necessarily an answer.
Those auto-generated avatars on this site come from a service (Gravatar) that focuses exclusively on providing avatars and is therefore the core of their business. For apps that aren't specifically intended to generate and display avatars, I would just go with an empty placeholder (like Facebook). It's a neat feature, but is it worth your development time when a simple placeholder would be just as effective?
A very good source of images would be flame fractals. They are rather computationally expensive, so simply sourcing them from a project like electric sheep or having them be rendered by the user's computer should be considered to offload the work.
Who wouldn't want default profile pictures like these?
alt text http://sheepserver.net/v2d6/gen/202/124809/icon.jpg alt text http://sheepserver.net/v2d6/gen/202/124805/icon.jpg alt text http://sheepserver.net/v2d6/gen/202/125373/i77.jpg alt text http://sheepserver.net/v2d6/gen/202/125431/i116.jpg
Use a Julia set or something like that and set the initial conditions to a hash of the user's email address.
I'd use a jpeg server tool (aspjpg or similar) to manipulate the image on load so it displays their badges within their profile pic.
In fact, using any tool to dynamically generate images is pretty cool. Applying some sort of 3d or flash technology to dynamically create images using random variables for eye spacing or facial structure would be pretty wicked as well.
But ya this is a weird question. hah!
I did something similar years back, I used POV-Ray to generate little 3D scenes with torusses (torii ?) and spheres. There were lots of parameters to tweak such as the position, size and colour of each object.
POV-Ray is a scriptable 3D render engine, you can find it here.
Unfortunately my images all looked too similar to each other. I love Gravatar's identicons as uses on this site. I think the symmetry helps and the shapes are unique enough that you can identify users fairly clearly.
In ruby there have a library http://github.com/swdyh/quilt to generate it!