Artefact 6 - Planing

After completing my 5th Artefact, the Augmented Reality Business Card, I came across two major problems -

1. I couldn't apply my own marker, the QR Code AR marker
2. There was no audio playing making the video which made it useless

How do I over come these problems?

The problem lies with my a lack of ActionScript 3.0 knowledge as I don't know how to code in a video plane so when the marker is visible it would display my video.  With my previous artefact not having audio maybe I could produce a motion comic of some sorts to counteract the fact there is no audio. This would be the only way to come out with something that's an improvement on the last artefact.

I have therefore looked at a few examples of motion comics, with Watchmen and Batman being the best examples as they display the text too.

In the meantime I need to look again at my example to see if I can change the marker files to the one I had created.

Obviously and help or suggestions feel free to comment below

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Client Project - Complete

The Colwyn Bay Hockey Club website is now finished and ready to be handed over to the client.

It's a full WordPress site build with HTML5 and CSS3.

It will hopefully be found under http://www.colwynbayhockey,co.uk over the next few weeks too.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Client Project - Validating

It's nice when things work out and you see the green bar.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Artefact 5 - Evaluation

I encountered many difficulties in coding functionality into my augmented reality business card in this artefact. I also had trouble finding methods of augmented reality that would work on mobile devices. I did try using Junaio, an augmented reality browser by using the marker from the previous artefact but I found it difficult to change the 3D model it was producing. I therefore tried coding a version myself but was unsuccessful. After contacting the developers at Junaio they suggested using a different marker as it would be hard for the application to encode and track it correctly.

As I was having trouble producing my AR business card through Junaio for smartphones, I decided to further my research into an AR toolkit for Flash in ActionScript. As Flash utilised a computer's webcam this would hamper the business card's flexibility in mobility however it was more important for me to see it working correctly on a computer rather than on a mobile device. With limited ActionScript knowledge it was difficult to produce what I wanted exactly and not being able to change the model it produce was the biggest problem. The QR Code AR maker however worked better using Flash. Following more research I found an SWF file and connecting source files that would play a video. I then managed to replace the video file with one of my own. I was however unable to change the marker file as it were encoded differently. Once completed and tested, users liked the interactivity and manipulative features. Unfortunately adding audio was a problem.

To conclude, it's a sound way of adding and sharing information to a traditional business card however if you don't have the coding capabilities to add in key functionality like audio it can be an incredibly hard task to perform.

A working example of my 5th Artefact, for those of you who haven't tired it yourself yet.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Client Project - JavaScript Disabled and Out-of-Date Browser Warning

As you know not all browsers fully support HTML5 and CSS3, and since I’ve been coding my client project in HTML5 and CSS3, I’ve needed to add in a few extra features to tell the user to upgrade their browser with a short error message below. Example if the user is using Internet Explorer 8 or later –

!html

Also since the website uses a large chunk of JavaScript to create the weather widget, I’ve create a simple no script message. If the browser has JavaScript disabled –

!html

Warning – Your Browser has JavaScript disabled. Please enable Javascript to make full use of this site.

If sure there are better ways of going about it but here are two very simple examples.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Client Project Mobile Site Using WPTouch Plugin for WordPress

WPTouch works brilliantly with my client porjects site! I've just selected the news page so club members can get their news on the go. It also includes a switch to the full site too.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Artefact 5 - My Augmented Reality Business Card (Video Example)

A working example of my 5th Artefact, for those of you who haven't tired it yourself yet.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Client Project Gallery Plugin for WordPress

In searching WordPress for a gallery plugins for my client project, I've come accross the NextGEN Gallery. I have used this plugin on a previous project and found it's ability to batch process images really helpful. It can crop, resize, create thumbnails, add watermark and create various galleries and albums which can all be adjusted through the plugin's settings. The gallery's supports lightbox box too which you add via another plugin.

I will also need to look at the images within posts and create thumbnails for them to be used in the blog posts.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Further Client Updates

Today I finished the sites footer. I've added in an admin login section which replicates the login method of navigating to /wp-admin. This was done using the following code -

Once logged in, a simple dashboard appears allowing the user to access the full dashboard -

I've also added a simple but stylish jQuery scroll to the top button. The 'Top ^' links to '#top.' I'm also using the Google Code link to the latest jQuery file.

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous

Artefact 5 - Presentation

artefact5.pdf Download this file

Posted via email from City&Wool's Posterous