Monday, October 6, 2014

Infinite Canvas - Milestone 2

This one latest update on the infinite canvas app took a while longer, partly because it was a lot of work and partly because I haven't had as much free time to work on it.  But I'm so happy it's done!

I now have an editor page that lets me do basic edits (and has features) like the following:
  • create a new map
  • add an image
  • drag and drop to reposition an image
  • save out map
  • maintain regioning information and keep it up-to-date
  • mouse-over highlights images
  • dirtied images are highlighted in magenta
  • grid lines to show regioning sections for debugging
The interface looks like this for now.  Extra UI elements are minimal to keep the interface clean and simple and very similar to the viewing page.


Using the new edit page I'm experimenting with laying out the 4 comics I have for "Official Kitty Cat Business".  See the comic map here!

Next stage:
  • I may revisit some of the design choices I made this time.  In milestone 1, I made more use of cached images and regions.  In milestone 2, I'm forcing more queries to the datastore so the app is guaranteed to have fresher data, but it has started feeling a bit more sluggish. 
  • add delete functionality
  • add user permisions
  • add arrow keys controls
  •  get DanAnh, Hoyt or Mari to play with it a bit
That's enough on the tech end of this for a while.  Now the basics are here, I can start using it to put together thumbnails for Project Apricot and put up more comics for Official Kitty Cat Business.  I'll focus more on the artistic side for the next few months.  Yay!