Alright, I haven't heard much back, so I'll assume that the above is good.
I spent all of today coding, so both the condensed view and the normal view are DONE as far as the visuals go. I still need to smash out the CSS and visual layout for the extended view, but that shouldn't take more than a few days.
After this, I need to wire everything up and hook the database in so you can actually start doing some live searches.
BIG CHANGE: I switched away from GIFs and started using transparent PNGs. PLEASE REPORT ALL BROWSER PROBLEMS. I'll eventually have a "Legacy Browser/Slow Connection" link that'll strip away any fancy CSS. For the time being, though, it's going to cater to people using browsers <5 years old.
I'm quickly realizing that it is crazy hard to have collapsable panels like in the above description. I might blend this model into something a little more traditional in order to make it all jive. Namely, you'll have either collapsed or normal display when you do a search, but when you want the expanded display, it's going to be a full redirect so you'll have to download a whole new page.
On the bright side, I can keep the cached state from your search, so both the browser's "back" button as well as any "back" button I include in the interface can take you back to the list of resources you were just looking at.
Not dead yet, but intensely busy. I've been working on an entirely new system using ASP.Net MVC. I'm calling it project "Codicore" since the underlying Codex system can be applied to anything (3dCodex, 2dCodex, FoodCodex, whatever).
Give me a few more weeks to keep cleaning this up. I think I might take some time this weekend to give it some CSS and HTML cleanups to make it somewhat presentable. Right now it's dangerously ugly, but vastly more powerful than the original 3dCodex.
P.S. When I say vastly more powerful, I mean it. For example, when you submit a resource I could bind it to your login and you can see "my submitted tutorials" in your account page. You can comment and rate every resource, and report any garbage that gets through. I could even track views and clicks on each resource and show graphs of it over time in the detailed view.
Prototyping is over, and I'm wrapping up some final mocks. Anyone care to chime in with some final critiques before this goes to production?
Below is the home page and filter page.
Below is what you'd see when you click on "Visits", "Responses", or "Details". If you clicked on a resource image or title you'd be taken straight to the link.
And finally, here's the submit tab for submitting resources for review and insertion into the codex.
It's true; the prototype is totally hosed. Not a fan of my current webhost. The prototype was in ASP.net, but I think a PHP-based CMS will work faster/more reliably for this particular project.
EDIT I found and repaired the problem. Turns out it was just a really critical typo. :P
Happy Holidays! I wanted to post an let you know that I'm going to send this to the developers around Jan 10th, so if you have any feature requests or ideas- now's the time to get them in!
I really like the site, lots of good stuff here.
just one thing;
get maya and xsi already!
but the site is working really well, would be good to have the page already loaded with the newest tuts when you first visit the site, rather than a blank page.
The only thing is a lot of online tutorials disappear or get taken down so there ends up being a lot of broken links on sites, is there a way you could set up a back up system? (like have a download .zip button with the webpage/tutorial saved?)
@Shrew81: You're right! I'm on route for both of those requests. I'll make sure that the home page gives you at least some easy items to start off with. Also, the site will support the following softwares (and more can be added easily):
Max
Maya
XSI
Modo
Silo
Vue d'Esprit
Rhino
Blender
C4D
Mudbox
ZBrush
Let me know if you see something missing!
@ZacD- You're right, and that's going to be tough to accommodate. The reason is that detecting multi-page tutorials is not fun to do, and it's a time-expensive insurance policy against something that doesn't happen very often. Let me keep pondering this and get back to you.
P.S. Let me say that if you've written tutorials or scripts and submitted them to the Codex, then the "Dashboard" feature will blow you away. Screens still pending.
Replies
I spent all of today coding, so both the condensed view and the normal view are DONE as far as the visuals go. I still need to smash out the CSS and visual layout for the extended view, but that shouldn't take more than a few days.
After this, I need to wire everything up and hook the database in so you can actually start doing some live searches.
BIG CHANGE: I switched away from GIFs and started using transparent PNGs. PLEASE REPORT ALL BROWSER PROBLEMS. I'll eventually have a "Legacy Browser/Slow Connection" link that'll strip away any fancy CSS. For the time being, though, it's going to cater to people using browsers <5 years old.
On the bright side, I can keep the cached state from your search, so both the browser's "back" button as well as any "back" button I include in the interface can take you back to the list of resources you were just looking at.
Give me a few more weeks to keep cleaning this up. I think I might take some time this weekend to give it some CSS and HTML cleanups to make it somewhat presentable. Right now it's dangerously ugly, but vastly more powerful than the original 3dCodex.
P.S. When I say vastly more powerful, I mean it. For example, when you submit a resource I could bind it to your login and you can see "my submitted tutorials" in your account page. You can comment and rate every resource, and report any garbage that gets through. I could even track views and clicks on each resource and show graphs of it over time in the detailed view.
Prototyping is over, and I'm wrapping up some final mocks. Anyone care to chime in with some final critiques before this goes to production?
Below is the home page and filter page.
Below is what you'd see when you click on "Visits", "Responses", or "Details". If you clicked on a resource image or title you'd be taken straight to the link.
And finally, here's the submit tab for submitting resources for review and insertion into the codex.
EDIT I found and repaired the problem. Turns out it was just a really critical typo. :P
Happy Holidays! I wanted to post an let you know that I'm going to send this to the developers around Jan 10th, so if you have any feature requests or ideas- now's the time to get them in!
just one thing;
get maya and xsi already!
but the site is working really well, would be good to have the page already loaded with the newest tuts when you first visit the site, rather than a blank page.
Let me know if you see something missing!
@ZacD- You're right, and that's going to be tough to accommodate. The reason is that detecting multi-page tutorials is not fun to do, and it's a time-expensive insurance policy against something that doesn't happen very often. Let me keep pondering this and get back to you.
www.3dCodex.com
Right now I'm working on cleaning up the image display and trying to make it run faster...