Lots of polishing this week. I spent a good amount of time working on creating a unified user interface and building components that are useable throughout the site. One major thing that has been bugging me for months is the inconsistent icon UI elements spread out throughout Farmur. I spent a lot of time creating one icon font file and replacing old styles and reformatting for the iconography. Chnages included: arrows, a main menu icon, a close button, a more information “i” and many others.
The navigation is now much more aware of how it’s being viewed and proper placement. For example, on pages with side page navigation, the bottom dot navigation slides up whenever you enter the last page, and goes back down when you leave the page. This allows the down button to not interfere with the navigation dots. Hovering over the down button makes the dots fade out so the button expands without layering under the dots. Other improvements include the main navigation dots along the left hand side. On the home page, they are collapsed to keep the design simple, but expand when a user comes nearby or goes past the home page. Also, the “more information” button dissappears when you are in the last About/Further Readings/Share/Data Sources pages, since this information leads you here.
As for back-end issues, the main menu bottom four buttons are now linking properly. Before they didn’t work, but I was able to connect them properly. Also, the modal windows load a blurb, links, readings based on the page the user is on. The “Plan Your Garden” page now links to the proper tutorial modal—now I just need tutorials.
The last major change and update was to the Corporate Consolidation Page. I had cut this page from my development plan a few weeks back thinking I wouldn’t have the time to get to it. However, this week I built it. It’s fully functional and allows users to spin the knob, type in a number, or skip guessing by tapping the down arrow. This is a significant piece and will help bolster my thesis as a truly “interactive” piece. I’m really happy that I was able to get this working, it represents a big task off my list.
Lots of work this week—you can view the most recent version here: http://farmur.com/aau/rweb2/week10/index.html