Speaking of today,
Today, I:
- Researched client-side implementation ideas. Initially, I was thinking that I'd build the designer as one big Canvas element and do all the drawing and event handling through it. But I quickly learned that Canvas element doesn't support the drawing of text. There are, however some workaround libs floating around, but it feels to early in the process to be hacking in fixes. Instead, nodes will be represented by standard Divs and transitions will be dynamically resized canvas elements at a lower z-index. A quick firebug session tells me that Yahoo Pipes is doing something like this as well.
- Came up with a little formula for drawing the bezierCurves that will represent transitions in the designer. Look here: http://screencast.com/t/MZue42IvfZ
- Started working out a way to achieve some level of "resolution independence" with the layout tool. I'm thinking of using a percentage coordinate system to describe the locations (and sizes?) of nodes. These will be percentages of the minimum rectangle containing all of the nodes. This will potentially make printing or rendering to other devices a bit simpler, but mostly I don't want the layout data in the PDL to be pixel-centric.
- I imagine that a complicated process will need more real estate than a 17" monitor will offer. So I'd like to offer a zoom/pan function to control the users's view of the process. But before I spend too much time on this, I'd like to publicly remind myself that this is what scrollbars are for. But the zoom, that's still a good idea.
- Created initial wireframe for the designer
- Had a bowl of Moroccan Stew for dinner. Didn't even need a side dish, it has rice built-in.
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