Hey all creative people out there!
I just added the new feature: “download as .zip”, which is a link you can see below the list of codes. This link will provide you the whole package as a .zip file (including the data files, images, etc.. the original zip file as it was uploaded). So that you will be able to download a sketch you liked, and start working on it on your own computer right away (without copy pasting all the code).
Currently, it is only available for the sketches uploaded by November 19th, 2008. I am still checking if it works fine, so it is in ‘beta’. But give it a try, and let me know if you face any issues!
here is an example sketch for you to download:
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=661
I hope it will be a helpful tool for most of you!
Hey there,
Recently I got a lot of feedback on the needs for a search function. Well, as a quick fix, I implemented google search.
Don’t get very excited though, Google Search comes with its evilish sides:
- Since new uploads are not indexed by Google right away, they don’t show up in results for couple of days.
- Google made search box (doesn’t allow to create your own from scratch) includes an ugly google ad in it. So, till I implement my own search engine, I will not put a search field on the header. There will be just the link to get you to the search page, for a while… See below.
Heyo! Sinan is very happy to see many comments being posted lately. This reminds him to implement notification function: currently the owner of the sketch is not notified about the comment. Therefore, they never come back to give a response. Hence a very important asset of communication is missing.
He is going to implement the solution as soon as possible.
Again, heyo!
Seriously? Can I blog while I am on the train?
So here is a list of all the issues in OpenProcessing, that comes to my mind (thanks for all the feedback that reminds me those issues):
- Basic navigation issues
- nothing many to navigate, but navigation isn’t well structured
- no status feedback of where people are (no, I will not use breadcrumbs, ever!)
- browse page doesn’t help (did help in youtube before? in flickr? any good examples?)
- where the hell is search button?
- image size issue (I need to implement a thumbnail generator or a server-side image sizer), need to get those huge thumbnails 100×100 pixels, otherwise they slow down the page load time, and they look ugly when resized by the browser (and windows)
- somebody please replace the (rss) word on the homepage with an rss icon, yes the little shiny orange one
- that very somebody, please push me to post to the blog more often
- change the main theme color to pink and turquoise (????) (that’s gonna be awesomee!)
- more visual tabs for code browsing
- more visuals generally, nice icons for example…
- improve the communication between users (users, with more functional profile features) (that’s big deal out there!)
- fix utf-8 issue, people’s names show up weird… (does anyone know how many dots are there in my last name??)
- comment post information (oh, that’s important to improve communication) (I don’t know how to)
- design and user test group structure (students of a class get together under a group, collect their applications under one hood, sleep happy)
- ‘previous’ ‘next’ buttons are cool, but should be more meaningful, I need better wording..
- browse page visualization (the sneaky joker smile |) )
- anything to add ??? huh??? put as a comment below. that’s why comments are there! thanks already!
I also welcomed Firefox 3, which is the browser that I always take as a base in developing OpenProcessing. Buuut, it broke my heart! They didn’t fix that OpenGL issue (so OpenGL pieces don’t show up in browser), and java applets seem to load slower (need to find some ‘loading…please wait till you die’ solution for that)…
I was never meant to be a web designer… I was supposed to be an actor… Am I too old to switch careers?
OpenProcessing has two main focus:
- to get Processing community together, to share, comment and collaborate. We are already quite open-minded people, displaying our works on our websites, sharing our codes. So OpenProcessing is trying to be a common portal for this collaboration.
- to be a good channel of awareness of Processing, and to support the educational uses of Processing. Processing is being used widely to teach visual oriented programming, and in these groups, code sharing, exhibiting and working collaboratively is a necessary component.
In short, two big goals of OpenProcessing to open up the necessary channels for Processing community to communicate over their sketches, and to provide the tools to teach/learn Processing better, easier.
So, a little bit history of OpenProcessing for those who are interested..
Everything started with OpenVisuals.org, which was my thesis project at Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU. It was about getting interesting data sets and visualizations under one hood, and making it possible to map any data set to any visualization. It was inviting any visualization artist to pick a data set and build a visualization on top of it. Within the framework, I created the website, openvisuals.org, which was supporting easy uploading and sharing of Processing Sketches. After getting website live, I started getting a lot of feedback about the necessity of such a website within the processing community, but one without a focus on data sets and visualizations. Basically, people needed a place to share their sketches (of any content) on the web, exhibit their pieces and comment on each other.
As a response to this Processing Forum thread, I saw that OpenVisuals already included many technical components that people were expecting to see (tags, easy upload, profiles, etc..), I put up OpenProcessing.org, copying pretty much the same content and design that OpenVisuals had. I stripped all those data set and visualization focused sections. And here came out OpenProcessing.org!
In the end, I was able to setup a blog for the website. This will be the place that I will let you know about what I am working on and future developments. I believe, this blog would also be very helpful for me to get feedback from you; your feedback is veeery important for me.
1. Because I am an interaction designer and respect the “user centered design” principles a lot.
2. Because there might be many different uses of this website, so the more I learn how you are using, what kind of features is important for you, the more I will be able to make this website valuable for our community.
Anyways, this is just a first post.. gotta keep it short!
Coming very soon: the history of OpenProcessing, where it is heading to, new features under development…