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Plazes Widget First Version
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[web 2.0]
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After mucking around with Dashboard some more, I gave up last night. My widget worked fine in Safari but every time I installed my widget in Dashboard the widget would disappear. The fact that Dashboard does not give you any feedback does not really help in solving this problem.
Programming Dashboard is really really painful experience.
Today I took a widget which was doing something similar to what I wanted: the GMaps Dashboard Widget and tore that apart to see why it was working and my widget was not. I'm thinking it was either the sizes which were not correct or the AllowNetworkAccess directive from the plist file.
Using that as a starting point I could bootstrap my widget into existence and finally have a working prototype: Download Plazes Maps Widget.
The dimensioning thing is still not really clear to me but that shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. I do not know in how far the dimensions specified in the plist file override any other dimension settings or how they interact.
The same goes for the confusing number of ways you can specify a background image for your widget.
It is functional and not much more than that. It could use at least some graphics that I haven't bothered with. Partly because I do not have any graphics editing software installed on my iBook and mostly because I'm not so good with graphics work.
So don't be confused with the strange icon and the horrible background, the functionality should be there. I'll try to arrange some polish for the next version.
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Made by alper at 2006-04-23 17:46
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Re: Plazes Widget First Version
Ok, this first version was at least prototypic enough to sollicit adequate feedback from my first tester: Cristiano.
I countered his suggestion that it currently is not very useful with the fact that the API somewhat limits the things you can do with it. For instance it is impossible to query arbitrary online users in a certain area (necessary to duplicate the radius widget on the plazes front page).
You can however get exact locations and distances for all your friends. So we came up with the following functionality: instead of having to switch between your friends and seeing a map.
- You are the center of the map.
- There is a control to set the maximum distance < 3 km< 10 km< 25 km< 50 kmunlimited anybody can be (or maybe a free text input).
- Everybody within that maximum distance will be displayed on the same map as you with you as the center.
- The Google Map should be scaled zoomed such that everybody is visible.
So this becomes a radius widget with a map. This functionality is currently missing from Plazes (and the maps are buried a bit deep within the system at times).
I'll make this after my deadline of following week.
Made by:
Alper
on April 23,2006 21:56
Re: Plazes Widget First Version
Actually I found out Plazes does offer a very similar view like what I just described.
Made by:
Alper
on April 23,2006 22:21
Excellent start
I'm pleased that you're working on this. Thank you!
Made by:
Trevor
on April 23,2006 23:18
Re: Plazes Widget First Version
Congratulations on being the first outputting something with the new API 1.0! Keep it coming. We will include searches, like we have now in the people or plazes search, with the next release of the API.
Made by:
felix
on April 24,2006 09:49
Re: Plazes Widget First Version
I've installed this on my Dashboard and it works fine.
I actually had a play with Dashcode today - Apple's new IDE for making widgets - and imported your widget. One of the things I've noticed is that the badges /markers that you are using are no longer available at the same location on the Plazes site, so I updated the code to pull down the current ones. The only other issue I have is that my current plaze name is quite long, so it drops off the side of the widget.
Apart from that, some smarter graphics are all that are needed (and I might have a go at producing some at some point... would be nice if Plazes provided some sample graphics for application developers / press releases etc.).
Cool widget.
Made by:
andyp
on March 21,2007 00:09
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Ok, this first version was at least prototypic enough to sollicit adequate feedback from my first tester: Cristiano.
- You are the center of the map.
- There is a control to set the maximum distance < 3 km< 10 km< 25 km< 50 kmunlimited anybody can be (or maybe a free text input).
- Everybody within that maximum distance will be displayed on the same map as you with you as the center.
- The Google Map should be scaled zoomed such that everybody is visible.
I countered his suggestion that it currently is not very useful with the fact that the API somewhat limits the things you can do with it. For instance it is impossible to query arbitrary online users in a certain area (necessary to duplicate the radius widget on the plazes front page).
You can however get exact locations and distances for all your friends. So we came up with the following functionality: instead of having to switch between your friends and seeing a map.
So this becomes a radius widget with a map. This functionality is currently missing from Plazes (and the maps are buried a bit deep within the system at times).
I'll make this after my deadline of following week.