Monday February 20th, 7pm
Take a look through the new interface layout, especially the text used, and be picky about how to change it.
Detailed Notes on Interface 03
Currently the front page background matches applet/building background.
Block strip at bottom.
“Plumbing” general liked as a way to tie stories to author’s stories, other stories, characters and phrases. Maybe more ‘plumbing-like’ with bends etc. Connecting to the building metaphor…
“X” button, moves story to background, behind building. Maybe grab any part of story and move it. Stories have 90% transparent background (?). Christiane liked having many stories open at once, rather than just three, but all the stories titles should be visible and clickable. (We decided only have three stories at once for clarity)
Issues of dithered text etc. Martin will start in two week time to create the applet, mostly about how the building looks and works.
Vivian thinks Serif is worse than Sanserif in terms of legibility. We shall try different options! Will also try with and without ‘dirt’ in the applet
Solid color behind story titles… maybe the background color of the storytitles is the same as the building color, but without the text scrolling behind it.
Maybe the building text can continue moving while a story is open, but maybe it moves slower.
The plumbing color is the story title color also…
“Link to story”? using question marks is good… ‘come hither’ tone.
“Search” and “Login” are separate buttons.
The building text should be as is! Readable only as fragments. A ‘window’ into the text. When you click on a fragment of text, it opens up to reveal the story (how? The window expands and the font gets smaller ? Animates?) The genie effect.
A dragging motion on the building ‘turns’ the building. Not really a rotation, more like unfolding a pop-up book, so you can fit 10,000 stories.
What stories open:
If you click on ‘christiane paul’ or any author on the front page, their stories open up. Plus all the stories plumbed to those. If that isn’t enough…. 2nd order linked stories appear or just the latest stories.
If you click on ‘Gothamberg’ you just see the latest stories, except for the ‘blue’ stories, which are always sent to the back. (Will excite people to come back)
“200 new stories since you last logged in”?
Buttons… can you just type anywhere in the ‘sky’ and stuff happens? Perhaps there is no ‘logout’ button, so you are logged out as soon as you leave the site? (ie. Fewer buttons)
Two types of login, after you click ‘Link to story?’ or the ‘login’ button.
‘Tennant’ login or ‘Visitor’ login.. using the vocabularly…
help is a doorman or super? ‘doorcode’ not ‘password’. Maybe above basement on left as the entrance to the building.
“Search?” “Ask the super?”
Issue of consistency for story-editing… perhaps you can’t delete a story, OR, you can’t delete characters and story-links…. However, plumbing breaks all the time… can stories with only characters and story-links have a low ‘value’ so not on top?
However, inconsistencies are an issue…
No word ‘edit’ once you logged in, its just that you can edit your own texts… but discrete.
In Building Text, there is always an ‘elevator’ (a vertical story), also ‘stairs’ … step-like story?
Are the ‘story’ shapes complex or simple rectangles…
“locate” crosshairs are wide but not edge to edge so it doesn’t look like a quadrant.
As you crosshair over, different shapes are made evident which you need to choose for a story.. People cant determine themselves what a storyshape is, but the building will be shaped by the aggregate of stories and their locations…?
Spaces:
Commercial spaces, apartments, lobby, stair, elevator, hall, roof, garden, basement
Note that some of these are single spaces (lobby) which grow?
A single window for writing a story. “Title of your story?” If no title to a story, then they are called: Apartment #2827 etc.
Linking…. We drop surrounding stories onto new story to link? We drop characters from other stories onto new story to link? If we use pronouns… he, she,… in the body text, can we drop a character onto them? (so that a person who is not mentioned by name still appears connected between two stories)
“Type a new character”
“Drag a new character”
Also, a ‘John’ that may be connected between various stories in one part of the building, is not the same as ‘John’ that’s connected between other stories….you can however get all ‘John’ stories by searching.
Two different reading/writing processes… some may search as they write then include as they go along… others research first, and then write their stories. Is there an issue of ‘Character driven’ narratives? But actually, people in a building may only know partial stories… and later find connections, so ‘search for stories’ may not be important as part of the writing process….
If we include ‘search’ as part of writing stories, then those story titles appear, and you can click and hold on them to read them?
Is “search” replaced by “ask the super?”
No ‘back’ button. However, after you click ‘submit’ you get the ‘preview’ and if you edit anything on your text, that brings back the write-screen.
Either: you drag a character from another story into a ‘box’ on your story… or as soon as you type the name of any of the characters in the other open stories, then a link is made…? However, to drag a character is a positive enforcement to make you consider linking characters.
So you can either drag a character from another story onto your ‘box’ of characters, or you can drag another character onto a ‘pronoun’ or empty space in the writing area, and they will appear in the box of characters as well.
After clicked ‘submit’ - “do you want to leave these… characters behind?” does that appear? Or “Include” or “abandon” characters in your story?
For example, in Christiane’s first story, the “Intruder�? is not named, but someone may have a character “James” that they want to link to “Intruder”.
Can only input 5000 words max… then it issues warning (as people with this many words probably won’t type in by hand, just a warning at the end)
Logging in, sessions, security… issues Martin/Chuck
Also, auto-backup of database every … x days…
Background is just a grey-grey gradiant… maybe with a bit of sodium brown at night.