Party Toonz Assessment – Blog 2 Footnote.

The next items on the jobs to do list were to create the classes for the Reader and Writer then code up the favourite’s buttons. Again I was surprised how reasonably smoothly this went, so much so that I had another one of my ‘brilliant’ ideas! Instead of the user having to click the favourite button to pass the track information to the current track panel and THEN having to click the play button of the media player, couldn't we just code it so that both things happened when they clicked the favourite’s button? Well apparently we could, and quite easily by just duplicating the If statement from the Play button, so this is exactly what we did! Hey presto!! A much simpler option for the user :o).

I also ended up coding another aspect of the favourites buttons in a slightly different way than the example we had been given, by having the track name appear in a label above the Favourite Button, so that I could have each favourite button display a message to the user about what they needed to do to play their favourite tracks. Then, after adding the appropriate coding regarding the Reader and Writer to the Load Event and Exit Event respectively, I tested each of the buttons and opened and closed the application a few times, and most of the bits and bobs seemed to be working well. Also the details from the favourites buttons were happily saved and restored as expected. I just needed to brush up on a couple of little errors I had made with regard to the various messages on the buttons, etc.

While I was doing this, Jake had wondered off on a tangent and started trying to code in complicated things that were way over my head (as he had been trying to do all along)! He did however find out how to do a couple of things that we had been talking about - locking the size of the form so that the user couldn't play with the layout, and hiding the controls at the top right corner of the screen so that the user would only be able to exit using the menu system - so that was really helpful.

By the end of the day my application seemed to be working smoothly, so all I now have left to do are the finishing touches which I can do at my own pace (but want to try and get out of the way asap). Poor Jake on the other hand still has some work to do on getting his extra complications all working well - I tried to help him out but I think I just confused him even more! In the end I just said my goodbyes and left him too it ... after beating him at pool again obviously ... as I knew he would be able to figure them out much more quickly without my 'help'.

So, as we stand now, further jobs done:
• Reader and Writer Classes
• Favourite Buttons

Jobs still to do:
• Help File
• About Information
• Publish

Signing off for the night again.

Deb.