Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

tomasboudr · Jul 8, 2004, 10:10 PM

so I have an idea for a program... its not very complicated

here is the idea:

Basically I want to have a people sorter program where I can have a window with a list of names and cell numbers on one side and on the other a cool looking map, (the map could be of the entire country or just a state (choosable via a menu above the map or something)
I want to be able to drag names from the list onto the map and drop them onto cities (and not every city just a few (like if I did VA I would want va beach, richmond, newport news, arlinton, and maybe 2 more) and then have their names locked on that city (maybe slightly transparent) so at a glance I can see who is where.

This way when my buddies go to different places over the summer I can keep track of where they are so I know which people are interning in dc somewhere, which people are staying in charlottesville etc. Lastly if I was going to travel to dc I could maybe print out a list of who is there and have their names an dnumber to take with me. And if it synced with my address book and pulled the names and numebrs from there that would be sweet.

it seems to me something that college students would want to be able to do (I know I would) and at the very least it is an exercise to start me into Xcode development.

how hard would this be to do? Is it something I could hash out in a couple weeks with no previous knowledge of xcode (I do have object oriented c experience from college and hs class) just have no clue how to tie the underlying code to interface elements described above.

Catfish_Man · Jul 9, 2004, 02:16 AM

Cool idea, could be a bit tricky to implement though, at least if you wanted it to be any more sophisticated than just pinning names to a map (say, being able to look up all the names in a city). Just doing a map with names wouldn't that hard at all.

If you decide to try it, have a look at the address book API and see if you can integrate it with that.

hyperb0le · Jul 9, 2004, 03:16 AM

Nice idea. If you don't wanna try it, I"ll give it a shot. (But if you'd like to give it a go, go for it!)

Chuckit · Jul 9, 2004, 03:30 AM

If you already had any experience in the area, this could probably be done in a couple of weeks. But since you don't, and this touches on a lot of different areas (UI design, drag-and-drop, hit-testing, basic OO database usage) as well as just learning the fundamentals of Cocoa programming, I think it would take quite a bit longer than you might hope for.

That said, if you've got a lot of patience and want to give it a try, it would be a major learning experience.

tomasboudr · Jul 9, 2004, 09:56 AM

Thanks for the replies guys...

Yeah it would just be a virual representation of a map pined to a wall with pins for the cities and little strips of paper with names, so I guess I did a decent job explaining it the first time. I feel no need to do this myself other than to have something to do the above. I would be just sa happy DLing something that did what I want. So hyperb0le if you want to try it out be my guest. Keep me informed if you want. I am majoring in human factors and computer interaction design so I have a good background there. Just not on the API and Xcode side. That being said I would actaully like to try to build it myself. and now would like to ask you guys if you could recomend a good xcode starting book or even where I look for documentation on the address book API mentioned earlier. I appreciate the help so far. I would just like to give back to the development community by making something worthwhile

sambeau · Jul 9, 2004, 11:21 AM

You could do this in HTML with a spot of Javascript and floating DIVs. I've seen it done with a Weather Map (clouds, rain, sun etc)

hyperb0le · Jul 9, 2004, 01:10 PM

Originally posted by tomasboudr:
That being said I would actaully like to try to build it myself. and now would like to ask you guys if you could recomend a good xcode starting book or even where I look for documentation on the address book API mentioned earlier. I appreciate the help so far. I would just like to give back to the development community by making something worthwhile

A good book to get started with XCode and Cocoa is Cocoa Programming for OS X by Aaron Hillegass.

This page would be a good place to start learning about accessing the Address Book.

tomasboudr · Jul 9, 2004, 03:42 PM

I bought the book you recomended.. so hopefully I'll be good to go... I'll be sure to post how I'm doing in a couple weeks. Basically I just needed something to get me started I'm pretty good at this stuff once I get going.

Thanks for all your help and encouragement guys.
-Thomas

wadesworld · Jul 11, 2004, 02:11 AM

I am majoring in human factors and computer interaction design

Pardon my ignorance, but WTF is that?

Wade

Catfish_Man · Jul 11, 2004, 12:44 PM

Originally posted by wadesworld:
Pardon my ignorance, but WTF is that?

Wade

UI Design, basically. What I would be majoring in if I could.

spauldingg · Jul 14, 2004, 11:21 PM

Make it in Flash and wrap it in a gadget.

tomasboudr · Jul 15, 2004, 09:31 AM

ohh nice idea... might have to do that... gadgets are just html and javascript right?

spauldingg · Jul 17, 2004, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by tomasboudr:
ohh nice idea... might have to do that... gadgets are just html and javascript right?

They can be, and they can be a lot more: check out the PurpleGiants dashboarder for a cool group of people who might be able to help you if you go this route.

Chuckit · Jul 17, 2004, 07:45 PM

Originally posted by spauldingg:
Make it in Flash and wrap it in a gadget.

And wait a year for Tiger to come out before you can even see if it works?

tomasboudr · Jul 17, 2004, 08:26 PM

I have a copy of tiger.... I just need to find a spare mac to put it on right now.

Naintofaren · Aug 8, 2004, 08:57 AM

u have tiger? its not even out? do u mean panther

tomasboudr · Aug 8, 2004, 09:25 AM

well its the wwdc version... same as everyone else... thats how people are making dashboard gadgets and stuff already.

Truepop · Aug 25, 2004, 10:40 PM

Originally posted by tomasboudr:
well its the wwdc version... same as everyone else... thats how people are making dashboard gadgets and stuff already.

a lot of people are actually making gadgets in BBEdit and the JavaScript Editor that comes with mozilla. if you download some of the Gadgets off thedashboarder.com you will be able to run them in your web browser.

Chris O'Brien · Aug 27, 2004, 07:54 AM

Originally posted by Truepop:
a lot of people are actually making gadgets in BBEdit and the JavaScript Editor that comes with mozilla. if you download some of the Gadgets off thedashboarder.com you will be able to run them in your web browser.

I use SubEthaEdit and look to see if there's any errors in the Javascript Console. I should point out that the gadgets will generally run fine in Safari (the only differnece is they don't save preferences, obviously), but Moz browsers bork at seeing the unkown object `gadget'. Commenting out all if (gadget) parts will allow them to work in moz browsers just fine. Not for IE though.