»start«

mmm... I just throw this at you: the starting page after you selected Poland on the world map. I had wanted to integrate the basic data about Poland on this page - just to give a quick overview.

At first I tried to do a graphic comparing the size and population of Germany and Poland.... which didn't work out:



Then I tried to stick to the countries' outlines... which didn't work either:



Then I decided to make it simple.. and just tried some different colors... of which I liked none so I just left all of them in the sketch:



Then things were slowly getting better:
1.

2.


My teacher decided for the first of these last two.

Somehow I had desperately wanted to have a direct comparison with the German numbers. The main problem with that was that usually these kind of statistics are perceived in table-form. Putting them in a more graphical way made them more difficult to grasp at first glance. Additionally with the underlying colors the idea of the comparison kind of got lost. Janet said that is because the eye is so much used to understand that if in a table something is highlighted in some way it appears to be the headline or title of the row instead of being understood as data.

In the end my teacher was right asking why I would want to have a comparison on this page anyway. After choosing for Poland and "being welcomed to Poland" it seems quite akward to be confronted with Germany again. Thus: solution - wooho! I'll drop the German numbers but leave the shape of Germany in with a text that you can click on to find a table that compares the two statistics. Yeahyeahyeah.

And, yes, still want to put a bit of color in the map.

Navigation continued.... forgot how much time this scripting takes. Argh. But at least I'm pretty much back into it and this explains, too, why I didn't just drop it and continued to sketch: I love it, it's so neat. All this fiddling and problems where you don't even know where to start and then in the end it kind of works. So... here it goes.



Just note that I concentrated on Europe.
The text is still blurry sometimes (stupid mistake of mine but to fix that is gonna take way too much time). And yes... sorry, the letter navigation is not activated but I wanted to see what it looks like when the mouse runs over the letters.... I guess the result still needs to be re-worked but I'm not sure how.
What else? I'm a bit tired of looking for bugs.

Alright. Gonna start making sketches for the Polish starting page - eager to work on some content.

Something for you to play with.

I'm not so happy with the cross to close the maps. I'll try Inês' suggestion to take the sea as return-button later. Kind of had enough for today.



And there is still a lot of fine tuning necessary anyway. Still due:

• experiment with speed of zooming
• try a nicer way of zooming out
• fix the text, so that first of all it's not blurry anymore and that secondly these two long lines on the top can be separated more nicely
• programme navigation via letters (that's gonna be so complicate - I'm scared)
• kick out explanation as soon as zooming-things start
• fix these colors: at least a bit of contrast would be helpful
• find solutions for all kind of problems coming up when you haven't coded for a long time.

Went to try some navigation stuff - thus here a wild mixture. And don't tell me you don't like the pink (that's quite some color - you shouldn't complain). But honestly.... this is just to give an idea of where this whole thing is heading at... and yes, still need to rework the colors.


(the link might take some time to load...)

Ha! You thought you could trick me with these concepts of cold and warm colors.... no way!!!!!!!

But still I think that I gonna need to get myself some rainbow glasses. Whenever I work on the sketches I just see them getting way too colorful and then I decide they are finished... look at them again and magically all the color is gone. Strange ;-)

(Both sketches I uploaded in big for all those facing problems to read so just click on them to see them enlarged)

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7...............................



(hey, the white-theme again)

Gee, you are fast with commenting - thanks. I tried to pick up some things ... I don't think any of the sketches is IT! Wanna keep some different suggestions in the moment til I have consultation on Monday and then do a biggreatwonderful assemblage :-)

And I'm still so afraid of colors - where does that come from. Maybe I worked too much with print where any additional color makes the whole thing way more expensive...
Tomorrow first thing: re-touch the colors - in all the sketches! And look for fonts! And animate the navigation! (That's actually one thing I like to add about the boring usual sketches... I didn't want to make them too fancy when there is still continental highlighting on mouse-over and stuff like coming up - stay tuned :)

So, sketches 3 - 4 - 5:

#3..................................................



don't like the brownish....


#4..................................................



don't like this one at all.


#5..................................................



and yes, this one actually looks white on white... was not the idea of it, so this ones gonna be the first one to re-touch. Because actually I really like this one but wait and see.

Wanted to be done with these since a long time but ...

I feel a bit afraid of color in the moment and I guess the type-decision I'm gonna put off till I actually put the sketches in flash - just putting up pictures for you to see, kind of compresses the text which doesn't make it any more legible... Hold on till tomorrow... more sketches, more animation, more fun.

Just gonna feed you with two half-done sketches.

So... these could be a starting page to the overall web application - thus the first page any user will see. From there it can be chosen which country is actually of interest (ok, the way I do it now, you can only choose for Poland but that's still an option).

Saving the pictures seems to kick out some soft shades - gonna work on that later. And typo.... gee... I don't have the nerves (and neither the eye) for typo..

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3....................................................

(going sheckerd - haha)


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