Jason's Blog

Okay, here it is, the final version of the ConcerQuest website:

people.emich.edu/jkeswick/IS449/project/project_final.html

Well, I've finally figured out the whoel route-finding thing.  An example of routing (by itself) can be found here:

people.emich.edu/jkeswick/IS449/project/routeform.html

There are still a couple of bugs to work out in integrating with the rest of the project, but it should be ready to go very soon.  This is the last of the major features I'm working on (since I got the date thing managed), so I'll work on the diagram(s) for the presentation as soon as that's done.

I've built in by date searching on the version of the formatted page as Todd currently has it.  I don't think its the most up to the minute version of the formatting, but it shouldn't be hard to integrate it into the newer version.  To see how it works, check out the following link:

people.emich.edu/jkeswick/IS449/project/iteration3formatted.html

Well, I've been working on a couple of the issues of concern from reviews.  I've added a bit of formatting control, making the map and list appear side by side, and re-arranging the search options along the top.  I have also addressed the issue of missing address, city, state, or zip code information by filtering out those events that are missing some key piece of info.  It seems to have taken care of the problem we were having with events popping up that were clearly outside the requested range.  The final bit of work that I've completed is the separation of event title and venue name for the list of events.  I'm still trying to work out how to incorporate date ranges.  I have a couple of ideas, but haven't figured out how to work them in just yet.  In particular, the javascript calendar widget that I found doesn't seem to like either having two calendars on the same page, or selecting multiple dates on one calendar.  I'm still trying to work with this calendar, but if anyone has had a good experience with a javascript calendar I'd really appreciate the web site.

Here is the site for what I've done so far (if it doesn't load or does something funny, that probably means that I'm working on it some more)  people.emich.edu/jkeswick/IS449/project/iteration3.html

Kayakers have made tremendous strides.  Your site has a very nice look and feel to it.  I think you've got a pretty good handle on what still needs to be done, so just stick to the goals you already have.  I.E. cross-browser compatability.

I'm really impressed with the way you guys have handled all of the difficulties you've encountered.  Your solutions have been creative and well constructed, particularly considering that you are dealing with issues that none of the other groups have had to deal with.  I would like to see a way to compare several companies side by side, or possibly you could provide an easy way for the user to produce a printable version of the info they pull up.

Todd's Blog Well...... on Thursday and Friday I made the changes that Jason and I discussed last Monday after class. The data is now being added via Jason's array to a table. The hope here is this will allow us to more easily use event handlers, which will be the next step. We feel the additional fuctionalty grealy improve the site.

Here, finally, is the merged version of what we've been working on.  Getting 'finished' bits of code out of the main html document turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected.  I'd temporarily forgotten how picky the mapQuest API is about ordering, and I jumped ahead of myself and tried to do code cleanup at the same time.  In the end, it all worked out.  Now, all of the sections that we are reasonable certain we are done with are in two files called maps.js and events.js, leaving mostly the stuff we're still working on in the main html file.  There are some exceptions, in that the main file contains several lines of code near the end that I'm pretty sure we're done with, but the mapQuest API doesn't seem to like having those lines in the head.  All three of the files can be viewed here:

http://people.emich.edu/jkeswick/IS449/project/

The Iteration 2 file includes the use of a dynamic table for displaying info on the events that are currently being mapped.  I'm going to see if I can work with the format of the page a bit today, but I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to get it ready in advance of class.

Also note that the array currently being used to store the event info now contains a start and end date/time attribute that we should be able to use in iteration 3 to handle filtering by a date range, but the code is not in place to do that quite yet.  I did find a javascript calendar widget that we might be able to use for user input, but I've not been able to experiment with it sufficiently to say for certain.

Hey guys, I'm still working, but here's what I've come up with so far.

 ConcerQuest

It finds events, grabs the first 10 in the list, and generates a map for those ten.  Clicking the 'get more events' button will grab the next 10, and make a new map for those 10 events.  Once you reach the end of the list, the 'get more' button will restart the search automatically.  For some reason, simply going back to the beginning of the array doesn't work, so I set it up to redo the search.  There is a better way to do this, but I've not managed to make it work yet.  At any rate, we now have the events stored in an array, so we should be able to incorporate filtering by a specific date range, which is what I'm actually concentrating on now.

At the moment, there are a couple of popups.  The first one is showing the total number of events that the search has returned, and the second shows the index range of the events currently being showed on the map.  Both were for debugging purposes, and I'll get rid of them the next time I update the file.

Also note that the list at the bottom of the page shows all of the events, rather than just the ones currently being displayed on the map.  Once I've figured out how to do the filtering by date, I'll tackle the issue of making the list match up with the map.

Hey guys.  I've been doing a bit of research into the problem of multiple points on the map, and it seems to be a very common problem.  A lot of people on the mapquest forum have complained of similar issues (mostly related to route mapping), but nobody seems to have come up with a direct solution.  An alternative for us would be to have events listed on a short list, with a "get more events" option.  I think I can arrange it so that it will start by displaying the nearest events. 

I think that we can also separate venue locations and still have the popup balloons show all of the events at a venue.  This should expand the number of events we can show, as the map is currently treating each event as a separate map location.  I'm currently working on this, but don't have a protoype ready for viewing yet.

Lori's Blog Hey guys. Here is my blog post to the world that I may not be able to make it to class tonight. I had to make an emergency dental appointment late in the afternoon today to get a tooth pulled (ouch)! For future refrence, if a filling falls out, dont eat jawbreakers and crack your tooth into pieces! (Yeah it's sad that I managed to do that - what in the world was I thinking???) I will try my best to make it tonight, but since I most likely will have to get a surgical extraction of the tooth, I may not be in the best shape later. I just thought you would all love to know why I may miss class!

I've done something similar, but on nachos at the movies.  Its harder than you think to avoid chewing on a damaged tooth.  You might want to stock up on soft foods, cause you're not going to want to do any chewing for a few days.