Ergonomics Concept – A Day/Night Toggler!
from personal expirience, programs provide little control to users over the brightness and contrast of the program.
For example, i am working on my laptop at night and my environment has little light surrounding the computer, yet the program i use has alot of white space, and this white color is really bright compared to my surroundings, making me discomfortable from the brightness.
Hence, i decided to tackle this ergonomical issue in my program, with the introduction of a Day/Night Toggler function; i was inspired by the same concept that is currently in GPS systems; the user can select a day time brightness and a night time brightness setting, to ease them in focusing on the road rather than the GPs itself.
The Day/Night toggler rather than changing the brightness of the screen/monitor itself.. would change the “white space” of the program; during the day, the white space would be white, and duing the night, the “white space” would be black.
this allows the user to focus more on the programs functions rather than the “white space” the color black also mimics the feeling of a loss in brightness, compared to the color white, which increasing the feeling of brightness.
you may ask, why not just let the user change thier monitors brightness itself?
well, when the monitor’s contrast decreases of increases, the whole screens brightness also follows the same patterns.. which in this case, if the monitor is dimmer, then the whole program also is dimmer, which i dont want in this case: i want “white space” to become dim, yet i want the same brightness and contrast for important functions of the program. hmm i might have to check if this concept is already patent, if not… woot, i mgonna be making some money!
GUI – following my concept drawings of screen designs!
looking back at all that documentation i made in the 3rd assignment, i looked back at my screen design concepts.. and 2 particullar concepts turely lightened up my day, and my program… using my knowledge in photoshop i decided to implement these concepts into pratise… and this is what i developed:
after analysing the two final screen designs i concluded that the second screen would be the most appropriate, as the first is too intense and crowded, and would fail in use of white space throughout the program.
Music Concept
Well, after sharing my little secret on how to add music and video with ease, i decided to add some background music into my program. to do this i need a form that will always be “hiden” i.e: always at the back of any other form. after this i can use my web browser to play music from a specific file that will naturally loop throughout the whole program.
This the implementation of background music i thought that it would be appropriate to include a mute and unmute button in my side bar menu; meaning an extra 2 functionality buttons!
in order to achieve a mute and unmute button, instead of actually doing what it says to do, because my music is within a web browser, if i change the url of the web browser, then the music would “stop” and if i re assign the url back to the music’s file path, it would seem to continue playing the music.. a much easier solution compared to actually using the difficult coding of changing the computers master volume!
another genuis short cut when using a web browser!
———— code————-
Private Sub mutevolume_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles
musicbackgroundweb.musicmaker.Navigate(navmute)
End Sub
Private Sub about_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles
about.ClickAboutfbiic.Show()
End Sub
Music/Video Concept – A way around Windows Media PLayer
Well, im going to share a little secret that i have been brewing up for some time now; a way around the hassles and limits of the Windows Media Player Control!
With the help of flash, you can change any media format into a .swf file: e.g: i have a .avi movie, i want to change it into a .swf file, simply import video into a flash project, change some frame rates and other options you want, and then export out as a .swf file
But what does a .swf file mean to me in vb??
it means that YOU as a programmer dont need to use windows media player any more to play movies!
All you need now is a simple web browser! a control that requires no code to get your movie (in a .swf format) playing in your vb.net application!
With my home brew genius concept, i decided to PUT this into PRACTISE, and achieved the ability to easily add mp3 music, and video to any of my forms with easeeeee!
My First Form!!
After deciding to fall back on vb.net, my first form would be my login form, which i have concluded will not be a traditional username and password concept, but rather a combination code that will be inputted.
The Combination code is still a password, but that is the only thing the user will enter; the combination code will be a unique 5 digit code (meaning up to 59049 unique codes can be generated with only 5 digit characters)
Once the user enters this code and clicks the confirm button, i plan for the coding to go to a database, and check if that same combination code is within the database. If it is successful, then the user can enter the program, else, they will loose a chance (4 to begin with) and must enter thier combination code again.
If the user fails the combination test, to warn them of this, i thought to change the color scheme of the screen; every time the user fails, the color scheme would gradually change to a hazardous warning color scheme, if the user continues to fail, and surpasses the 4 chance limit, then the whole system would shut down.
