June 19, 2007

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The Pieces are Coming Together for Echonote

Echonote is really starting to come together, which couldn’t make me happier. I’ve been working on it for quite some time, and I can’t wait to get it out there and in the wild. Here’s what’s been going on this week:

Front End Design. I just got off the phone with the Igoo guys and they’ve been putting in some really great effort. They have added a bunch of really impressive functionality utilizing the jQuery Javascript Framework. We also bounced a bunch of ideas off of each other regarding various interface options; it’s awesome having them there to be my sanity check when brewing up new features.

Back End Scripting. I finally got back into coding mode this past weekend and made some good progress. The site’s basic functionality has been complete for quite some time, but I am still working on all of the little kinks. This is something that doesn’t come easy for me. I like seeing results for my effort and making final tweaks and modifications doesn’t really “wow” me. Nonetheless, I’m doing my best to stay motivated.

Moving Forward. At this point, I have been developing the test site on very minimal markup[aka it is VERY ugly]. This has posed two problems. 1. During development it has been hard for me to visualize the site’s functionality when the right icons and colors are not being displayed. 2. It has been difficult communicating my ideas to Igoo for the same reason; it is hard to digest for them also. Because of this, I plan on taking the design thus far and integrating it into my test site. This will create extra work for me as the design will likely change, and I will have to integrate my code a second time when the final design is delivered. But I think the benefit of being able to see what the design will ultimately will be doing far outweighs this extra work.