Post #16,974
11/6/01 4:51:07 PM
11/6/01 4:51:44 PM
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HTML image maps
One of my projects, if they assign it to me, will be to make an image map of the whole offices and assign user clicks to the rooms/cubes the employee is located at. The guy who has those skills didn't get back to me about how to do it, and it may be one assigned to me as nobody else seemed to want to do it at the time. I get all kinds of rejected projects shuffled to me.
I am assuming that they have TIF images of all the offices that I can convert to JPG, last I checked they had TIF images and wanted to use Leadtools, but I think that JPG will work better.
Any ideas? There are over 20 floors to one building alone. Some cubical areas get shuffled around so it can change at a momment's notice as the management plays Corp Chess and we are just pawns. :)
Picking up the pieces of my broken life.
Edited by orion
Nov. 6, 2001, 04:51:44 PM EST
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Post #16,983
11/6/01 5:04:41 PM
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What ideas are you looking for exactly?
You gave us the situation but no specific problem to address...are you looking for an editing tool for imagemaps?
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A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires."
Jacques Servan, 1767
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Post #17,013
11/6/01 6:14:36 PM
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Ideas I am looking for
#1 Information on the HTML Image mapping in general. Using a straight up JPG file.
#2 Information on Leadtools image mapping so the events can be trapped on a TIF image to check the area to see if it is a click to an employee area.
#3 How to create a way to check the X and Y coordinates of each office/cube so that a Data Entry clerk can enter it easily without getting confused. If they enter the data wrong, or the map changes, it is my head on the chopping block. This will most likely be database driven from the server side of an ASP page. I can do HTML and ASP right, just need help on the image map and how to implement it.
I did research on this but didn't find anything relevent to what I was working on. I do not want to spend a lot of time researching it, I want to hit the ground with both feet running so I can impress the managers. Then maybe I can keep my job for the time being and pass probation.
Picking up the pieces of my broken life.
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Post #17,037
11/6/01 7:08:00 PM
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Couple of questions
#1 Information on the HTML Image mapping in general. Using a straight up JPG file. TIF images are not standard for the browser, so GIF or JPG are the way to go. If the images are simple, then just use GIF. If they're pretty elaborate, use JPG. #2 Information on Leadtools image mapping so the events can be trapped on a TIF image to check the area to see if it is a click to an employee area. Not sure what you mean by "click to an employee area". Do you mean that the user that is viewing the image on the browser can click on the image and have some info pop up (e.g. who's office, their name, title, etc...). Not familiar with the tool, so I'm not of much help in any case. #3 How to create a way to check the X and Y coordinates of each office/cube so that a Data Entry clerk can enter it easily without getting confused. The end result should be a table that has the squared coordinates for the various parts of the images. This would then be pushed into the html as coordinates for the javascript mouse over and/or click events. As for how to chop up the image for the purpose of data entry, I'm not sure if there's any tools. Perhaps some VB program that does the chore is in order?
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Post #17,258
11/7/01 9:00:54 PM
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Re: Couple of questions
JPG sounds like the way to go.
An employee area, being a cubical or office. Some square or rectangle area of the office map that when clicked on gives the info for the employee that works there.
Writing the data entry program in VB would be best. We could display the map, and then set the points and have the data entry person click on a square, or define one by themselves with two clicks or something.
Picking up the pieces of my broken life.
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Post #17,282
11/8/01 3:08:56 AM
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Just make sure...
...that you keep the information about the physical aspects of the office (within the images) in a seperate table from the data about who currently occupies that space. The physical characteristics are unlikely to change - at least not very often, but the assignment of those offices may have a constant churn.
Along these lines, I'm not sure that you really need to get data entry involved with defining the graphical coordinates. In my estimation, this is a one shot deal that might be better handled as part of the software engineering process. That is, if there is a finite and fixed number of offices to be digitized, then you could have a less friendly way to enter the raw coordinates.
OTOH, the assignment of the personnel to those defined office spaces needs a nice friendly interface because the software staff will want to turn it loose at some point. But since you already have the office space digitized and categorized, all you need in your html front end is an additional mechanism wherein someone can not only view who is currently assigned the space, but also can modify that information (maybe with some security scheme to limit who is allowed modify access).
Of course, if this is a turnkey system where the office space is constantly changing, you probably don't want to hand key the coordinates. Still, you probably want to have a seperate front end for the two tasks, with the coordinate input maybe in a standalone executable and the assignment as part of the normal html interface.
Anyhow, just a thought.
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Post #17,038
11/6/01 7:18:44 PM
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Idea for #3
...depending on how spiffy (I mean, "user-oriented" ;) you want it to be.
I wouldn't expect a data-entry clerk (whoever that is) to know the first thing about X and Y cord'nutz. I would want (in a perfect world) to give them some kind of interface so they can edit the map themselves graphically. Doing that in HTML is difficult (but not impossible if you have a fast server).
May I suggest a standard grid instead? It would make the "selection" of map points easy; it would make the actual imagemap areas a walk in the park, and you could update the underlying map file with a different tool, like Paint Shop Pro or something, on an as-needed basis (not on the Web).
You can find the MAP and AREA tag specs for HTML 4 at [link|http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#edef-MAP|http://www.w3.org/T...tml#edef-MAP]
As for Leadtools?...you're on your own.
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A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires."
Jacques Servan, 1767
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Post #17,260
11/7/01 9:05:00 PM
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Thanks, the more "user oriented" the better
I don't think that our users will want to futz with X/Y coordinates. Maybe I'll have to define them myself via a VB program and then train someone how to set the coordinates so someone else can click on an office and assign an employee to it. Each office has a number assigned to it anyway, just set two fields one for the upper left corner, and the other for the lower right corner.
Picking up the pieces of my broken life.
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Post #17,636
11/9/01 11:32:04 PM
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Not worth the fuss IMO
>> I wouldn't expect a data-entry clerk (whoever that is) to know the first thing about X and Y cord'nutz. I would want (in a perfect world) to give them some kind of interface so they can edit the map themselves graphically. Doing that in HTML is difficult (but not impossible if you have a fast server). <<
I once had to think about a similar issue when a sports-art company (defunct now I think) wanted to show photos of a bunch of players in a huddle, and then click on the image to get images or art about specific players. (The huddle only showed their butt.)
Without some training, the "data entry" person is fairly likely to screw up I concluded. For example, they may accidentally overlap the rectangles or polygons that make up the click areas.
Fortunately the project was scrapped when sales never got to where the investors wanted (and people had to bail, including me.)
But, I don't think it is worth the effort for an internal application. Just build an employee directory with room cubicle numbers, and prominently label the physical cubicles.
Offices shuffle around too much. The person who you train to digitize the coordinates will probably quit or get reassigned, and then a new person will make all the same mistakes all over again for six months.
Spend energy on something that brings in customers instead. Is there a slowdown there? Why all the fiddling for internal directories?
________________
oop.ismad.com
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Post #18,141
11/13/01 6:11:19 PM
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"I don't know how to do it, but here is ..."
"... why it should not be done"
:)
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Post #18,195
11/14/01 12:01:30 AM
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Standard practice
Managers mostly have low computer skills, unless they started out as a computer person and worked their way up. So they think that anything is possible, and may have no idea of the limitations we face. But they think if they throw enough money at a problem, it might go away. If it doesn't go away, it must be the worker's fault. Spend money to add more memory cache to the SQL Server instead of having the developer redesign the application to cache data to a local file for things that don't change that often. If that doesn't work, get a technical specialist and have him read some web pages on SQL Server and appoint him the DBA and hope that the problems go away. If that doesn't work, blame the developers, whose hands got tied and ideas get ignored. Put one on probation as a warning to the rest. The market is in management's favor now, they can hire higher skilled developers for less pay now. As long as they can work under the same limitations, politics, and conditions that the rest of us work under and don't leave in less than a month like the others have. ;)
Picking up the pieces of my broken life.
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Post #19,372
11/25/01 9:57:18 PM
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What gave you that interpretation?
________________
oop.ismad.com
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