Dot Lab 3 Requirements

[swethapraba]

For next time:
3. a) Be able to click on and drag a dot
b) If a dot is created, clicked on, or a rectangle is created it becomes selected
c) Pressing escape or clicking on the canvas unselects any selected object
d) Use arrow keys for fine grained positioning of selected object

[swethapraba]

There are two things that you should have finished by Monday, and you have lab time tomorrow (Friday) for it.

1. You should update your index.php file in your .doc folder to show the number of times your page was accessed (we are not counting unique visits - I really do want page accesses). We discussed in class that the method of choice for this is to use file_get_contents() and file_put_contents(). The single biggest possible point of failure on this is that your web-docs folder may not be configured in a way to allow you to programatically create files (from your php script). This is a permissions issue, and in this case you should present yourself to Mr. Andrew Hamilton in the Sys lab who would be aware of this. This problem should only affect persons who already had a web-docs folder prior to this school year. In any case, if it is an issue, please address it on Friday (ideally prior to the start of class by writing a trivial entry into a file from index.php).
2. Dots lab 3. You should finish the movement portion of the Dots lab (ie. Dots Lab 2) by Monday. You should be able to move dots by using the arrow keys and by dragging them with the mouse. Also, pressing the Escape key should unselect all dots. Remember that if you are clicking on a previously selected item, and dragging it, then any other items do not become unselected. Let the file manager be your guide on this.
3. Dots lab 4. (Likely due on Wednesday before Thanksgiving) If you have done the Dots lab 2, the next part of the lab is to record the actions that you take (definitely exclude individual mouse movements (wrap them into a single Move item); excluding Selection items is a possibility though it's not a bad idea to include them. Definitely include dot creation and movement). There are two buttons that you should implement for this: (1) An undo button which does an undo of the most recent action on the stack (2) A replay button which clears the canvas and replays the entire sequence of directives (with some delay between directives).

If you have not finished Dots lab 2, you may wish to take a look at an example that I have put up on my web-docs folder. You will find it at
http://tjhsst.edu/~pcgabor

The architecture is slightly different from what most people are doing, but the point of my posting is that you should be moving forward in your lab and not get stuck. I suggest you update your lab appropriately - I don't want you dwelling on part 2 of the lab, I want you to have finished part 3 by Monday. Better to take relevant parts rather than the whole lab. If you have already have checked the first two parts of the lab, you may still wish to take a look. It is somewhat minimalist. There are only 5 if statements. Each piece tries to be tidy. If you have time in class and you are done with the Dots lab, part 3, I strongly suggest consolidating your code before moving to part 4.