Do I Dare Build Another Chartmaker?
| Posted by nButton on Feb 20, 2012 |
Over the past six months, the Color Chartmaker has succeeded on the two most important criteria: it is being used by a lot of people on a regular basis and I have not had to touch it in all that time. No fixes or tweaks or adjustments. I just put it out of my mind and it has gone along doing its thing.
No errors may not sound like a very positive acheivement, but programming is like plumbing, if you do your job right no one should notice a thing. I know that's a cliche that's been used in several movies but there it is. Any programming you can walk away from is a good one (okay, now that's just a blatant rip off of the plane landing at the end of Die Hard 2, I should be ashamed but I'm not).
Success number two for the chartmaker is the fact that in those six months, 2,800 knitters have used it to design over 9,000 charts. Moreover, almost 1,500 of those charts have been shared and can be downloaded from the Shared Charts section.
Still, the color chartmaker is not perfect, and my recent work building a Google+ Hangout app for playing RPGs has got me thinking in some new directions.
So I'm opening up the color chartmaker for a second round of programming. Chartmaker 2.0, I suppose. Have you tried the chartmaker? Do you like it? What worked, what didn't? I want to know what needs to get improved and what needs to get left alone. Here are two thing I've noticed (or rather that Megan has noticed then shown me):
- When you build a very large chart, especially on an older computer, the whole system slows right down. This is because each cell in the grid is its own entity and needs a little spave in memory. A lot of littles add up to a lot and after a while the computer starts running low on memory. Low memory = slow computer.
- You should be able to delete a chart.
What else is there? I'm looking for critique, but I also accept praise ;). If there's an aspect of the chartmaker that you want to see preserved, let me know and I'll protect it.
I have had another dangerous thought. I am strongly considering creating a Stitch Chartmaker. Am I utterly mad? Is there an audience for a web tool that lets designers map out their patterns stitch by stitch? What would it need to do in order to be useful?
I pretty much live on Google+, so if you want to discuss the chartmaker, read my updates, join the beta testing group when it gets to that point or just chat, here I am.
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