re: Mosquito or no-see-em?

[WendyPetti@xxxx]

I had been waiting until I had completed more revisions to the mosquito 
project before replying to Jay's message of Sept. 1 (below), and I then had 
gotten diverted onto other tasks. I attach to this message my revised version 
of Gary's mosquito project in its current state. It is called "mosquito." 
Then I'll attach more suggested revisions/extensions later. Please see my 
comments below in response to Jay's input:

> From: jfra@xxxx
> Date: Sat Sep 1, 2001 11:23 am
> Subject: Mosquito or no-see-em?
> 
> Gary & Wendy
> 
> When I downloaded and played MosqHunter.mw2, my mosquito was able to
> fly thru the green "L" shaped barrier. Is he supposed to be a mosquito
> or a no-see-em (who can fly thru screen barriers)?

I agree that that was a "bug" in the original project, and in my attached 
revision, I think you'll see that the green "L" barrier is much fatter and 
more impenetrable, although the occasional mosquito still gets through.

> Nice-If Comments:
> 1. replace the Announcement window with an inplace display area in the
> frame that would show Distance Traveled.
> 2. take the Stop Button out of the Announcement Window and make it an
> inplace Stop Button in the frame (like the Find Button).

I did not get any announcement windows when I ran the project. When I ran 
it, Gary's version displayed the distance travelled in the command center. I 
had already written to Gary that I thought he should output the distance 
travelled to a textbox rather than the command center, and you've illustrated 
why this is important: if someone is viewing the project with the Web Player 
rather than the full version, they cannot see the command center and instead 
get messages in an announcement box. Obviously this would be a very annoying 
interruption to the animation! I've used the textbox approach in my attached 
revision.

I am still puzzled as to why you were seeing announcements; I thought that 
the demo version of MW is a full version which would include the command 
center... oh! I have a theory! If you ran the project in Presentation Mode, 
you would be hiding the command center and would therefore get announcements 
instead of seeing output in the command center. I recall that Gary suggested 
using Presentation Mode so that his entire window would display without 
scrolling. In my attached revision, I have used a smaller window size so 
that it is unnecessary to use Presentation Mode.

By the way, there is no way to control the placement of the stop button in an 
announcement window or to remove it; in fact, I think whether it exists or 
not depends on what version of MW you have installed. When I run a project 
using announcement windows in MW 2.0, I never see a stop button, but I do see 
a stop button if I run the exact same project in MW Pro.

> 3. add a GoodBye Button that would do the equivalent of using 
> browser's Back menu item.

If this project were embedded into a web page, I don't know that there is a 
way to use a button to function as a browser's Back menu item. But in MW 
Pro, there would be a way to create a hyperlink to another web page, if 
desired. But it might be easier simply to include a navigational button on 
the web page outside of the project. I'm not sure I really understand... 
were you hoping for a button which would close the project?

> 4. does not seem to be a need to be able to Grab & Slide the Moves
> Slider (make it an inplace display area in the frame)

Sometimes I like using a slider to report information, as Gary has done. I 
did not change his slider in the attached revision. But it is certainly true 
that the moves could be reported in a textbox instead of through a slider. 
Probably people don't feel as much of an urge to replace numbers in a textbox 
as they might feel the urge to manipulate a slider. I will consider that as 
I continue playing with and revising the project.

> Very interesting project. I like how mosquito was able to fly thru
> the left edge of the screen to the right edge (like cylindrical
> space)

Actually, I had considered that to be a flaw, and I had tried to overcome it 
by making a green border around the whole window and programming the green 
color to send the mosquito back in the other direction. But then I 
remembered that programmed colors do not have any effect on turtles which are 
moving with the pen down (drawing a line), because the color under such a 
turtle will always be the color with which it is drawing and not the 
programmed color. Then I thought that I might have the turtle continually 
check its x and y coordinates and move back from an edge if it was about to 
go beyond it. I did not do this in the attached version. Instead, the way 
I've got things set up now, the mosquito rarely seems to cross a boundary 
anyhow.

I had already changed the black square to a mosquito shape before Gary 
replied to explain why he preferred a black square.

Other changes:
In my attachment, you can move the red "blood meal" with the up, down, left, 
and right arrow keys to try to avoid the mosquito. However, the way the 
folks at LCSI have implemented things, if you use MW Pro, key controls will 
not work unless you first click somewhere on the page itself (not on a 
button). The way to work around this is to force a user to click on the page 
by using a simulated button to launch the action. The simulated button uses 
a programmed color to launch the procedure. But I have not done this in the 
current revision, so as it stands now, you will need to click on the 
background of the page if you want to use the arrow keys to move the blood 
meal in Pro.

I thought that in a future revision I might program other keys to be able to 
move and rotate the barrier.

I would be interested in reactions to the attached revised project.

Wendy Petti

Attachment: MOSQUITO.MW2
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