Programming Examples
PIVOT (Visual Basic 6.0, Desaware ActiveX Gallimaufry, Windows APIs, Microsoft Internet Control)
The Digest Handler (Java, JavaMail API, Kunststoff Look & Feel, Platform-specific delivery tools)
Build-A-PIVOT (BAP) Visual Basic Application
The BAP application is unique to CSC in
that it is the first piece of software designed to be
installed on a user's computer. One of CSC's signature
product lines is the CD-ROM. When I started at CSC,
CD-ROMs released had only static content. They held
simple text and images in html format along with some
spatial data that people could use only if they had
expensive Geographic Information System (GIS) software
like ArcView.
To get more dynamic content onto CDs, I first helped
create dhtml pages with Javascript to include
everything from simple mouse-over image swaps -- a
"poor man's GIS viewer" -- to a Javascript-powered
full-text indexing application that could highlight
search terms once the user moved on to an html page
with a hit, all from a CD with no software
installation.
The browser as a means of delivery, though successful, was fairly limited. The BAP is the culmination of integrating CSC's html skills with truly dynamic content without browser constraints. By moving outside of the browser into Visual Basic, product users could not only read a tutorial of how to foreground their issues on a web site, now they would have their web pages created for them as they followed along and consolidated their information together. By using the Internet Explorer engine in the BAP application, the PIVOT team was able to continue to leverage CSC's html design abilities. The embedded IE engine also allowed simple hyperlink clicks to set off processes, like writing out files or creating html image maps, that could not have been easily done within a traditional browser's security constraints.
BAP was released to a select group of National Estuary Program (NEP) leaders in Summer of 2002, and is set for general release to the public in December 2002.
Description of PIVOT; pages housed at NOAA CSC
PIVOT highlights page (use menu bar to see other pages)
Three minute Flash movie about PIVOT
Screenshots, in jpg format
Checklist Project Entry/Edit page
Project page with review window open
Wizard, "What are we doing?" page
Wizard Finish page with example output in browser
The Digest Handler
You're subscribed to an email list. The traffic is brisk, so you subscribed to the digest version. You no longer get emails every fifteen minutes bothering your busy day, but the digest is unnecessarily difficult to read.Enter The Digest Handler. Now digest emails will stop looking like endless streams of text like this...
... and start looking like something manageable, like this!
The Digest Handler isn't a mail handler. You don't have to give up Eudora or Netscape or mutt. Instead, The Digest Handler is made to work in tandem with your mail handler as it scans your inbox for new digests, downloads them, and parses them into an easy to read format. Download The Digest Handler and give it a try today! The Digest Handler is available for Mac OS X, 10.0 or higher, today. Windows (95 through XP) and Mac Classic versions are on the way!