UR!KA dev blog: Archive

Launch!

After a long hiatus due to job commitments, I can happily say UR!KA is finally live. Any questions please feel free to tweet us at @urika_app or use the feedback system we have running. Changes won’t be instant but we will keep a log. And last of all get uploading, either using the upload page or using the Chrome extension. The content has to come from all of you, we can’t wait to see...

Sep 18th

Invites for UR!KA

Initially, UR!KA will be invite only, with each user being given new invites at regular intervals. Please note this is not due some sort of elitist mindset. Due to time constraints for maintenance and uncertainty on how the site will cope with larger amounts of traffic, I’ve decided to keep some control over the user base until I can put some research into hosting, use of the cloud etc. Any...

Jun 18th

May 22nd

Gearing up for launch

Despite not being able to touch UR!KA till the project is marked in June, I’ve already made a list of improvements to make as soon as I possibly can. These mainly concern design fixes, such a thumbnail size, as well as completing some parts of the project that got sidelined due to deadlines, such as browser extensions for browsers other than Google Chrome. The eventual plan is make complete...

Apr 21st

Project Deadline Reached

Nearly a year on from starting work on this project, I’ve handed in the codebase. The only thing left to do now is a) pray that no-one finds the site and tries to break it, and b) write the report and user manual. I have an astonishing amount to cover so the difficulty will be being concise. And finally, once the project has been marked, I will release a beta version of the site into the...

Mar 23rd

The Final Push

3 days to go and things are so far looking good. Usability testing is complete, I’ve a few more bugs/features to work through, three video tutorials to record and finally, like a monolith against the horizon, IE8 testing. I’ve already added a warning to the page since the site’s coolest features will SIMPLY NOT WORK in IE8 due to it being so behind the times. That said,...

Mar 21st

Mar 14th

The countdown begins

23 days to go! I’ve implemented quite a few new features since last time, and also ran into some strange and unusual bugs: Moodboard system is now up and running, and is successfully intergrated into the rest of the site (search, favourites, comments). One interesting issue I’m having is the speed of my live server affecting the loading times on the moodboard. There is a lag between...

Mar 1st

Another Update

Things are going fairly smoothly with 5 weeks to go. I’m hoping to do all the usability testing a final testing myself within the last two weeks. But the workload still looms pretty large: Finish Moodboard system Update the rest of the site to match this (favourites/comments/search) Tutorial videos + Content Pages Any final touches to the design that need doing Browser Plugins The last...

Feb 19th

Prototype Presentation

The second part of the presentation part of the module involves showing off a working prototype of your model, which I did today, in week 14/22. Very positive feedback, and some more aspects to add to the to-do list (currently at 300 lines). Can’t really ask for me much more! Onwards and upwards with the development.

Jan 28th

Watch

A little update showing some implemented features: Uploading images and cropping Notices Comments Tags

Jan 1st

Account & Registration

At the moment the project is incredibly behind schedule compared to the original plan. This is mainly due to the amount of work the other modules have come up with, which caused me to stop development on this project for about 3 weeks. Perhaps my original timetable was over-optimistic, but whatever the case, something at least has been done: about 90% of the account/user system. This includes: ...

Dec 2nd

Development Begins

I’m onto the days of the real work now, having notched up about 6 hours hard coding so far. Here’s a quick rundown on what I’ve succeeded with so far: Registration system, complete with powerful bot protection Login system, both using the drop-down form and on its own page Implemented optional use of Gravatar as an avatar option. Started building skeleton database functions...

Oct 28th

2 notes

http://www.urika-app.com/ →

Just bought the domain and set up a little holding page for now

Oct 26th

Proposal Presentation

Showcased my project for the first time today in my proposal presentation, which, despite a few hiccups, I think was a success. We were only allotted 10 minutes each, and I spent so long explaining what UR!KA actually is that I barely had time to show 2 of the 4 prototypes that I’d included in the presentation. The prototype presentation will have to blow them all away. On the plus side...

Oct 25th

Watch

The first working prototype for the moodboard-creation system on UR!KA. Still a while to go e.g. more features, editing, improving the interface(!), but nice to have something working.

Aug 26th

The first hurdle

One of the features of this site is the ability for users to upload images of pieces of web design that they like. Instead of relying on the user to crop a screen-grab themselves, I envisaged a process where the user could press a button, be it a browser plugin or javascript bookmarklet, allowing them to draw a selection around the area they wished to upload to. The actual method to this would...

Jul 23rd

What is UR!KA?

Welcome to the UR!KA development blog. I’m Luke Williams, a 2nd year Multimedia Technology and Design student at the University of Kent, England. As part of our final year, we are tasked with creating pretty much whatever we want, so being a web developer by trade I decided to build a big old web application, which I named today: UR!KA. Without revealing too much, this will be targeted at...

May 23rd

My main site →

May 23rd