Any news or progress on forthcoming releases shall be posted here as shall requests for royalty free resources where needed.
All work on the following apps has temporarily been put on hold while I revisit the code used for World Flags and its associated apps. At its outset it was only ever envisaged to be a lightweight web page with sufficient javascript to facilitate a test. Once work began on the Option List, it rapidly expanded with additions tagged on in trial and error fashion without the usual or customary design practices.
The result is too many global variables that can easily be broken or overlooked when making changes or additions to the code. However it has now become a framework that can be applied to other fields such as those that follow, for example. It is to this end that now its requirements are established, I shall begin anew to build a robust solution that can easily accommodate many other fields of interest with the minimum of effort.
Work on gathering material for a Film Stars app began in early September as a surprise for my granddaughter's thirteenth birthday. Not exactly educational in the academic sense of the word, but it is certainly attuned to her interests. She is an attendee of the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts and something of an aficionado when it comes to films.
There are links from their pictures to their respective Wikipedia bio page and from in character images to their filmography. What I hadn't anticipated was the minefield that royalty free images and copyright turned out to be. For that reason all images of film stars themselves have been cropped and resized from those available at Wikimedia Commons. Even so they need to be attributed with links to their license. Any help in the provision of such images would be greatly appreciated.
To the best of my knowledge, I am ascribing screenshots from films of actors in character to the film rights holder, some of which are in dispute. I am using them in what I consider 'fair use', i.e. for no financial gain without seeking the copyright holder's permission. They can, if necessary, be taken down should they be deemed copyright infringement.
It should be noted that I can only begin to scratch the surface. I quickly got to over sixty actors with just a handful of films. They shall be added to over time. It should further be noted that in character shots will be restricted to films suitable for a younger audience and that the data requirements are too great for an offline version.
I figured that learning about the human body would not go amiss. Gathering and editing suitable images however is pretty time-consuming and difficult to find. I have at least collated enough for what could become a preliminary release for just the skeleton, but would like to cover so much more.
What I envisage includes major blood vessels, muscles and nerves perhaps. There are insufficient organs for a category of their own but maybe with the addition of glands there could be.
As already stated, finding suitable royalty free images that can be edited with highlights for tuition or test purposes is no simple task. It is to this end that I am not above seeking help. Should anybody have or know of any such material, I would greatly appreciate your assistance. They should ideally include full body images plus more detailed views.
I am also open to serious suggestions or requests to make the links to further information on this topic point to possibly more suitable resources than Kiddle or Wikipedia.
I notice one of the input fields is disabled in the images above. Maybe it's because the mode order has recently been changed, so please appreciate that they are only provided for illustrative purposes.
The option list was developed because the standard HTML datalist type elements were unsatifactory when used with the virtual keyboard on Android devices. It has thus far only been implemented to meet the immediate requirements of the World Flags and associated apps but could be refined and packaged as a web component.
In its current form it largely mirrors the functionality of the Microsoft Windows ComboBox, autocompletion, sorted or unsorted, limited to list items or not, with or without the drop down list that can be activated by clicking the input field. I don't feel compelled to add the small button as it isn't really necessary. It also comprises a disallowed character facility.
Possibly the most notable addition is its abbreviation facility, which can be used for any other input, product codes for example, something I would most certainly have used during my working life had it been available. It took a twelve year old asking for abbreviations to become a reality. Also included is a typo correction facility when limited to list.
More information can be gleaned from the World Flags instructions page plus of course it can be tried in any of the apps on this site. If requested it could be packaged as a web component. As for the Microsoft ComboBox, maybe I could subclass it to also accept abbreviations; something for another day perhaps.