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INFO:
Welcome to my Space Map user interface!

You can drag this window with the left mouse button.

This UI example utilizes some important Web 2.0 concepts, and was a blast to code. I'll probably develop this example further in the future, but for now, here is a list of some the site's details:
  1. Javascript animations and AJAX: I've used the Mootools framework to handle transitions, menus, and most importantly, AJAX content. Features:
    • On the left is a nested accordion of menus
    • Clicking on "Logistics Interface" and then "Broker," "Market," and "Technology Browser" will pop up some simulated sub-windows that can be dragged and minimized
    • Planet images scale when hovering over them

  2. The "Google Maps" like star navigation is accomplished using some simple DOM manipulation.
    • You can drag the star map with the right mouse button.
    • You can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel, or the arrow buttons on the top right
    • Clicking on a star in the cosest zoom level will bring up a view of the system. Clicking on the star in the lower left will exit this view.
    • Clicking on a planet in the system view will pop up some interesting facts about the planet. Clicking on the planet's image again will exit this view.
    • The "universe" button on the top right will zoom the map out to a galaxy view. Here there are a couple of options to click on certain regions or sectors of the map.

  3. PHP/MySQL: Most--if not all--of the dynamic content was developed using PHP and MySQL. I wrote a script that pulled info from an excel spreadsheet containing galaxy data. The script then generated image tiles of ten-thousand fictional star positions (using the GD Library) and saved those positions into a MySQL database. These image tiles are used in the aforementioned DOM manipulation to view the map. After that I wrote a script that utilizes pseudo algorithms for planet formation, and generated over sixty thousand planets to orbit these stars. Finally I wrote a script that uses a few naming conventions to assign random names to all of the stars and planets. (PHP is also used to grab MySQL content and display it when viewing the star systems and planets)
  4. This document is 100% Valid xHTML 1.1
  5. I composed all of the graphics in this example using GIMP