I just completed a small reusable, re-skinnable, XML driven music player for a Sony intranet site. Quite a simple job really but fun to do.  It loads in a bunch of tracks and their titles etc. plus a bunch of different background skins for each language. As well as the normal playback controls etc. – all in a custom scrolling interface. Small but nice.

Its obviously an intranet site so Ive hosted a demo of it here.

In a break from pure coding, I was lucky enough to be involved in writing the help manual for Steinberg’s new release of WaveLab 7 recently. A mammoth task of distilling a thousand page manual into an inline help system.

WaveLab 7 is a professional audio engineering package for Mac and PC that allows you to do everything from audio restoration to professional CD mastering. Along with Colin at CDA Cambridge, we wrote the copy for the inline help system. Not only was it a technical writing job but we also had to script and compile the Help system in a proprietary markup language for a documentation system called Doxygen.

Needless to say it was a long on-and-off job as the software was developed in various iterations. Each new feature meant some more learning for us as we figured out how the software worked. In terms of instructional design it was an interesting project as not only was the GUI design out of our hands but the complexity of the interface of WaveLab with its various “Workspaces” and thousands of functions created a lot of thought on how best to present it all to the user.

I was also responsible for making sure the Doxygen system we compiled the Help with all ran smoothly which was challenging at times after language translations and updates. Its now been released into the wild and selling well – you can read more about its new features at http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/wavelab/whats_new.html

I worked on various Flash components of this careers site for ASDA.

Update – the site has been updated since I worked on it and so you view the Flash I worked on here.

It also recently won a RAD award! http://www.radawards.com/radawards2011/employerwebsite-workcom

I was asked to help solve how to browse all of Citi’s programs for graduates for their global graduates site. Using a design based on filtering I designed and programmed this in Flash using a mixture of branded elements and customised Flash components. The program selector allows the user to browse through programs that match their situation and requirements simply and easily using an idea borrowed from filtering large sample libraries in some of my studio software.

I recently designed and developed this accessible interactive quiz for the Environment Agency site. The brief stated that it needed to be 100% accessible to screen readers. This required some interesting work arounds and modifications in Actionscript continually testing using the JAWS screen reader. It has been tested by a visually impaired user and given the all clear!

This was a game I was asked to put together for Coop in Flash. Dynamic Hexagon layout using Flash’s drawing API.

You can check out the game at: http://www.co-operative.jobs/graduates/bee.aspx

Completed nPower site Flash components using Papervision and standard AS3. Used some bending code to distort video planes in PV3D and also call out to Javascript to update Google Maps via Flash. Also built Match Me Tool and locations image browser in Flash.