Dictionary Robot
From ThePlaz.com
Dictionary Robot [1] is a site I made to help users look up a bunch of words at once. It's purpose is to help students do their vocab homework much faster.
Initial Development
I spent about a month off and on doing initial development in the summer of 2007. I had created the site because I had an AP Psychology vocab project. Steps:
- design and branding
- rounded corners box
- open/close javascript
- dictionary querying (using a library)
- flow along pages and multiple steps.
I tend to create the branding and visual design before I code any of the actual working parts. I know this is backwards, but it reflects how I think.
Restart in 2009
The site sat barely-working from August 2007 until February 2009. I had considered it a failure and deemphasized it from my accomplishments list. I restarted work on the project for the [FreshBrain http://freshbrain.org] scholarship contest. It only took a few hours to get the site working again.
I decided to remove all of the js and iframe visual elements. I decided it was more important for the site to be fast and work reliability than to have nice page loading transitions. In the future I should use Javascript to build more functionality - not add visual effects.