Sketchplanet 2.0
Sketchplanet will be appearing in a Japanese magazine this month as part of a Mozilla campaign, so I thought I’d give it a bit of a brush-up. That brush up turned out to be a complete rewrite of the entire system, adding in functionality that I’ve wanted to put in there for a long time and making Sketchplanet pretty much entirely self-governed.
Go and have a look!
It also represents an evolution of the ideological framework for web application development (I mentioned this in the Orchestrate post) that I am now extremely comfortable with and shows that yet again, you don’t necessarily need a pre-built framework to help you develop faster, as long as you know exactly what you want to achieve. Sketchplanet is an entire rewrite, merely using the same database (with a bunch of new tables) and went from zero to what you see now in about 3 days of on-and-off coding.
Lets take a look at what’s new:
Digg-like voting system! Digg For Sketches(tm)!!
Well, it’s not really a digg system. In keeping with the overall philosophy of Sketchplanet (simplicity, level playing field) the new voting system is based on a very simple “thumbs up” metaphor. If you like something, you click the thumb, and the sketch’s vote count goes up in the background. The top page displays sketches that people liked within the last 24 hours.Groups
In the previous version of Sketchplanet I had something called “challenges” where you had the option to sketch something based on a common, running theme. It was a lot of fun seeing what people would sketch for themes such as “Star Wars”, “Video Games” etc. However, this process required me to physically choose a theme and post it up on the site - which as you can imagine, I gradually found less and less time to do. With Groups, anyone can start their own sketching theme and anyone can then contribute to it. The process is much like at Flickr - first you join some groups, then you can add to them by going to one of your sketches and choosing the groups it should be in from a pull-down list.Recent Activity
This needs expanding a little, but the premise is useful. A panel on the left shows you what is happening on your sketches - who is commenting, who is voting. I will expand this to a more thorough, paginated version in the new “my page” area. Currently your “my page” simply shows you all your sketches - don’t worry, this will change to something more useful soon.Ajax up the whazoo
There are some subtle uses of Ajax throughout Sketchplanet 2.0. For example, you can now edit your sketch’s details from the same page you view them, with a neat inline editor. Comments, adding to and joining groups are also handled via Ajax.
Design and coding-wise:
Now with more green!
Yes, I am such a one-trick pony. I seem to be addicted to green right now.ezSQL
I’m using something called ezSQL to provide a very basic data handling layer. It’s not a full-blown data abstraction layer (nuts ‘n’ fudge), it just helps me to write faster SQL. Right now I’m building an Ajaxified, Bilingual blogging engine at work and for that project I’ve taken a lot of cues from Wordpress. I always liked the way Wordpress handles its database calls and sought to emulate it for my own project - I discovered in fact that Wordpress itself simply uses this ezSQL Class, which anyone is free to use. I now use ezSQL in everything I do - it makes working with php/SQL so, so, so much more swift.FAMFAMFAM’s Silk Icons
I love FAMFAMFAM’s “Silk” icon set and use them in most of my web apps that require iconic design metaphors.
Aaaand that’s yer lot. Go and play with the all-new sketchplanet - I’m off to bed.
(here’s the link to the original Sketchplanet post from last year)
seems like there’s not as many penis sketches as there were at first :( …
There’s some ‘issue’ with registering… I got all green marks, but also the “Fill in the form properly!” message. I suspect some concurrency problem while checking for username, because the username green icon suddenly changed to “processing” on [Submit] In the end, just insisting worked. PS: Opera 9
perfect to waste 10mins!
hah
[…] What is Sketchplanet? Sketchplanet is an online user-driven sketching community. Use an online build in flash tool with your mouse and you can start draw anything as you like and click on print(please make sure you have register). […]
Publish API.
could do.
I’ve done 2 sketches but it hasn’t published them
what do you mean it hasn’t published? can you give any more details? what page do you get taken to, is there an error message etc etc
Hey man thought I’d let you know 2.0 looks great pip pip and all that!niki&jeremy was my username from sketchplanet.When I tried it on 2.0 it didn’t work so now I am the mighty tyquandagon. pretty cool, eh!
I have a question… how does the “groups” work? How can I move some of my images in the groups? And how does the voting work? How can I see who voted for my picture or how many people voted for my picture? Also, how can I “unvote” for a picture. You need to put up a FAQS!
Heh. yeah there is very little in the way of help. will do so soon.
To add your picture to a group you simply have to join the group (click on it and you’ll see the join button) then go to any of your sketches where you’ll see a “choose groups” list.
Currently you cannot see who voted for your picture (apart from the last 3 on the “Recent Activity” list or how many votes your picture has - BUT all that information is being saved in the bckground, so I just have to create a special page for you to be able to see it. Coming soon!
Neato! I can now be even more unproductive.
Poopoo - Who the hell cares about unvoting? Simple solution: If you’re going to be so wishy washy about your votes then don’t bother voting to begin with.
Grrr…forgot my email addy so my little gravator avator thingy didn’t show up.
dude, you need to do a modular version of this which can be put on someone’s blog, website, netvibes or even [horrified ghasp!] myspace page…!
inside the modular version i think you should be able to display pics matching a tag, group or individual artist…. and obviously a link to draw your own pic.
chickerino > that functionality was in the first sketchplanet, and it will be in this one too when I get around to writing the code.
i have a complaint. i apparently reached some sort of imposed limit and it fucking ate my beauuteeefoollll art! i wasted 5mins on two pieces that i poured my heart and soul and unspent sexual energies on. totally.
now, it’s forever gone. GAH!
so now back to thinking abt what to do with the rest of my kinetic energy. :,(
Is it possible to change my nick name I have used one where all my friends could recognise me. Since the drawings that Im doing is really dirty i dont want them to recognise me. thanks
Nice site! ^_^ Yes, there has been a lot of green of late, but it could be worse… It could be pink!! shudders Good to see you still going strong with the projects. If you can anytime soon,… music please?
My Mario drawings up there!!!! Thx YongFook!
And so are my drawings!1 woohoo!
Its quite an addictive site. Well done Yongfook!
Hello Mr. Fook. Do you remember me? Grand champion of all the little contests that were once held on the original sketchplanet? Sure you do! I havn’t been back to the site since the original and I was at first lost, ha. Check out my pictures everyone, they’re the real winners, lol!
Thanks for creating another adictive site for hand cramps. At least now I’m left with more than a messy tissue.
Thanks for being such an active user! As someone who likes the site - is there anything that you would like to see in the way of new features?
Thank you for asking. A larger sketching window would be nice. Overall, my favorite feature is how crisp and clear you’ve created the layout.
I know I shouldn’t be linking competitors but you just have to check this out. Essentially Sketchplanet on steroids. Shows stroke sequence too!
http://noughts.jp/