I have been ironing out the bugs and have a nice little interface. Most of my work is in the backend and is invisible to the user (which is the whole point)

I have been working on getting the uniwue stlye for that user and have come up with some renders of what the server is doing with the stats:

Working on narrowing down the activities:

narrowing down to hotspots:

Working out the grid

working out the points

finalising the grid into a set of rectangles

What we have is a set of coordinates that are rounded down to for masic green circles. then these are pverlayed with the blue circles taking into account intensity. the darker the node the higher the relevance. Then  i have taken the most promunent nodes and drawn a grid around them. Them and working out a subconcious prefered areas of space on the page.

These images are rendered using the math i have created to creae the rectangels. they are rendered using the dimentionss used passed trough the php-gd library.

I have been experimaneting with some usefull animations. I have tried looknig around at some pre build packages with "easy" animations, btu these are for designers and have not enough options to do what i wanted. So i decided to write my own. I have a function to move any element to any position and some expanding div aniamtions. probalby tool less time to write my owne then to work out the pre made ones structure and impliment.

I have been also experiemnting with getting some content into the site. I have built a mining couple, one to mine out a list of rss stories form a set of feeds in a database, then the other will go off and get the contents form the actual page the story is linking too. It then usies the php dom class to go through the content of the html and look for a set of determined  class or id names and gets the content. This works very well. there are a few bugs with getting content that i dont want but i have added in an ifnore featire to ignore elements with a specific id or class.

Her are some screenshots of my progress:

an example of the background i created while debuging my aniamtions:

The first draft of the content with randomized links

second draft with dropdown snipits:

After out project presentations last week i have soem really good ideas. i wasnt to sure how important the presentations would be but after seeing everyone else's projects and the feedback that i got i am really please i went. Thre were some really good projects that gave me some ideas on what i could add to my project.

As the content for the site is not relevent i may keep the rss reader and extend its functionality. What i will do is keep the sites specific ofr each user. they will either have a unique code or soeme sort of identifier that wil then redirect them to their style. I will concentrate on accecibility, if a user is finding an element hard to see or navigaet it will pick this up and change it untill it is getting the most use for that style.

The links and elements will be randomised to start with and will gradually start to form clusters of where the ideal palce for that user will be. This will need some complex algorythms and coding.

I am also interested in fractal patters like this. This is a computer generated image based on a set of rules. I want to create patterns and images using the data tnhat i have created. there wil be some basic rules but the bulk of the pattern will be user generated, similar to the iamgs in my last post.

I wish to have the user select or input an rss feed and i will then mine all of the informatino as and when it changes. i will store these informatino in a database and then fetch the relevent information form the relevent pages and links. This will speed up the searching and colating of links.

I would also like to get some js nimations to alow for a pleasent animation effect and transitions between movments and other such functions. I will lik to make the site completely ajax powered and using clever linkages i would like to draw in information that could be more important and related stories. Say you are reading a story about iraq, more stories will fade in around the page that are related to the story. the user will not have to trawl through a list of snipits tofind relevent stories ofa particular event.

I have been working of some experiemnts for logging and global styles. I have made up a basic template that uses a few rss feeds from google news. i have mined (on the fly) the feeds and made a list of the titles and showing the infomration/description on their pages. I have added some functions to get the style foreach element. Each element has its styles in a database which it updated when the user interacts with it. I have soem basic styles, when you click on a link it will get larger, when you click on some white space it will gues what you mewnt to click on and move the stles towards that poin and soem border manipulation based onmost polular element.

I have also added soem mouse tracking and am worknig on using these images to be the basis of the sites style images. currently these iamges are randomly generatd with the php gd library. These are random pictures that dont really have much meanding, but what i want to do it to have the most reasont and relevent mouse movements to be used to create images like the ones below. The mouse movements images are created by redrawing the mouse positinos on a page (relative to the users resolution)> the faster the movments the larger the circles, the slower, the small er and more precise. The color is using the users's ip, i am splitting it up to its 4 numbers. These will become red, green, blue and the last will be the alpha. I am pleased with the outcome

basic random image

mouse movements image

another movements image

very (very) basic design - mainly functionality

Project outline

Working title:

Generative website designed by the users that interact with the system

My project will be an online website that design and style will change on a collaborative scale. The user's actions will affect the design for the whole. The design will be dynamic and powered with PHP, Ajax and MySQL. The use of javasctiont with Ajax will be used to track user's actions on the webpage. It will log movements, speeds, clicks and where a mouse is hovering over. It will also log which links are used and what their properties are,  colour, size, font, text length (abbreviations), logos, pictures etc. There will be a 'timer' on the website that will control the speed of the evolution form one design to the next. The changes will be made slowly and subtly, not to throw off the user. But if they come back a fair few hours later then they will notice a change.

The system will periodically check what is going on in the outside world. It will use RSS feeds form the most popular news websites and mine their contents. It will systematically go through each article looking for keywords and patterns in the stories. With a predetermined set of keywords it will try and understand the global status and assign an' emotion' to its design. It will not be simply happy or say, it will be a series of scales that will determine a happiness and  angriness etc. Depending on these statuses' it ill change the design to be a spate set of evolution for that day/time period.

As mentioned before the timers' speed will be controlled/influenced by the current emotional status. E.g if it is at an extreme of one of the scales, say depressed, then it will slowdown and become gloomy, if it is excited/angry then it will 'evolve' faster and more furious. These sets of rules will be continuously developed within the scope of the project.

These are several different branches that I could follow, but to start I have decided to use one single design that is effected by the masses. Another possibility is to have a specific design for registered members also.

The content of the website will need some serious research. To start I will add a small wiki/explanation of my ideas and research material. I will like to include a directory of user generated reviews and opinions. People can (possibly register) write reviews on products and ideas. I will start by setting some of my own and asking people to write small reviews. If things don't pick up I can mine other websites' content and reviews to bring n more data (referencing the material). I will also have a comments section and other interacting functions that will provide more user input data. I will also add a forum which will most likely be off the shelf open source forum that I will modify to include my design and logging/ tracking systems. Another idea I had is to have a huge database of mined content, like a directory of services that will be automatically generated using mining scripts, these will need to be well thought out and will be a serious option if needed.

What will be changeable

I will start off with a small number of things that are change able and gradually add more. I will start of wi a random set of variables given to the system then gradually introduce the data that has been collected from the website. This will allow me to produce a more organised set of rules.

Things that will be changeable will be:

• Layout options, there will be a few templates to choose from
• Height and width of all boxes.
• Simple CSS attributes, border width/style, text align/weight/size etc
• Image orientation, floats/dimensions
• Image display, using GD library the image could be distorted/colorized/burred etc
• Background colors will change shade and hue
• Text colors will also change along with the style(italic/bold) If time it could be converted into an image and skewed/blurred
• Links positions and styles

• Forms styles, orientation and positions

Research

http://art.othernet.com/about.htm
http://fredibach.net
http://mindshareprojects.com/2007/12/22/generative-webdesign