Javascript + DHTML

There are impressive examples of what you can do with HTML applications. Here is the famous Word like editor application example of Microsoft. Guido needed an application that would make scoring the video fragements he recorded of emotional behavior in children easier and more acurate. Although commercially available packages exist, for example Observer, these are expensive and offer far more features than necessary. More importantly they are accompanied by a dongle and so only one installation can be used at a time and only at the university. This is not very convenient for Guido's students, who are doing much of the scoring. They would like to be able to do it on their own computer, and they don't want to set up a schedule for sharing with other students. So I started to build a HTA, because that saves me a bit of time compared to building a full blown application in C. Furthermore, it suffices generously. It is now in a state where I think it might be useful for others, at least as an example of what you can do with HTA. The interface is however fully in Dutch (could be translated if there is enough interest). You can find a screenshot here: 'filmpjes-scoren' screenshot. You can download the installer from this link.

Labels: HTA

If you want to use webpages and DHTML to do experiments or fill out questionairs, the problem is saving the data to a file on the hard drive for statistical analysis. If your web-form is on a online webpage this not too difficult (e.g., using a mail-form—see this page). But if you want to collect data offline, you would like to able to save those data to a file on the hard drive. How to get access to the hard disk from within a webpage is explained here, but it is more convenient to have javascript code that works for any form on a webpage. To this end I created a Javascript object that gathers the data from a form, and—in Internet Explorer—can write it to the hard disk in the comma separated values (".cvs") format. Part of the code is based on code from this website. An example and a detailed explanation can be found here. A zip file containing the .js library file and the example and documentation can downloaded here.

Labels: HTA