Continue the advantages of the Page Manager. Expand the object to allow it to control multiple pages within the use of an individual users. Allow the user to flip to a scratch pad of sorts. Allow the user to individualize the pages. Allow the user to flip to pages that the rest of the group is not currently on.
The great design of this software package made use of many object oriented features. Toward the conclusion of the project a couple of features were added to provide more functionality. Some of these features strayed from the object oriented concepts. It would be wonderful if these features could be corrected. Such features include removing the type definition in the obj.java file. Each object should already know what type it is. The functionality of the application should not require the type variable. The move and cut feature, which is currently implemented in the whiteboard.java file should move to the respective object files . Also the move feature was haphazardly done for conveyance and does not support any form of the object oriented concepts.
In order to create the ability to have remote host and client action a concept of using a file to store this information was created on the hosts end. Though this file allowed user to read from this file, the clients were not able to write to the file as an applet. This complication cause a chain reaction of other complications with the software package. Many were already discussed in this paper. By correcting this complication the ability to run the host and the client on different machines will greatly improve the capability and usefulness of this software package. Some possible solutions to these problems are; to create cgi-bin files, or working C or C++ programs that can be called when needed.
Within java the idea of not permitting buttons to have images on the caused an initial complication, but was resolved by creating several images to simulate the pressing of a button. A focus image for the buttons would of been nice to implement, but other constraints did not permit this to be added at this time.
Because this application was required to be an applet, normal exiting methods were not possible to implement. Because no class provided the means to kill or close an applet due to the Java class hierarchy, the applet causes security violation errors and does not completely exit the applet upon request when going to the applet window and quitting the applet itself.
I was not able to correctly adjust the text font size in the message board when the user select the font list button and selected a different size. For some unexplained reason the current font size did not want to erase the characters from the screen completely. The message with the new font size would over lap the same message with the previous font size. Hopefully this can be changed in future versions.
Just like the font size, there is no current form of implementation that allows the user to change the color of the text during the typing of the message in the message board. A added button that permits the user to make this change would be that much more pleasant. When making this addition the programmer must make sure the change in color gets updated for the object on a global bases correctly.
One feature I would like to see in future versions of this software to have more modularity. I believe an additional class should be added in order handle and manage the color options within the application. It did not become apparent until it was to late. There were many function created to handle type conversions and message deciphering that could easily be collected and stored in a separate file. This would increase the readability of many of the files including whiteBoard.java.
Other additional features that would make this application much more user friendly are as follows:
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Written By Graham L. Mehl
Last Modified on April 23, 1996
© Villanova University