myBBC Share It Edition
My entry for the reboot:bbc.co.uk competition is a fully working prototype of a personalised bbc homepage.
It is a Web2.0 application that makes use of AJAX and all the RSS feeds that are available from the BBC and other places. It allows a user to personalise the content of their own homepage, seeing only the news and content that they want to see.
Nearly all the components work fully, and the actuall application works currently in Firefox, Safari and should (although not fully tested) work in Mozilla/Netscape. It currently does not work in IE 6, mainly because i dont have my WinXP pc available to debug at the moment, but i will get it working asap (should be trivial).
Each control has a small settings icon (cog top right) which allows you to alter some of the settings. Each control can also be moved by clicking and dragging the title or resized by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner. To add more controls, change the style of the page or even alter the whole layout set, you can click the small settings button in the bottom left of the screen (cog, next to the earth icon).
clicking on links within the controls opens up an in-context web browser with the page in question. This means that users can view the stories that they want to investigate further without loosing the context of the myBBC application.
myBBC Story
After looking at some of the ideas that people were having and also thinking about what i would like to see for reboot:bbc.co.uk, it was obvious that what people want to see is a fully customisable website that gives access to the wealth of raw data (RSS etc) that the internet is making available.
The trend with many of the designs seemed to be along the same lines... The thing that majes my particular re-design unique, is the ability to create a online community that can also share this data.
The default layout includes a welcome to myBBC control that indicates email and private messages etc. It also has a link to a dummy public homepage (http://bbcreboot.mspace.fm/myHomepage.html). This public homepage is the social networking part of my idea. It allows for the people using myBBC to meet other people and see what other people are looking at etc. It allows user to have their own mini blog, which also opens up the door for blogging about particular bbc articles.
The actual application has one working example of this sharing and social networking feature, which is the ability to save a page layout. When you open the main myBBC settings panel, you can choose one of the predefined layout sets, but you can also give your current set a name, and save it to the server, so future visitors will be able to make use of your unique layout. This allows people to have shared views, and quickly switch views dependent on current context/circumstances.
Future Work
If i had more time (oh... i wish i did!) i would have made many more improvements to the prototype.. Obvious bug crushing and getting it working in ie (which should be easy... beta.mspace.fm works in ie and this site is based on the code i wrote for that).
Other features include getting the social networking part of the site working, and also being able to share and create stylesheets for the page (not just limited to the Classic, Brown and World Cup England Supporters).
There are a couple of controls that are just examples, specifically the myBBC Contacts control. I would like to make this a fully functional IM app, like http://www.meebo.com/..
finally i would like to release a public api/sdk for developing custom controls... All the controls that are currently available within the app are simple extensions to a base control. Creating new controls is an easy task (if you know how)... this would allow endless customisation possibilities for everyones own myBBC.
Finally
If there are any problems with the site, then please contact me and i will try and fix bugs, or upload a video of the site in action so you can get a better feel of it. (i have not done any load testing, so not sure how the site will handle lots of visits :S)
Thanks
Ali
- 25 May 2006 15:26
gallery