Last week, I gave my presentation and I was very pleased with it. It went far better than I expected. A lot of people laughed, in a good way, and I got a lot of compliments from people I didn't know. Originally, I was going to stick to a mini script that I wrote, but I realized that I didn't need it. I just got up there and just said what I felt. I worked on this project for 4 months. I did not need a script to tell me how I felt about the project and I definitely did not need it to explain my app in full. This project has been an amazing experience and hopefully, I get to work on more projects like this. This project has really showed me what I like about programming and it gave me a good idea of where my programming skills are at. The best part about this field, is that learning will never stop. It is an ever-changing field and I am happy to be a part of it.

This post is late but my application is 100% finished now. Last week I lied. Whoops! The last touch I added to my project is the ability to check for an internet connection. When there is no internet available, the title screen stays selected. When the user finally connects to the internet, the application starts up normally with the error message gone. I think that everybody will enjoy what I created.

Today I think I finished my application. I had a friend come over to test it out and see if he could find anything wrong with it. He found one thing but it was fixed within minutes. I fixed the searching and the interface changes based on what the user selects. Based on what my friend was doing, I think that it is easy enough for anybody to use. I will see what my professors say this week.

Over the week I adjusted my application to be easier for the user to operate. You can now press "Enter" to search instead of hitting the button, I changed the name of some of the buttons and fixed some bugs that would occur. It has a better feel now but I think that there is still some work to be done.

I plan on going to talk to DCP about final suggestions before I fine tune the look and feel of my app. I feel that I am really close to being finished. A user is able to add to, delete from and search the jukebox. It has all of the functionality that it is supposed to have, I think. I was thinking about adding a preview part of the app so users can know if a song plays and it is what he/she wants. This is a way to get around the copyright videos. It's a way of checking if it will play.

It's been a long time since I last posted but I got a lot done since my last blog post. First of all, I think I have all of the functionality finished. My only problem still lies with the copyrights of some videos. I cannot find a way to get around it and I have tried basically everything. So at the moment, I am just working on how it looks and finding ways to make my UI as easy as possible to use. It looks alright, but I want other opinions on it to make it better. I also want confirmation that my designs are ok. Hopefully, I can come up with some stuff for it during the week and get even more done.

This weekend made me happy but also not so happy. The good part was that I was able to figure out how to cycle through different pages in the window without using tabs. This means that I have a homepage for the app and I can see the video on a different page. The part that makes me not so happy is that I cannot view certain videos because of copyright laws some companies have on the videos. I cannot figure out a way around it. I tried almost everything I can think of.

This weekend was awesome for my project! On Friday, I talked to Dr. McVey about Windows Forms Hosting. The reason we talked about this is because I didn't know how to embed YouTube videos into my project. WPF does not support Shockwave player objects like their Windows Forms counterpart. However, she came up with the idea of trying to use a WebBrowser object. It worked! Not only did I accomplish showing a selected video in my app, but I also succeeded in creating buttons dynamically for each search result that pops up. I can choose which video I want to watch just by clicking these buttons. The only problem I ran into is region protected videos. I saw that if a specific channel is from an area outside of the United States, I cannot play the video in my app. It will load, but it will not play. This problem aside, I feel like I hit my stride with this project. It feels like all the hard parts are over.

I didn't get as far as I wanted to on my project last week. I struggled to further what I had done in the previous week. In order to get search results in my app instead of in a browser, I had to use API's. I've never used an API and I did not know where to start to acquire them and actually use them in code. I was so frustrated with it this weekend. I spent so much time on trying to understand API's and had gotten nothing done. However, things got better. I was able to get the YouTube and Google data API's and actually use them in my code. I hardcoded a video id into my code in order to see if one of the YouTube functions returned anything. It was a success! It returned the title of the video that was specified! Hopefully this week or on the weekend, I can get multiple video search results to appear inside my app.

This weekend I feel like I made a lot of progress. I started experimenting with WPF applications in visual studio. I feel like it would be easier to create an interface with this and it is a platform I am more accustomed to. I started on a simple interface and I was able to connect to YouTube with C#. To take it further, I was also able to get a user to type in a band or a song into my simple interface application and conduct the YouTube search without having to manually open a browser. It uses the default browser of the user if it is not already open. Building the simple interface was a bit difficult because I wanted to use some XAML. A lot of it is written for me but if I wanted a certain look for a button, I had to write up a resource script. That is exactly what I did. XAML is similar to HTML in style but I feel it is far more complex. I think if I continue developing the project in this way, I will eventually get the hang of it. I'm just wondering if creating the app in a WPF format in visual studio is alright for the project. I know a lot of people are wanting to put their apps on phones but I'm still wondering about that for myself. I'll continue to think about it.

Last week, I didn't do as much with my project as I wanted to. I feel really bad about it. But today, I studied a lot of C# with forms. I had a tiny breakthrough moment where I am finally understanding where the data is going. However, I still need some things explained. Hopefully this week I can talk it out and be able to take the next step this weekend.

After talking to Dr. McVey and Dr. Pankratz, I have confirmed that C# is an appropriate language to use for the project. Of course, I have never used the language before so I needed some help. I asked Dr. McVey to give me some resources so I can learn it at a good pace. Today I started working on the labs she provided for me. I'm a little less confused on how to use C# but I still have a lot of work to do in order to get a full understanding. I really like the language. I've always been more interested in designing things so C# caters to that interest very well. This week I hope to finish up those labs and hopefully think about the next step forward.

Today Dr. Pankratz gave me my project! I'm actually very excited about it! I have to make a foolproof Jukebox app that allows users to enter new music into the Jukebox and possibly have links to YouTube for video. I'm still unsure about how I'm going to go about it but I think that I'm going to have to use C# with XAML. At least, that's what I'm thinking so far. I think that this app requires some event programming and C# is perfect for it. I didn't know what XAML was until tonight but it apparently goes well with C#. I can use that for links and for a way to create a smooth interface. This app has to be so foolproof, even senior citizens could use it without issue. I could be completely wrong but I will talk to Dr. McVey and Dr. Pankratz to see if that is a good starting point. Considering how much I like music and design, I think this project is a perfect fit for me.