Welcome to the new location for the Adrift Topic Tutorial System at thephurroughs.com, my family's upcoming website. Now I can update the ATTS myself and save Campbell some time and effort, as well as provide faster online updates!
I have also incorporated a download site in the online ATTS to help centralize activity to a single location and make it easier for everyone. The download site will always have the latest packages of the installable ATTS. To get there, just click on the downloads button in the index of the main page.
Of course, I have changed some more icons and images, some to my liking and some not (just more to change later). How do you like the new Home Logo and desktop link icon? My intent is to continuously improve on the professional image of the ATTS. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Last, but not least, I have added a submission and revision column to the Mini-Tutorials page. Look for a new tutorial and set of mini-tutorials in the next release of the ATTS!
It has been a long and trying two months, but well worth the patience. I have completely reworked the look and feel of the ATTS, including adding all personally created graphics and restructuring the menu system. The Adrift Topic Tutorial System is now one-of-kind, designed especially for the Adrift community.
I have added two new tutorials on System Commands and Task Commands combined into one tutorial labeled "Task Commands". But that is only the beginning. Thanks to an idea by Rich Dersheimer, I have also created a new section of Mini-Tutorials which are submitted by Adrift users. See the Mini-Tutorials section for more details.
The exhaustive list of Adrift Commands is here! Each command is also accompanied by a pop-up description, the rest of which will be finished by the next ATTS release.
Last, but not least, I have updated most of the HTML and Javascript to conform to W3C standards. Unfortunately, this means that the ATTS currently works in only Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 6 and higher browsers. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but I feel this is in keeping with the goals of the internet community at large and ensures a wider range of browsers will be able to use the ATTS in the future. The new W3C standards are being adopted by almost all major browser manufacturers in Version 6 of their respective browsers. If you need help with how to download the necessary browsers, or with how to make them work without giving up what you already use for internet access, please e-mail me.
On an additional note, please be aware that the Online ATTS is not necessarily the latest release. To ensure you have the latest release, download the ATTS from the Adrift Yahoo Group.
Thanks to everyone for their continued patience in waiting for this release! I hope your programming is truly enriched by what you find here.
The ATTS is now online at www.adrift.org.uk/tts. Many thanks to Campbell for getting it setup! The online version will always be updated before the local version is available for download.
It has been a busy two weeks ironing out wrinkles in the TTS and updating it with new features, not to mention the addition of the Variables Tutorial. Frankly, it's amazing that I'm only a couple of days late!
I've added three great help features to the tutorials: popup examples, screen shots and zipped TAF examples (Thanks KF!). I hope these help everyone better understand the tutorial text and how to apply it to their games. I have also updated some text and changed my e-mail address throughout. PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS (agapeincognito@visto.com). If you send me a question, it will be forwarded to my beeper and I'll try to answer as soon as I can.
Last, but not least, the ATTS and all of its features have now been tested successfully with Netscape 4.7 (and above) and Internet Explorer 5.0 (and above). I hope to have it tested with the latest version of Opera by the next ATTS release. Let me know if you have any problems or if anything looks funny in your browser. The only thing I've noticed so far is with the Example popups. In Netscape, they don't have a defined border and sometimes the text is double-spaced. Other than that, everything looks good so far!
Please let me know if you would like to see anything added to the new Variables Tutorial. Look for the next topic, Overriding System Commands, in two weeks!.
My apologies to Netscape users! ATTS was originally created for use with Internet Explorer 5 and had a few bugs with backgrounds and special features when used with Netscape. I have fixed several of the bugs and tested it using the new Netscape 6. If you are using an earlier version of Netscape and it doesn't work, I'll try to figure out why if you e-mail me the problem.
I also fixed a few textual and concept errors in the ALR Files tutorial. Thanks to DuoDave for all his help!
Here is the initial release of the ADRIFT Topic Tutorial System ("ATTS") as promised. I hope it's what everyone wanted. This was my first time learning to program in HTML, but I enjoyed it and look forward to improving the Tutorial System as I learn more. I welcome any comments about the HTML formatting. Also, please feel free to copy any HTML concepts you see here.
My goal is to have a new Tutorial out every other week. When it is downloaded and installed (or extracted), it will update any files you currently have on your computer and add the new topics.
The next topic to be added will be Variables, which can be even more complex than ALR files. Look for it in two weeks!
- Agape