Project: The project uses a March 1998 "Kids sub-page" from the Surrey Police website as its model. Enhancements were programmed to demonstrate how a screen can be made more interactive while still remaining backwards-compatible to Netscape-2/MS-IE2 browsers.The original page-frame had all the attractions of a "game" but in fact carried only one game-button calling a secondary window (with a picture solution and close-button). It is viewable via a copy (above), or in situ on the Net by selecting the "Spot The Difference" Zone-option after accessing the "Kids" sub-page at: " www.surrey.police.uk/kids/kidsset.htm".
The improved page-frame turns the righthand picture into a client-side image-map. Client-side mapping responds more swiftly than server-side, reducing wait-times. It also has Javascript window-controls, several "yes/no" replies and a basic scoring facility built in. The new controls enable secondary "score"/"answer" windows to self-close by a simple "anywhere-click" (for latest browsers), and the windows also have a 15-sec maximum life (to ensure self-closing in outdated browsers). But the size and duration of secondary "yes/no" window messages are harder to control without Netscape-4/IE-4 browsers (because both the messages and the scoring are driven by the image-map links). Therefore the bottom row of the frameset has been adopted to bounce "yes/no" replies through. An alternative could be to turn the image-map into an active-image for a form taking coordinates.
For comparability the overall page-layout has been retained exactly (including the use of images which may be copyright Surrey Police, and for which permission was sought and given to reproduce for project portfolio use).
Pvh: 23rd March 1998