Juce.haydxn.net - startup guide site

General JUCE discussion
1

Hey guys, I’ve spent the last few days preparing a new website for all newcomers to the Juce experience.

juce.haydxn.net

I decided to do this after starting to transfer my tutorial to the WiKi. As cool an idea as a wiki is, i found that it didn’t feel quite friendly enough, and many things wound me up about it.

The purpose of the site is to be a total introduction to programming with the Juce library. Currently, there are two main sections:

(1) Getting Set Up - covers choosing an environment, obtaining and installing the software, and configuring it to work with Juce. Currently this section is empty, with just a placeholder to a VC++e guide. The guides in this section will be written with the aid of some of you guys!

(2) Coding Tutorial - this will be my tutorial. i’ve currently only got chapters 1 and 2 up properly (3 is up but unformatted).

There is a download section which can be accessed directly, but initially it will be used for storing files that will be linked to in the tutorial chapters. However, once the site is up and running, it will contain all of the source code for my apps and plugins. I will likely add a user log-on facility, and give users the ability to upload their own code examples for sharing.

It’s still in a fluid state, but I’ll keep you updated. I’d greatly appreciate any feedback or comments you may have about it. I’m aware that there’s a chance it may be redundant, but I’m going to soldier on with it for now anyway, at least until the guides and tutorials are more complete, as I feel it will be a valuable resource for all newcomers.

2

What’s wrong with the wiki?

  • kbj
3

yeah… what’s wrong with it ?

4

splitter!

5

That’s really nicely done, haydxn!

I should really add some links to this and the wiki, etc, from my site (which needs a bit of a tidy-up anyway).

6

Well, the first thing that niggled me was that I couldn’t put images in my tutorial pages. I could have a link to an image, or I could be asked to upload one- but then the wiki told me that I wasn’t allowed to upload one. I know I could have asked someone to perhaps enable that feature, but it made me think about different ways of doing things.

The second thing is that WiKis are just pretty ugly! I wanted to see a Juce introductory site that was a little more, I don’t know… cute? :lol: I think tutorials and guides can definitely benefit from having a friendly appearance, and I find the wiki a little too clinical. Petty, I know!

Then there’s the fact that it has to link to my files for the tutorial. They’re going to end up changing every now and then, and i’m already starting to find it tricky to keep track of which sites have links to redundant files on my server! Plus, my plans for an user upload facility started to bring the idea together.

The last thing is that some of my chapters are pretty long, and this site thing just made it easier to maintain them - they can stay as individual article entries, but just be split into multiple pages as they’re being read. That just makes it much easier to read thru, as well as being simple to maintain.

I know it might look like I’m trying to steal the ball away from the WiKi, but in truth the WiKi can happily live alongside it! It’s a different idea, you know? Like the WiKi exists alongside the forum (which is a fluid and user-lead place too), and I’ll be linking to it from the site anyway.

But aside from ALL those things that made me consider this alternative, my original plan for the tutorial was to be a dedicated website, and a PDF was a happy accident. Whenever I’ve been learning something massive and new, I’ve always wished there was just one place that could tell me everything I needed. Hopefully this site can do that for Juce - the amount of people who ask questions about Juce or are just excited about the idea but don’t know where to start- you could just say “go to juce.haydxn.net”.

But just don’t do it just yet, because there’s not a lot of content there!

7

Shit! Haydxn’s a girl! :shock:

8

crumbs! when did that happen! :-o

9

Well, how long have you enjoyed drawing cute frogs in pastel colours? :smiley:

Anyway! I wish you luck with your girly JUCE site. I agree that a wiki is not the place for longer texts. Wikis have a sort of chaotic undercurrent, that is good as long as the material can be neatly sliced into article sized chucks that can be re-organized as things change.

It seems the JUCE community is still a bit to small to drive a wiki too. It’s actually sort of a catch 22 situation. I suspect though, that there are lots of prospect JUCErs lurking about.

Before I included the source for peggy in the zip I had like 10 ppl email/pm me for it. I’ve also had almost 600 downloads of roid without having done any serious attempts at promoting it.

So I think providing pathways into JUCE can have a big effect. It’s a lot to “get” for a newbie.

There is a lot of stuff I still don’t get, but I have learned to just go with what I know and not let gaps in knowledge stop me from firing up the IDE. I know though (from having been a college lecturer) that having gaps in understanding will bring a lot of people to a place of confusion and frustration where they just give up.