This project was a collaborative effort that used a team of analysts and developers. My roles were to interact with the client in the initial brainstorming sessions, and to concretize the look-and-feel of the product. I co-wrote the functional specification. I also conceived and built the idea of the animated avatar. My other roles were to build the Chatbox to MSOutlook synchronization engine, the ActiveX whiteboard, and all the view renderers. Except for the whiteboard for which I used VB6, all coding was done using VBScript and DHTML. For these latter items, all communication with the web server was done by transferring XML data and building pages at the client, rather than fetching pages with pre-built HTML.

Over here (takes a while to load the first time, needs Internet Explorer) is an early stage demo of the front-end DHTML functionality. Not all buttons do something, but try clicking a few. Also try clicking the chromed, rounded button near the bottom right of the console to activate the animated help avatar, or the Help button (a different mode of help). The graphical flyout menus also work. This is for demo purposes only, so functions are not necessarily business-relevant. Also try clicking the Chat button, then the Contacts folder, then Judy's Room to see a simulated session of multimedia chat.