Journey through GSOC : A Peek into Week 7 and 8

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Hey there! Get ready to explore the fascinating world of Music Blocks and see the amazing things that happened during weeks 7 and 8 of my GSoC journey. If you haven’t checked out my previous blogs yet, no worries! This is the 3rd blog in the series, and I’m glad you’re here to join me. So, let’s jump right in and see what’s been going on!

Week 7

Let’s talk about the awesome Pie Chart menus in Music Blocks that make everything super easy, especially for kids. This week, I started working on a cool new feature called the “Higher Order Pie Chart Menu.” It’s like a magical tool that lets us create Pie charts with the exact configurations we want.

We had a brainstorming session to figure out the types of Pie Chart menus we needed. Here’s what we came up with:

  1. Burst Pie Chart Menu: This one’s really cool! When you click on it, it opens up another set of options. It’s perfect for creating menus with sub-options. We thought it would be great for simplifying and making the instrument selection menu more intuitive.
  2. Pie Chart Menu: This is a simple but powerful menu. You can configure it to have as many rings as you want, just like the ones we use for selecting operations.
  3. Classed Pie Chart Menu: This menu is all about flexibility. It has multiple levels of independent selections, similar to how we pick notes.

I had some great discussions with my mentors to decide how to go about building this feature. We used to work with a library called raphael.js in MusicBlocks v3, but it’s no longer maintained. So, we decided to go with “recharts” as it’s actively updated, and it allows us to have a reactive approach for the component.

By the end of the week, I made significant progress on all three components.

Week 8

Week 8 was quite a rollercoaster ride for me. I had lots of great moments and some challenges too. My mentors provided me with some awesome suggestions on how to make our Pie Chart menus even better and more efficient.

We encountered a couple of issues during the week. One problem was with aligning larger text along the mid-angle axis. It took a bit of tinkering, but I managed to fix it! Yay!

Another thing we wanted to improve was the visibility of options in the rings, so my mentors suggested making them scrollable and rotate. It’s a cool idea, and we’re working on it to enhance the user experience.

There was also an issue with the classed pie chart menu that caused it to Re-render multiple times. But guess what? I tackled that problem too, and it’s now working smoothly.

However, we still have one last challenge to overcome. The scrolling in one of the menus isn’t working as expected. But no worries, I’m on it, and I’m confident that by the end of this week, I’ll be able to fix it and make our Pie Chart menus even more awesome!

Goal for Week 9 and 10

For weeks 9 and 10, we’re super excited because it’s time to bring all the puzzle pieces together. The good news is that we’ve completed the work with the workspace, so that’s all set and ready to go. Now, the fun part begins as we start integrating everything.

One of the cool features we’ll be working on is the drag and drop functionality. Another exciting task on our to-do list is working on the palette component.

I’m really excited about the learning opportunities ahead and building even more exciting features for my projects. I can’t wait to see what this summer has in store for us as we continue moving forward. It’s going to be a thrilling and rewarding journey!

So, get ready for some amazing progress in the upcoming weeks as we put it all together and create a fantastic experience with Music Blocks. Stay tuned for more updates, and let’s make some musical magic happen! 🎵😊

Thanks for reading