SPARKLECARE EXPLORE - 2024 First Look

Hi guys! I have a bit of an interesting and exciting post for everyone today! Today I'm going to be showing off a glimpse of the modern experience of Sparklecare Explore. This post is exclusively for patrons, so please do not share it!

You've definitely seen that little "explore" button up on the top bar for many years now, only for it to say it's under construction... and it has been. This project has been revamped and scrapped and recreated at least 5 times now, but at long last I feel like I am finally good enough of a developer to actualize this vision I've had for so many years.

Now what IS Explore? It's essentially an immersive interactive experience for Sparklecare readers which gives you a direct ability to interact with Spinch and its world. It's a little bit like a game, but in your web browser! There will be a lot of exploration elements and even secrets to uncover.

This is absolutely a mammoth of a project to work on with a LOT of content, so it's definitely going to take quite a while, but the wait will be worth it.

Here, I'll be showing off the recent progress I've made on the newest version of the project. Keep in mind, EVERYTHING you are seeing here is VERY early in development, so it's almost certain the final product might work and look a little different- but this is just the state it's currently in that I want to show off.

Let's dive in!

This is the appearance of the Explore desktop. It's basically a fake computer in your browser with apps you can use, plus a functioning "fake" web browser using the Spinch internet.

 This is the app menu, that displays your user plus a few apps. (Interesting user choice here... I wonder). More apps will be added, these are just the ones being worked on currently.

There's a web browser, the notes app, and a gallery app. Let's see what they look like!

Now, starting with the web browser, there aren't any actual fully-fledged websites yet- HOWEVER, the browser does function!

When you first open it, the plan will be for it to take you to a landing page with links to a few websites. The URL input bar at the top works to access websites, when you type in existing site names it'll take you to them. A few other things will be added, such as a refresh button and a home button. The browser history arrows also function.

 The URL input bar updates while you browse, as seen above.

For context about what's happening here, for anyone curious: This is coded using iframes. These websites that you'll be using on Explore are actually directories on the site that are simply being accessed using the iframe. The iframe will have special implementations to make sure you can't go anywhere else out of the fake websites, though.

You can also bookmark specific pages and access them later! These pages are remembered by your browser.

Now we're gonna look at the notes app!

When you open it, it's just a big text box you can type anything you want into.

With it, you can load, create new, and save notes like demonstrated here (the load note list is visually a major WIP and will definitely be updated)

We also have the gallery app, which is also subject to style updates. There will be other folders added later. It's also using placeholder images at the moment.

You can currently load images with it easily, later you'll be able to load videos as well.

Lastly, there's one more fun feature in place:

With right-click (and hold-press on mobile devices), you can change the wallpaper :) There will be more images you can select from. Your browser will also remember the wallpaper you chose when you go back to it!

I hope you guys like this project so far, I'm very excited to be at a point skill-level wise that I can work on this and actually feel confident in it!!! <3