IERI Utility

I'm in the process of making a few modifications to the utility. Though not terribly difficult I'm doing them quick and dirty. Since the utility is going to require a complete rewrite I don't think it'll hamper future efforts too much.

1. Updated the text of the indicators
2. Removed the compare-to-literal rating drop-down from the enacted and its accompanying field for explanatory text
3. Created a function that allows the user to choose pre-defined idea text
4. Modified the timecoding so that the user can edit the start and end times manually rather than having to load the movie and click the clock button
5. Made it possible to timecode the sightings from the summary table on the activity page

While working on (4) I discovered that Firefox has problems interacting with the plug-in through javascript. While it can grab the current elapsed time and jump to a specific time it doesn't seem to be able to start the movie from a stopped state. I'm not going to worry about it too much at this point because when I rewrite the utility I'm going to make it a little more flexible regarding players as well as do more extensive compatibility testing.

Item (4) and (5) together have required quite a bit more work than expected. Though not terribly difficult to do from a programming perspective, my coding style has changed a great deal since I initially created the IERI utility a few years ago. I'm much better now at creating code that's a little more flexible and modular. The functionality will be ported to the new system, but I imagine the actual code will be a little bit cleaner.

I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to work on the utility update, but I hope to begin in the next month or two. A number of other items are still hanging over my head, however, before I can begin. But the real impediment is the constant stream of last-minute work.