Gershwin, what a name, Gershwin is the name of the next update available right now from WordPress.
Version 3.2 offers plenty of new features including a really neat looking full-screen mode window for when writing blog posts, a brilliant cropping tool for images for your article posts, a generally quicker admin area and the dropping of support for IE6.
The WordPress update is available now via your WordPress Admin.
To the surprise of quite a few of us here in the MadeByPi office, Microsoft released a new website the other day, with the strapline "10 years ago a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we're in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it's time to say goodbye."
Yes, Microsoft are making the effort to try and get global usage of it's own browser IE6 down to below 1%.
Currently the global usage of IE6 is 12% worldwide - still rather high, but hopefully with this campaign which, developers can also contribute to by using their provided scripts to inform IE6 users to upgrade to the latest versions (IE8/9) we might eventually get there.
For information from the chaps at Microsoft themselves about why they are doing this, check out their blog.
You may remember, in August last year, I released FontSwffer - a tool to simplify the creation of font SWFs for Flash.
Several minor updates and bug-fixes have been released over the last few months, and now, I think, it's time for a 'dot' release. So, here comes FontSwffer 1.1
Along with some little improvements, bug-fixes, and tweaks, the main new features are:
Project files:
You can now save and load all your font setup in FontSwffer project files (.fsproj - an uncompressed XML file)
File drag-drop support:
Drag-drop support has been added to the application for font files (.ttf, .otf, .ttc), font SWFs (.swf), and FontSwffer project files (.fsproj)
Application invoke options:
FontSwffer can now be invoked directly via project files, or by dropping font SWFs and fonts files onto the application icon.
If you've installed an earlier version, the next time you run FontSwffer the update should be downloaded to your desktop and it will ask you if you want to install it right away.
Or, if you fancy it, you can grab the new builds directly:
Built by Adobe - using the Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) - it's simple to use, yet powerful; and thanks to being open source, the project is available for all to download, modify, and re-build at will. Which, as it turns out, is rather handy.
For a recent project I needed to -quickly- implement a Flash video player that supported various streaming protocols, and would play nicely when loaded/controlled by some other Flash content. For me, SMP was the obvious choice.
The standard player supports being loaded by another SWF - passing any flashvars from the loading SWF on to the player - but for this project I needed more control over the configuration, positioning, size, and full-screen behaviour. With a few small changes to StrobeMediaPlayback.as, and a new wrapper class to make loading and configuring the player from Flash nice and simple, I had what I needed.
When modifying the player, my aim was to retain all the original functionality and behaviour when embedded into HTML - so the same player can be used everywhere, as you should see at above... However, *caveat alert* I can't guarantee that, so if you end up deploying this somewhere important be sure to test it works as expected beforehand.
Changes to the player were made in the StrobeMediaPlayback document class:
Added an option to stop the automatic initialize() call when the player is added to the stage - to allow initialising the player with custom sets of parameters, not necessarily from the loaderInfo parameters.
Added optional width/height parameters to the initialize function, where passing 0,0 causes the player to fit the full size of the stage.
Added a resize function that can be called any time after initialisation.
Get the wrapper code and tweaked StrobeMediaPlayback here. There's a little read-me in there to help you get started working with the wrapper and/or rebuilding the player, and the changes are documented in comments at the top of the StrobeMediaPlayback class.
The wrapper and player modifications are built on version 1.5 of StrobeMediaPlayback - you can view/download the various SMP distributions on sourceforge.
The team here at MadeByPi® were recently tasked with creating an auction site for our client first direct, the website would be used to auction off some really rather cool items to raise money for childrens charity ChildLine.
The auction this week came to a close and we are pleased to announce that the website has raised a huge £14,114.10 in the aid of charity!
Matthew Aitken 'Mobile and future devices designer' for MadeByPi recently gave us an insight into the future of the mobile web and applications. Matts article goes as follows:
"If you believe the rumours, then apps are the future and the web is old news. Great headline, but is there any substance to this sensationalism? In case you missed it, Wired magazine recently started the debate with its announcement that the web is in decline and its death is imminent. The truth is that as great as apps are (have you played Angry Birds?) the web is far from dead.
Two of us have hit Brighton for this year's Flash on the Beach conference! We'll be doing a few short roundups of the talks we've seen over the three days. There's loads of great speakers, so I hope we've picked the right ones to see! (more...)
Creating font-asset SWFs for Flash used to be a bit of a pain. But now, there's FontSwffer.
FontSwffer is an Air 2 native application for Windows and OSX that lets you configure, build, and preview your font SWFs all in one place. All you need to do is set-up the fonts you want to embed and press a button, that's pretty much it. If you just want the font embed ActionScript to use in your own work-flow, FontSwffer can create that for you too.
FontSwffer uses the Flex 4 SDK to compile your SWFs, just point it to the location of the SDK on your hard-drive and you're good to go. (more...)
BSkyB to create 1,300 jobs as it reveals profit growth and new Pay TV service http://t.co/IHWirTvaview7 hours ago
A choice of other tools above TweetDeck to manage your Twitter profiles updates: http://t.co/augJMVnIview9 hours ago
Note to self: Will readers take your work as seriously when it appears next to posts like Best of Rihanna’s Twit Pics? http://t.co/4gSyeJpNview20 hours ago
