PanelsUI - The next step in Foobar aesthetics
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Terrestrial has done it again, this time it is his third component, PanelsUI . Until now, all foobar menus, toolbars and panels were arranged using ColumnsUI in any desired grid format - these panels were distinguished by irremovable borders that were defined by Window's visual style, much to the distate of budding user interface designers everywhere. PanelsUI offers a clean new approach - using scripts (in the familiar trackinfo mod format) panels themselves can be absolutely positioned and played with. New "persisting variables" or PVARS allow these scripts to store and edit variables in memory using buttons (see function: $button). In combination a slew of exciting new opportunities are possible; tabbed panels without the need for tabs_ui, clickable pop-ups, scripted interaction between trackinfo's, SCPL and PanelsUI, amongst others. To explain in words the potential is proving difficult, so I will show you some early design animations:
Pop-up playlist, this appears beneath when thin (as below) and to the side when wide.
A pop-up menu, buttons and control panel
Im sure I will think of some much more advanced uses of this integration in the near future. But for now I think this is exciting enough. For those interested, to get going, the code for tabbed panels in PanelsUI is:
$select($add($getpvar(display.mode),1),
$panel(Option1,Track Display,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option2,Album list,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option3,Console,0,20,%_width%,140,)
)
$button2(0,160,0,0,14,14,button text,button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:0',)
$button2(14,160,0,0,14,14,button text, button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:1',)
$button2(28,160,0,0,14,14, button text,button text ,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:2',)
This simple example (that needs the button text replaced with a $font()text code) is the basis for tabs, clicking the first button shows the track display, the second an album list, third a console.
Tabbed panels, changed by clicking the buttons on the bottom menu
Pop-up playlist, this appears beneath when thin (as below) and to the side when wide.
A pop-up menu, buttons and control panel
Im sure I will think of some much more advanced uses of this integration in the near future. But for now I think this is exciting enough. For those interested, to get going, the code for tabbed panels in PanelsUI is:
$select($add($getpvar(display.mode),1),
$panel(Option1,Track Display,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option2,Album list,0,20,%_width%,140,)
,
$panel(Option3,Console,0,20,%_width%,140,)
)
$button2(0,160,0,0,14,14,button text,button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:0',)
$button2(14,160,0,0,14,14,button text, button text,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:1',)
$button2(28,160,0,0,14,14, button text,button text ,'PVAR:SET:display.mode:2',)
This simple example (that needs the button text replaced with a $font()text code) is the basis for tabs, clicking the first button shows the track display, the second an album list, third a console.
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Recent Video, Audio and Image Posts
Video - Juno, I have lost my fangs
Video - What I have been watching lately
Images - Californication
Video - Haloid and Dead Fantasy
Video - Heroes
Video - How to do a press conference badly
Video - Juno, I have lost my fangs
Video - What I have been watching lately
Images - Californication
Video - Haloid and Dead Fantasy
Video - Heroes
Video - How to do a press conference badly
Artist Image Downloader, Service, Script etc.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
A big feature I wanted to include in my foobar2000 music player was artist images, i.e. pictures of the performers. If I had the images this would be possible using either the track info mod (which I now favour) or the album art panel. The trouble was, unlike album art, there was no service that offered image downloads and the only website that offered a comprehensive artist image database was last.fm. My first approach to this problem was to create a local C script that would, in a very roundabout manner, obtain the artist image url from last.fm and then download it. This proved rather slow and buggy due to various artist names, timeout problems and image creation, yet it sufficed for the majority, leading me to a collection of 2000 artist images which I posted earlier.
Still not happy, I looked into creating a web service, based on hydrogenaudio forums member Chronial's efforts and ultimately we developed an online resource for downloading artist images. I do not plan to make the code public, mainly at Chronial's request. I have created this service here: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=ARTIST where ARTIST is the performer's image you are looking for, for instance:
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the microphones
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=radiohead
Images are first sourced from Last.fm before being cached so as not to cause any undue strain on last.fm's servers.
To make things more useful you can append the URL with &outputmode=img,
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie&outputmode=img
and a wrapper of sorts is available via http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/ARTIST.jpg
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/blondie.jpg
which can be used on forums:
or in an artist download script. I use the URL2File command line application with this command:
URL2File http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60
Where %1 is the first parameter passed to the batch file and 60 is a one minute timeout.
Using a custom run component I can call this batch file using foobar and a keyboard shortcut or button; when passing the artist (%artist%) to the batch file you should take care to replace characters that cannot be used in creating windows filenames. Foreign characters work too, as do special characters such as the artist "Why?" or "Wham!".
When using image output, if no artist is found the script returns this image:
With regards to copyright issues, Last.fm's uploading policy states:
Because copyrighted images tend to be very restrictive about where they can be used we ask that you only upload images which are public domain, or that are explicitly licensed for promotional use. There are a number of places you can find images open to public use. First, try to find out if the artist has any promotional pictures on their official homepage (they usually do).
For those without foobar2000, I give an example of an alternative use. I took the recently played tracks RSS feed, played with it a little using magpierss and create a page that shows recent tracks along side artist images, an example can be found here:
http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=nowplaying
Still not happy, I looked into creating a web service, based on hydrogenaudio forums member Chronial's efforts and ultimately we developed an online resource for downloading artist images. I do not plan to make the code public, mainly at Chronial's request. I have created this service here: http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=ARTIST where ARTIST is the performer's image you are looking for, for instance:
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=the microphones
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie
http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=radiohead
Images are first sourced from Last.fm before being cached so as not to cause any undue strain on last.fm's servers.
To make things more useful you can append the URL with &outputmode=img,
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/?a=blondie&outputmode=img
and a wrapper of sorts is available via http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/ARTIST.jpg
e.g. http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/blondie.jpg
which can be used on forums:
or in an artist download script. I use the URL2File command line application with this command:
URL2File http://artists.trivialbeing.org/pic/%1.jpg C:\artistimages\thumbnails\%1.jpg -o 60
Where %1 is the first parameter passed to the batch file and 60 is a one minute timeout.
Using a custom run component I can call this batch file using foobar and a keyboard shortcut or button; when passing the artist (%artist%) to the batch file you should take care to replace characters that cannot be used in creating windows filenames. Foreign characters work too, as do special characters such as the artist "Why?" or "Wham!".
When using image output, if no artist is found the script returns this image:
With regards to copyright issues, Last.fm's uploading policy states:
Because copyrighted images tend to be very restrictive about where they can be used we ask that you only upload images which are public domain, or that are explicitly licensed for promotional use. There are a number of places you can find images open to public use. First, try to find out if the artist has any promotional pictures on their official homepage (they usually do).
For those without foobar2000, I give an example of an alternative use. I took the recently played tracks RSS feed, played with it a little using magpierss and create a page that shows recent tracks along side artist images, an example can be found here:
http://fofr.trivialbeing.net/page.php?p=nowplaying
Woe betide my broken Motorola V220 (and all mobiles)
Monday, December 04, 2006
At one and a half years I figured my phone could last at least double that and I wouldn't have to fork out for a snazzy new gizmo for quite a while. I'm not particularly enthusiastic towards mobile phones, yes I am fascinated by their all-in-one capabilities and ongoing improvements (as, after all, I am an electronic engineer) and I would love to have a 7 mega pixel camera, built in digital radio, 4gb hdd, javascript enabled internet, bluetooth and all those other perks but one simple fact remains; I do not use my phone as a telephone enough to warrant a monthly paid contract agreement. Thus I am left with the low end pay as you go options and all the shitty fallouts, or the one off cost of £300 for something high spec.
Because everything is geared towards contracts and the technology is moving along so fast it seems nothing is built to last, this rules out my second option - a £300 price tag is not a worthy investment if it wont last me 2 years, that and I am liable to lose it and phone insurance is a scam. My previous two phones both died a miserable screen-fading Nokia death before their time and all the other in-betweens have had atrocious battery problems; I have yet to lose a phone and I don't drop them - they just are not built to last. And so onto my Motorola story; having abandoned the faulty screened Nokia product lines I ventured towards a new manufacturer, Motorola paying a lowly £40 for the V220 model. I viewed this purchase as an intermediary until high specification models became affordable and I planned for it to last 3 years. Come Saturday afternoon, a windy but relatively warm winter's day in Leicester, my fully charged un-dropped never bashed phone with already defunct camera is sitting quietly in my pocket. Oh, my phone is on vibrate-then-ring, set to loud - I have a missed call that I somehow missed while waiting expectantly for the phone to go off (this happens often). Unlocking the clam I am presented with this:
Because everything is geared towards contracts and the technology is moving along so fast it seems nothing is built to last, this rules out my second option - a £300 price tag is not a worthy investment if it wont last me 2 years, that and I am liable to lose it and phone insurance is a scam. My previous two phones both died a miserable screen-fading Nokia death before their time and all the other in-betweens have had atrocious battery problems; I have yet to lose a phone and I don't drop them - they just are not built to last. And so onto my Motorola story; having abandoned the faulty screened Nokia product lines I ventured towards a new manufacturer, Motorola paying a lowly £40 for the V220 model. I viewed this purchase as an intermediary until high specification models became affordable and I planned for it to last 3 years. Come Saturday afternoon, a windy but relatively warm winter's day in Leicester, my fully charged un-dropped never bashed phone with already defunct camera is sitting quietly in my pocket. Oh, my phone is on vibrate-then-ring, set to loud - I have a missed call that I somehow missed while waiting expectantly for the phone to go off (this happens often). Unlocking the clam I am presented with this:
Pretty colours. My first instinct is to reset, remove battery and SIM, replace and restart. The error continues and this confirms my fears: c'est cassé! All the functions of the phone still seem to work, I can ring people (if I know their number) and change the ring volume, etc, I just cannot see what I am doing. My first guess as to the cause was faulty software - a nasty bug that I could fix if only I could get to that "reset to factory settings" option somehow (why isn't there a button inside to do that?). However I am now thinking it may be due to wear and tear on the clam's hinge which would explain why the camera went first. Ultimately I plan to open this all up and take a look inside, my sister has the same phone that she doesn't use so I can raid it for spare parts, etc.
Considering I have just finished a safety critical systems course where required failure rates are 1 in 100,000 years, this persistent failure of phones within 24 months when no mistreatment has occurred irritates and annoys me to no end. The irony is that I was for a short time over the summer an "honourable Motorolan", i.e. an employee of theirs (somewhat). I guess now I shall move on to Sony Ericsson and then another manufacturer when that model unavoidably fails.
Considering I have just finished a safety critical systems course where required failure rates are 1 in 100,000 years, this persistent failure of phones within 24 months when no mistreatment has occurred irritates and annoys me to no end. The irony is that I was for a short time over the summer an "honourable Motorolan", i.e. an employee of theirs (somewhat). I guess now I shall move on to Sony Ericsson and then another manufacturer when that model unavoidably fails.
The Issues with Blogger in Beta
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Last night I finally had the opportunity to change over to the new blogger system and it's associated improvements. My main reason for shifting was the inclusion of labels - finally I can categorize my posts and provide easy access to certain topics. The lack of labeling or categorization had tempted me to migrate to Wordpress but alas I have stuck with Blogger and I may make it through this difficult transition period also. My first process lead me to check templates loaded OK and blogs could be fully published as usual. This lead me to a few discoveries:
- Upon migration the URL for archives was reset so all updated archives linked to a 404. I quickly fixed this once my server, that has been up and down a bit lately, allowed me back into the FTP.
- Previous Post links have stopped working, the conventional
tag instead of providing a list of the 10 posts prior to the post being viewed now shows only the ten most recent posts. This makes navigation of the older pages less fluid and to find old posts you need to visit label pages or archive pages with the aim of finding a specific post. - The uploading dialogue for blogger has also been tweaked, it now shows the successfully uploaded files in a list and when errors occurs it tells you them. A nice addition to this would be a suggestion on whether or not to perform a republish based upon the severity of FTP errors. When I see the errors I ask myself whether or not all the files uploaded ok - the last thing I need is a corrupted page that I don't know about. One caveat of this new system is the removal of the percentage uploaded indicator, I like to know how far through the process is and whether or not connectivity is good or bad, taking away the only indication seems wrong to me. Hopefully it is just part of the inevitable blogger beta ftp teething stages.
- Labels with a gap in there name e.g. "My Life" would link to a labels page: "labels/My Life.php" without substituting the space for a '-' character or removing capitalization (e.g. labels/my- life.php)
- The labels directory is not customizable and is fixed to the "/labels/" default.
- No pagination occurs on the label pages, despite the number of posts - one of my labels has 33 posts and they all load to create a mammoth scrolling fiasco.
- When labels have a gap in their name they do not show up in the labels section on the individual post page - I noticed this and tested it to check it had uploaded correctly. All pages that I had applied the label "My Life" to did not show any labels, though others did. I have since changed the label title but it is an issue that needs fixing.
Finally I decided to post something new. The inclusion of a quick switch between html and rich formatting is an excellent addition that is very handy. Posting via a 1280x resolution the blogger post box seems very small. I like a large area to play with and it would be nice if the box could expand to fill the whole screen, much like in Gmail.
The interface is all very fluid and fast, quickly pulling up 160 posts and labeling them was not a daunting task as I had expected. The dashboard makeover also improves usability, I now only need one click to reach certain regularly visited sections.
I now have one plea: Please do not abandon the template tags scheme. I love it and use it successfully to create my blog exactly how I want it. Please maintain these tags and add respective ones so that us power users can continue using blogger and its new features in the same way we always have done. We do not need to utilize simplified template editing techniques and whilst two separate schemes never seem wise I don't know why they cant run side by side - leaving the templates tag as an advanced yet maintained option for those with a little more knowhow.
This is still in beta so I can remain hopeful for changes, it is nice to finally see some changes and I do feel that Blogger is moving in the right direction.
Foobar Component Update
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Terrestrial has made another great update to his single column playlist module for Foobar2000 v0.9. This latest change adds the following functionality:
+ some tweaks to multiple window / multiple playlists
+ added "Playing" playlist selection
+ $fileexists()
+ added NOKEEPASPECT option for images
+ added wildcard support for images
+ added alignment options for images VALIGN-T (vertical align-TOP), VALIGN-B, HALIGN-L, HALIGN-R
I have highlighted the key improvements that I am now making use of. With these new additions images can be stretched to fit a give frame, for example:
$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)
This will display an image (finds any .jpg in the song's directory thanks to the new wildcard function - * is the wildcard) and stretch it to fit a 100x100 frame. Expanding upon this using the new fileexists function:
$if($fileexists($replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg)),
$puts(albumMarg,110)
$puts(datax,160)
$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)
$imageabs(5,,images/artoverlay-1.png ,)
$drawrect(5,0,100,100,brushcolor-null pencolor-0-0-0)
$drawrect(6,1,98,98,brushcolor-null pencolor-150-150-150)
,
$puts(albumMarg,10)
$puts(datax,60))
This checks that the images is there, if it is it defines a specific margin for later use in positioning of artist, album and trackinfo. It then draws the image, a PNG overlay and some surrounding borders. If the image doesn't exist it defines a different margin so that the song data does not surround an empty space and instead is closer to the left, for example:
+ some tweaks to multiple window / multiple playlists
+ added "Playing" playlist selection
+ $fileexists()
+ added NOKEEPASPECT option for images
+ added wildcard support for images
+ added alignment options for images VALIGN-T (vertical align-TOP), VALIGN-B, HALIGN-L, HALIGN-R
I have highlighted the key improvements that I am now making use of. With these new additions images can be stretched to fit a give frame, for example:
$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)
This will display an image (finds any .jpg in the song's directory thanks to the new wildcard function - * is the wildcard) and stretch it to fit a 100x100 frame. Expanding upon this using the new fileexists function:
$if($fileexists($replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg)),
$puts(albumMarg,110)
$puts(datax,160)
$imageabs2(100,100,,,100,100,5,,$replace(%path%,%filename_ext%,*.jpg),NOKEEPASPECT)
$imageabs(5,,images/artoverlay-1.png ,)
$drawrect(5,0,100,100,brushcolor-null pencolor-0-0-0)
$drawrect(6,1,98,98,brushcolor-null pencolor-150-150-150)
,
$puts(albumMarg,10)
$puts(datax,60))
This checks that the images is there, if it is it defines a specific margin for later use in positioning of artist, album and trackinfo. It then draws the image, a PNG overlay and some surrounding borders. If the image doesn't exist it defines a different margin so that the song data does not surround an empty space and instead is closer to the left, for example:
Fighting XP's hatred of black themes
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Finding the elusive perfect black theme for windows XP is nigh impossible. The thwarted erroneous or inconsistent use of SYSCOLORs throughout applications inevitably leads to a mix mash of black on grey (Firefox says grey can only be spelled gray, silly thing), black on black, url-blue on black or many other unavoidable clashes that make using that particular program impossible or painful. Whether it be unchangeable background whites with white text or the fixed black font on the new dark-grey 3D windows there's always a reason to switch back to the eye-ball penetrating white themes. Even Microsoft applications lay foul to this problem - you'd expect proper SYSCOLOR usage here at least:
MSN & Microsoft's Tweak UI
No matter what you do, that black text cannot be fixed, no matter what you do that blue header and frame in MSN cannot be fixed - no tweak will suffice. All black themes face these problems. The only way of fixing such issues I imagine is to apply a custom visual style to each problematic application and the only program that allows this, as far as I am aware is WindowBlinds, which I shudder to use as I like my system resources. This problem extends to browsers wherein web-pages adopt the default color schemes; browsing under the guise of blackness you become aware of the sites that assume everyone uses a black on white setup and the problems in creating an incomplete or ill-defined CSS stylesheet. For example, defining the backgrounds as white but leaving the default text, defining text-color within an input box but not its background color, visa versa, etc. In IE this cannot be fixed remotely and your theme becomes absolutely impossible to tolerate:
But in Firefox this problem can be fixed by overriding default theme values via the UserContent.css file, found here:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\chrome
for a standard installation. I added these settings:
Which changes the page (and others that rely on default schemes) to look like this:
A significant and usable improvement that allows for an improved and enjoyable browser experience. Note: It seems Firefox defines text-colour default to black and ignores the themes value, so no changes have to be made here. To have a browser working within a black theme becomes a significant benefit and the problems and woes of the few assorted clashes elsewhere become tolerable. Now a beautiful black theme such as Inverso-Reborn-Balanced can be used functionally in day to day life without just looking pretty (screenshot showing Foobar, Explorer and Notepad):
If only more applications allowed complete CSS re-styling of their user interface.
MSN & Microsoft's Tweak UI
No matter what you do, that black text cannot be fixed, no matter what you do that blue header and frame in MSN cannot be fixed - no tweak will suffice. All black themes face these problems. The only way of fixing such issues I imagine is to apply a custom visual style to each problematic application and the only program that allows this, as far as I am aware is WindowBlinds, which I shudder to use as I like my system resources. This problem extends to browsers wherein web-pages adopt the default color schemes; browsing under the guise of blackness you become aware of the sites that assume everyone uses a black on white setup and the problems in creating an incomplete or ill-defined CSS stylesheet. For example, defining the backgrounds as white but leaving the default text, defining text-color within an input box but not its background color, visa versa, etc. In IE this cannot be fixed remotely and your theme becomes absolutely impossible to tolerate:
But in Firefox this problem can be fixed by overriding default theme values via the UserContent.css file, found here:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\chrome
for a standard installation. I added these settings:
/* Fixes textarea colours */
textarea {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}
/* Fixes input and button colours */
input {
background-color: #eeeeee;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}
/* Fixes dropdown box colours */
select {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
margin: 2px;
}
textarea {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}
/* Fixes input and button colours */
input {
background-color: #eeeeee;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
padding: 2px;
margin: 2px;
}
/* Fixes dropdown box colours */
select {
background-color: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
border: 1px solid #bbb;
margin: 2px;
}
Which changes the page (and others that rely on default schemes) to look like this:
A significant and usable improvement that allows for an improved and enjoyable browser experience. Note: It seems Firefox defines text-colour default to black and ignores the themes value, so no changes have to be made here. To have a browser working within a black theme becomes a significant benefit and the problems and woes of the few assorted clashes elsewhere become tolerable. Now a beautiful black theme such as Inverso-Reborn-Balanced can be used functionally in day to day life without just looking pretty (screenshot showing Foobar, Explorer and Notepad):
If only more applications allowed complete CSS re-styling of their user interface.
Labels: Technical
Audio Blog and Flash MP3 Player
Friday, October 27, 2006
Given my new found web space and bandwidth capabilities I have decided to turn the music section of this blog from a simple "review and list" posting of my favourite albums to a fully fledged mp3 blog with inline flash streamed mp3s and music videos via YouTube. My inspiration for doing this comes from the well versed Spiked Candy for which I am a regular reader.
However the "Radio Blog" flash script used there seems too cumbersome for my liking, so I searched around for an alternative flash streaming audio player. I found two options - both by Jeroen Wijering, the first was very similar to Radio Blog, it has a list of songs and you can choose to play them; whilst very nice and highly customizable it did not suit a post by post situation. So I opted for the second, a concise progress bar which allows colour and size manipulation (but has no text display), perfect for my needs.
To check out this neat little script I suggest reading the latest posts in the Audio / MP3 blog section, I have put up three posts so far including Lulu Jackson's pre-war blues rarity "You're going to leave the old home Jim" and a video of Mohammed Rafi's "Jaan Pechechaan Ho" performed for the Bollywood film Gumnaam.
My satisfaction with this script has also lead me to integrate it into the forums so that any direct link to a file with mp3 extension is parsed to generate an inline playable version and an option to download the track. This modification is amongst the many I have added lately, including the ability to post YouTube and GoogleVideo inline from the reply box. Now I only wish I could somehow apply these to blogger so that I don't have to add the html every time I want to post something dynamic.
However the "Radio Blog" flash script used there seems too cumbersome for my liking, so I searched around for an alternative flash streaming audio player. I found two options - both by Jeroen Wijering, the first was very similar to Radio Blog, it has a list of songs and you can choose to play them; whilst very nice and highly customizable it did not suit a post by post situation. So I opted for the second, a concise progress bar which allows colour and size manipulation (but has no text display), perfect for my needs.
To check out this neat little script I suggest reading the latest posts in the Audio / MP3 blog section, I have put up three posts so far including Lulu Jackson's pre-war blues rarity "You're going to leave the old home Jim" and a video of Mohammed Rafi's "Jaan Pechechaan Ho" performed for the Bollywood film Gumnaam.
My satisfaction with this script has also lead me to integrate it into the forums so that any direct link to a file with mp3 extension is parsed to generate an inline playable version and an option to download the track. This modification is amongst the many I have added lately, including the ability to post YouTube and GoogleVideo inline from the reply box. Now I only wish I could somehow apply these to blogger so that I don't have to add the html every time I want to post something dynamic.
Labels: Technical
Firefox 2.0 - Fix tabs
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The new Firefox release is great, especially the built in and seamlessly integrated spell checker, this should dramatically improve all those poorly spelled posts and web pages we see everywhere. The new glass theme and highlighting is an improvement (in my opinion) and new built in Phishing tools are also a positive development. Other noteworthy features include session saver, and suggestions in the search box. To test this release with regards to the ill-fated memory leak I loaded up a page of 20 or so animated GIFs which previous versions would choke on and die a painful death, the page still saw a large increase in page-file usage and some slow down but after browsing away from the page it all disappeared and I didn't have to restart the browser.
A couple of things I don't like, or maybe I am just not used to, are the changes to tabs. The changes give a fixed minimum width and a horizontal scrollable toolbar when the number of tabs exceed the screen width and also a "Close" icon on each tab. So I thought it would be helpful to state here how to change the tabs back to "the old style" ( i.e. FF 1.x):
Remove Close Button
To remove the close button from each tab and instead place one button in the top right, in the about:config file change browser.tabs.closeButtons to "3"
(For more details see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons ).
Fit More Tabs on the Page
To do this you have to reduce the minimum width of tabs. Once again, using the about:config file change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to a value of your choice. The changes will not be apparent until you restart Firefox.
For the complete run down visit: Mozillazine
A couple of things I don't like, or maybe I am just not used to, are the changes to tabs. The changes give a fixed minimum width and a horizontal scrollable toolbar when the number of tabs exceed the screen width and also a "Close" icon on each tab. So I thought it would be helpful to state here how to change the tabs back to "the old style" ( i.e. FF 1.x):
Remove Close Button
To remove the close button from each tab and instead place one button in the top right, in the about:config file change browser.tabs.closeButtons to "3"
(For more details see: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons ).
Fit More Tabs on the Page
To do this you have to reduce the minimum width of tabs. Once again, using the about:config file change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to a value of your choice. The changes will not be apparent until you restart Firefox.
For the complete run down visit: Mozillazine
Labels: Technical
Polish up the old Google
Saturday, October 21, 2006
I follow the inner workings of Google frequently through the excellent blogs "Google Blogoscoped" and " InsideGoogle ". I get excited when new google products are announced, when upgrades are implemented and generally every time Google makes my Internet life a little easier. A Gmail and Reader tab lie open continually, I use Google ad products to promote and earn from, I use google bookmarks, search history, personalized homepage, calendar, groups and obviously search. I am sure I have at least dabbled with most other releases also. So I sing my praises where I can, indeed I spent a half hour session with my last boss showing him all the ins and outs of Gmail and all those subtle little features you need someone to showcase.
But then again not everything is perfect in the increasingly large and amorphous world of the GOOG. In general, the spate of recent releases and acquisitions over the last year or so has left Google with an assortment of great and good products that need more dedicated development time and overall integration with other services to become truly useful. It has become increasingly difficult to find or even remember that Google has a suitable method for dealing with a certain enquiry. Google's aim is to organise and make available the world's information - I fail to see how this can be achieved when their own development procedure and release methodologies lead towards an increasingly difficult plane to circumnavigate. It is a white-walled maze -
The faintest ilk of an integration process between products is apparent in the new blue bar atop of Gmail and other services, a loose link to the other tools you haven't yet used. I will now take this opportunity to list some areas within google products and services that I feel should be addressed, improved or provided, paying particular attention to the idea of focused integration and improved user experience.
The simplest and most effective integration is to provide access to all search services through a single search box. Blog search, News search, Book search, Scholar, Groups, Images, Finance, Video, Froogle, Maps, Code search - they all require you to visit their little section of google. For certain search terms one box results appear suggesting a search using a different tool and the top alternative search links are available for video, images, etc. The recent addition of the pop-up more box is also helpful. But I feel this is not enough.
There is no method to simultaneously search more than one service. This could be addressed using search operators within the search box, for instance:
Search History, an invaluable tool needs expanding to all of Google's search services also. It is slowly getting there and I imagine in a few months it will be available for most if not all services. Why not expand this service to let users choose what histories they wish to keep and discard? Why not provide a search operator that automatically excludes a search term from the search history ( e.g. #nohistory). With the power of Firefox's extensibility search history could also be expanded to search boxes on domains of a user's choosing. For instance I often want to see what I have searched for on Wikipedia, YouTube or various coding sites. To save terms searched for on any domain would be a powerful tool. Obviously for the sake of privacy and security this should be opt-in by the user and they should retain complete control over the data being stored. Of course this could be expanded to an extension that stores your history online and saves search terms from all sites - but this would generate a slew of privacy fears from the quite right security zealots.
Tools are the second big issue and these should ultimately be integrated. The recent greasemonkey script that puts Reader into Gmail is the clearest and most influential indication of the power of integration. At present I have to login using a hundred different forms to access a hundred different tools that have little to no interoperability. The Reader into gmail approach is a nice idea and one that could be expanded up on:
But then again not everything is perfect in the increasingly large and amorphous world of the GOOG. In general, the spate of recent releases and acquisitions over the last year or so has left Google with an assortment of great and good products that need more dedicated development time and overall integration with other services to become truly useful. It has become increasingly difficult to find or even remember that Google has a suitable method for dealing with a certain enquiry. Google's aim is to organise and make available the world's information - I fail to see how this can be achieved when their own development procedure and release methodologies lead towards an increasingly difficult plane to circumnavigate. It is a white-walled maze -
For all is clean and clear but hidden behind a thousand doors.
The faintest ilk of an integration process between products is apparent in the new blue bar atop of Gmail and other services, a loose link to the other tools you haven't yet used. I will now take this opportunity to list some areas within google products and services that I feel should be addressed, improved or provided, paying particular attention to the idea of focused integration and improved user experience.
The simplest and most effective integration is to provide access to all search services through a single search box. Blog search, News search, Book search, Scholar, Groups, Images, Finance, Video, Froogle, Maps, Code search - they all require you to visit their little section of google. For certain search terms one box results appear suggesting a search using a different tool and the top alternative search links are available for video, images, etc. The recent addition of the pop-up more box is also helpful. But I feel this is not enough.
There is no method to simultaneously search more than one service. This could be addressed using search operators within the search box, for instance:
- " Iraq War #blog #news" could search both blog search and news search for results on the Iraq War - or alternatively "searchblog,searchnews:Iraq War"
- "Scarlett Johansson #images #video" to search for both videos and images.
- "Literary criticism #books #scholar -#normalsearch " a search for literary criticism in books and scholar, excluding normal google search
- "all:Johnny Depp" searches all services and provides for example the top result for each with an expandable box that can provide a further 5 results or a list of results similar to normal queries but with an icon indicating which service generated the result and left-aligned thumbnails for images, videos, etc. For instance the list could contain first a link to Depp's IMDB page, secondly a link and thumbnail for the trailer to Pirates of the Caribbean 2, thirdly some images and fourthly a recent blog post.
- "media:Buffy the Vampire Slayer" - automatically searches the media services for information (e.g. images, video)
- " research:Capacitive Tomography" - automatically searches .edu and .ac.uk sites, scholar, books, wikipedia and other valued resources.
- "latest:Halo Movie " - automatically searches news, blogs and sites recently updated.
Search History, an invaluable tool needs expanding to all of Google's search services also. It is slowly getting there and I imagine in a few months it will be available for most if not all services. Why not expand this service to let users choose what histories they wish to keep and discard? Why not provide a search operator that automatically excludes a search term from the search history ( e.g. #nohistory). With the power of Firefox's extensibility search history could also be expanded to search boxes on domains of a user's choosing. For instance I often want to see what I have searched for on Wikipedia, YouTube or various coding sites. To save terms searched for on any domain would be a powerful tool. Obviously for the sake of privacy and security this should be opt-in by the user and they should retain complete control over the data being stored. Of course this could be expanded to an extension that stores your history online and saves search terms from all sites - but this would generate a slew of privacy fears from the quite right security zealots.
Tools are the second big issue and these should ultimately be integrated. The recent greasemonkey script that puts Reader into Gmail is the clearest and most influential indication of the power of integration. At present I have to login using a hundred different forms to access a hundred different tools that have little to no interoperability. The Reader into gmail approach is a nice idea and one that could be expanded up on:
- "Files" - A list of documents related to your google account i.e. those in spreadsheets and docs, groups (files in the new beta), pages and possibly Gmail attachments. The list could indicate permissions, size, file type, last accessed and direct links to editing them online (or an automatic process to edit them locally and re-upload only changes using the Google desktop search client). This could extend to directly editing Gmail attachments without having to download and re-upload to docs. Photos from Picasa and uploaded blogger files could also be included in this list. Each of these files could also be labelled as per the gmail tradition and of course be search-able both for the file and in the file.
- "History" - An integration of search history into Gmail that could include terms you have used to search through your mail and "saved searches" that could be quite complex (like the greasemonkey script " save persistent searches")
- "Blog" - Post directly to blogger from Gmail without having to send posts via email - I much prefer the editor in Gmail and I generally use it to compose all of my posts. The ability to edit from Gmail would also save me having to login to blogger to correct changes or add after thoughts - especially considering I have Gmail open all the time. Once again a list of previous posts and associated files could be made and use the new blogger-beta labelling system. Add multiple blogs in settings.
- "Schedule" - Show calendar inside Gmail - please, please please.
- "Links" - A list of hyperlinks that have appeared in emails or multiple emails recently with the option to store them to Google Bookmarks. The number of times I have to search for the email that contained the link to the web page I have forgotten is annoying.
- Make all of the above options smart (i.e. don't show blogs if they don't have a blogger account) and give the user the ability to disable them.
- "Add word to dictionary" option within Gmail rich text editor, though this may be redundant considering the new spellcheck feature coming in Firefox 2.0.
- Save advanced search options to account not just locally - I like to see 100 results and have SafeSearch off, this often gets reset.
- Use the inline expansion of topics in Reader within Gmail to quickly read new mail as an option and to provide some sort of consistent interface.
- Quick add items to calendar using Gmail or Google search boxes (e.g. using calendar:) operator.
- Gmail: Use label colour coding as shown by Matt Cutts.
- Gmail: Relegate Spam to a label that incoming mail can also be applied to.
- Gmail: Export to PDF (and other similar formats in 'docs') for emails.
- Gmail: Provide extra security, a search for "password" in gmail should ask the user to input their account password again to ensure Gmail has not been left logged in accidentally.
- A session management console. Oops I left myself logged in on a public PC - delete the session remotely to preserve security.
- Zeitgeist for email - who has emailed me most, who have I emailed most, most popular email domains, who have I chatted to most, etc.
- In Google Reader, let it recognise my own site feed (or let me define this) and if it's blogger provide a link to quickly and efficiently edit the post.
Version 7 "and into the light"
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The site has changed and I would like to dub these edits and improvements an upgrade. The old black and orange layout, shown below, was my first attempt at creating a site completely from CSS, more than a year ago now. This turned out a failure, after hours of messing and continual frustration with the discrepancies between Internet explorer and Firefox and the bastardization of CSS rendering, in desperation I resorted to methods I knew best - tables and those dreaded font tags. This resulted in formatting that was half controlled by a hacked IE-fixing style sheet and half by random style and formatting strings placed sporadically throughout the design. To say the code was messy was an understatement. Another problem became the accessibility of content - all the links to older posts, archives, special pages, my websites and other random articles became obscured, hard to find and ultimately hidden from the reader. Thirdly the site, although looking relatively stylish on a flat screen was almost illegible on a classic CRT. For these reasons, and probably a few others I decided to address my distaste with this blog and fix everything that was once wrong.
My aims were thus to create a clean crisp appearance that looks good on all screens, where links are in visible and logical positions and the separation of posts, content, ads and information is obvious. This was to be brought about using a pure CSS design, no tables - a site that's content can be completely separated from its appearance. I am pretty pleased with the results, my aims have been fulfilled and the style sheet did not have to revert to a single IE fix. The biggest problems I had to overcome were firstly the central positioning of the main table and the right column.
My first attempt at creating the centre-piece was to use an auto-margin on either side of the <div> using margin-left and margin-right, yet Internet explorer doesn't like this in the slightest. I remember having a number of simple margin issues with IE during previous escapades. I switched to the 'all-in-one' definition and defined only the left margin as auto: "margin:0px auto;" and then set the table width to a fixed amount before applying the 'work-around' which is to provide the body element with a "text-align:center", this positions the <div> in the centre of the page from the start. A second text-align is then required within the <div> so that all the text within it is not also centered.
Fixing the column issue has a less elegant solution. In fact the first method was the best, it utilised the float parameter and allowed text to flow around the column once it had ended, the height of the main <div> would adapt to include all the content. However applying my design to blogger prevented this, on each post Blogger adds an irremovable <div> with the style "clear:both" which renders all floating around said element impossible. I imagine this is a security measure to prevent users hiding malicious things, etc. Going back to the drawing-board yielded an absolutely positioned column with margin to get the correct alignment and a restriction on the post <div> to prevent overlap. A new problem presented, by placing the content absolutely the main container would not stretch to encompass the full content, a crude fix for this was to include a minimum-height tag within it. If anyone has some better suggestions on solving this dilemma I am all ears.
My aims were thus to create a clean crisp appearance that looks good on all screens, where links are in visible and logical positions and the separation of posts, content, ads and information is obvious. This was to be brought about using a pure CSS design, no tables - a site that's content can be completely separated from its appearance. I am pretty pleased with the results, my aims have been fulfilled and the style sheet did not have to revert to a single IE fix. The biggest problems I had to overcome were firstly the central positioning of the main table and the right column.
My first attempt at creating the centre-piece was to use an auto-margin on either side of the <div> using margin-left and margin-right, yet Internet explorer doesn't like this in the slightest. I remember having a number of simple margin issues with IE during previous escapades. I switched to the 'all-in-one' definition and defined only the left margin as auto: "margin:0px auto;" and then set the table width to a fixed amount before applying the 'work-around' which is to provide the body element with a "text-align:center", this positions the <div> in the centre of the page from the start. A second text-align is then required within the <div> so that all the text within it is not also centered.
Fixing the column issue has a less elegant solution. In fact the first method was the best, it utilised the float parameter and allowed text to flow around the column once it had ended, the height of the main <div> would adapt to include all the content. However applying my design to blogger prevented this, on each post Blogger adds an irremovable <div> with the style "clear:both" which renders all floating around said element impossible. I imagine this is a security measure to prevent users hiding malicious things, etc. Going back to the drawing-board yielded an absolutely positioned column with margin to get the correct alignment and a restriction on the post <div> to prevent overlap. A new problem presented, by placing the content absolutely the main container would not stretch to encompass the full content, a crude fix for this was to include a minimum-height tag within it. If anyone has some better suggestions on solving this dilemma I am all ears.
The New Foobar
Monday, August 21, 2006
So I have spent some time working with the latest trackinfo_mod beta panel that is available for the latest version of foobar2000 (0.9.3.1). It has the great ability to support PNGs which can be absolutely positioned. I decided to opt for a clear and non-invasive design that can be read at a distance (I hate having to get up from bed to see what song is playing). So I made the artist and title large, the album name a little bigger and then of course a huge album art cover. Of course this makes browsing for songs to play a little difficult so under the browse tab at the bottom there is an auto-hide columns UI playlist and album list panel, as shown in the handy (yet miniaturised for this blog) GIF. To see a full version of my setup click this link: Screenshot
Don't buy Dell
Friday, July 21, 2006
In brief, this should sway you from ever thinking of purchasing a Dell machine.
Woe betide my Dell, (Renata's Blog)
Some quotes:
Tech: When you go around the web -- yes? On your browser program. You can run into bad programs called viruses. And these viruses can cause all the problems you are talking about.
Me: I know what a virus is. I don't have a virus.
Tech: But viruses cause all your problems. You have a virus -- yes?
Me: I do not have a virus. I have a hardware firewall on the router. I have a software firewall on the computer. I have up to date commercial virus protection that updates its definitions on the fly and I have scheduled full system virus scans that run every night at 3 AM. I do not have a virus.
Tech: Well, you know, too much security can cause problems too.
...
The first tech was adamant that the problem was not related to memory, and that there were only three causes for bluescreens: a bad motherboard, a bad hard drive, or software conflicts. She explained, again, that she had just replaced the motherboard and hard drive. "Must be software," the tech said. Exasperated now, my tech explained that she had just replaced the hard drive, so there was no software on the machine. He still insisted it was a software problem and refused to send memory. In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done.
Engadget: Dell Laptops Exploding...
Dell knew dozens of their laptops had sustained extensive heat damage at least two years before initiating any kind of recall. The source, who is claimed to be someone "close to the company," has said that Dell execs were provided with documents and photographs in 2003 and 2004 showing lappies described as "burned," "melted" and even "scorched."
Woe betide my Dell, (Renata's Blog)
Some quotes:
Tech: When you go around the web -- yes? On your browser program. You can run into bad programs called viruses. And these viruses can cause all the problems you are talking about.
Me: I know what a virus is. I don't have a virus.
Tech: But viruses cause all your problems. You have a virus -- yes?
Me: I do not have a virus. I have a hardware firewall on the router. I have a software firewall on the computer. I have up to date commercial virus protection that updates its definitions on the fly and I have scheduled full system virus scans that run every night at 3 AM. I do not have a virus.
Tech: Well, you know, too much security can cause problems too.
...
The first tech was adamant that the problem was not related to memory, and that there were only three causes for bluescreens: a bad motherboard, a bad hard drive, or software conflicts. She explained, again, that she had just replaced the motherboard and hard drive. "Must be software," the tech said. Exasperated now, my tech explained that she had just replaced the hard drive, so there was no software on the machine. He still insisted it was a software problem and refused to send memory. In fact, he suggested something that I will be writing to Dell about. He actually suggested that she install only one of the four memory modules, close the box, determine quickly if that module was okay, and then leave, telling me to continue installing Windows and call tech support if I had any more problems! He actually suggested to her that she LEAVE OUT 1.5 GB of my memory, memory I paid for, presumably without telling me what had been done.
Engadget: Dell Laptops Exploding...
Dell knew dozens of their laptops had sustained extensive heat damage at least two years before initiating any kind of recall. The source, who is claimed to be someone "close to the company," has said that Dell execs were provided with documents and photographs in 2003 and 2004 showing lappies described as "burned," "melted" and even "scorched."
Labels: Technical
Yahoo Launches Audio Search (impressive)
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Saw this on InsideGoogle,
http://audio.search.yahoo.com/
This is an extremely nifty release. Take these example searches and results:
(Purposely testing with lesser known artists)
Venetian Snares: Search
Clicking the artist brings up a discography and list of albums.
Clicking the song gives a list of legal locations for download, cost, quality, format, ability to burn to cd,
Quick links include Y! music link to artist, biographys and reviews.
There is also a matching artists page on the right hand side to give quick access to discographies of searched terms.
From the discography page:
Format: Album Cover, Title (Record Label, Year of Release)
Sort releases by popularity, date and title.
On the right Yahoo automatically searches images, the web and video and displays the first results from each in a single column.
Find CD link under each album links to Yahoo shopping and gives a list of online outlets to purchase the cd.
For more well known artists there are "Similar artist" links also.
Clicking an album cover takes you to the " album browser":
This lets you quickly browse an artists albums. On clicking from the browser you are presented with a tracklisting and all the available legal online download locations for that song.
You can also select your preferred audio service from one of these:
Moving on to Podcasts:
Search for engadget: Engadget Podcast
Notice the last published date and direct link to the RSS feeds.
Here's another podcast search: BBC
There's also an "other audio" option which I have yet to try.
quote:
Yahoo has apparently decided that, now that they have an ad network targeted at bloggers, it is time for them to release all of their blog-related services in development. As a result, here is Yahoo Audio Search, which can find you podcasts. According to The New York Times, Yahoo claims to have indexed 50 million music, voice and other audio files.
The service will also display links to the online sites where users can pay to download a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists of their songs and pay a commission on every song sold. The current version of the service has no advertising, but Mr. Horowitz said ads might be added later.
You can refine your searches by music, podcasts or other audio, by song, artist or album, by format (RAM, MP3, MIDI, WMA or AAC) by duration (more or less than a minute), by web & audio services or audio services only, and by major releases or to include alternates, imports, EPs, etc.. Smartly, the podcast results have links to the RSS feeds.
http://audio.search.yahoo.com/
This is an extremely nifty release. Take these example searches and results:
(Purposely testing with lesser known artists)
Venetian Snares: Search
Clicking the artist brings up a discography and list of albums.
Clicking the song gives a list of legal locations for download, cost, quality, format, ability to burn to cd,
Quick links include Y! music link to artist, biographys and reviews.
There is also a matching artists page on the right hand side to give quick access to discographies of searched terms.
From the discography page:
Format: Album Cover, Title (Record Label, Year of Release)
Sort releases by popularity, date and title.
On the right Yahoo automatically searches images, the web and video and displays the first results from each in a single column.
Find CD link under each album links to Yahoo shopping and gives a list of online outlets to purchase the cd.
For more well known artists there are "Similar artist" links also.
Clicking an album cover takes you to the " album browser":
This lets you quickly browse an artists albums. On clicking from the browser you are presented with a tracklisting and all the available legal online download locations for that song.
You can also select your preferred audio service from one of these:
quote:
None
ArtistDirect
AudioLunchbox
BuyMusic.com
dMusic
eMusic
Epitonic
GarageBand
iTunes
Livedownloads
MP34U
MSN Music
Musicmatch
Napster
PassAlong
RealPlayer Music Store
Rhapsody
SoundClick
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Moving on to Podcasts:
Search for engadget: Engadget Podcast
Notice the last published date and direct link to the RSS feeds.
Here's another podcast search: BBC
There's also an "other audio" option which I have yet to try.
Labels: Technical
Konfabulator is great!
Saturday, July 16, 2005
I have spent the evening looking for a method of skinning iTunes for windows XP, I'm fed up of the grey scheme and would like the library to take more advantage of the cover art each of my music files has. I really wanted to browse by artist and beneath the artist there would be the album title and cover and to the right a tracklisting / track details. This is what I want for iTunes and I haven't yet found it. However, on my trek across the internet I stumbled upon Konfabulator 2, the stylish, simple and effective widget machine:
What Is Konfabulator?
Konfabulator is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.
What sets Konfabulator apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today's advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X.
I decided to install and experiment. Previously I have used rainmeter and samurize clients to display information on my desktop. Such clients have been slightly annoying to position, congifure and match with my current theme. Konfab' comes with several preconfigured widgets for you to use; an analogue clock, CPU monitor, Wifi signal monitor, weather forecasts and various others. I used to have a weather add-on for Rainmeter yet the advanced configuration and work to find the local forecast code number was not worth the hassle of the forecast only showing every 3 reboots. So I tried this aspect first, I entered my home town and country and there it was, the forecast in all it's simple and brilliant glory, directly to my desktop. It also shows the current stage of the moon's cycle and puts temperatures in a METRIC format. Next up, time to browse the third-party widgets (http://www.widgetgallery.com/).
Here I found an iTunes remote that looks like an empty cd jewel case. Upon playing it shows the album cover in the ID3 tag, if not tag exists the widget searches Amazon for an appropriate cover. Upon rolling over the top half a set of controls to change track, etc... appear, rolling over the bottom half brings up the progress bar, track name and artist name. Simple and eloquent. It also has some advanced features such as hiding itself when iTunes is closed, bringing itself to the front upon track change and hotkeys for control. It also has three spearate sizes for album covers, in the screenshot below it's on the middle setting. So here's an image of my current desktop, click for larger.
Labels: Technical
Optimus (concept) Display Keyboard
Friday, July 15, 2005
A goon over at forums.somethingawful.com pointed this out to me and I relished the idea of having one of these so much that I decided to make a blog entry about it. At the moment this is only a concept piece, however there are patents pending and from the forums thread their is significant interest in such a product. It is ingenious without a doubt.
"Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment."
"Additional block of keys on the left is meant for switching between programs or modes"
Standard keyboard in English, same keyboard different display when playing Quake, showing the controls.
"Every key of the Optimus keyboard is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at this very moment."
"Additional block of keys on the left is meant for switching between programs or modes"
Standard keyboard in English, same keyboard different display when playing Quake, showing the controls.
The possibilities of this are endless. So many times I have played video games and forgotten the controls, had difficulty remembering keyboard shortcuts, wanted improved functionality and quick (and obvious) one key commands (I have this to some extent with my MS natural keyboard but you need to remember each button's function). This keyboard can also be sold internationally as it incorporates very easily all the different setups and arrangements of keys and characters, i.e. the Russian or Greek alphabets. It's a simple aid and solution to common key memorization problems, customization and adaptability and it looks incredibly cool. I want one.
Images © 1995–2005 Art. Lebedev Studio
Images © 1995–2005 Art. Lebedev Studio
Labels: Technical
Bug in Gmail's Rich Text editor
Saturday, July 09, 2005
I was happening to enjoy writing a lovely formatted email one evening and I decided I'd like to include a quote from a website at the end of the email. Gmail's rich text editor is fantastic at interpreting html from the clipboard and it implements all formatting, URLs, images and code. I love this feature and it is extremely handy. In this case I was copying a block of text, however mid sentence there was a small image that was a useful link for the website but was not required in the email. The text-editor added it as expected and I motioned to remove it. However, it wasn't just your standard image linked to web page because upon clicking to delete the icon it proceeded to load the page it linked to... within the rich text editor. The code for the image looked something like this:
This page that loaded replaced my carefully worded email much to my annoyance yet I grew excited at the prospect of being able to send web pages to friends with ease. My mind was traveling along the lines of,
"If I could exploit this bug, I could create a simple PHP script, render some code for the desired URL and then get the full web page up in the editor which I can then send"
Although these plans were somewhat thwarted when I noticed the SEND and save draft buttons had become completely defunct after rendering the url's html. I've given up re-writing the original email because I'm tired.I should also point out that this bug only occurs in firefox. Make of this what you will. Although I do fear it could open up some security issues such that the loading of malicious html within gmail could pose a serious threat.
<a href=" url"
onclick="{ window.location.href='url that loads'; return false; }"
onmouseover="status='url'; return true;"
onmouseout="status=''; return true;">
<img style="width: 402px; height: 378px;" src="image url" border="0">
</a>
This page that loaded replaced my carefully worded email much to my annoyance yet I grew excited at the prospect of being able to send web pages to friends with ease. My mind was traveling along the lines of,
"If I could exploit this bug, I could create a simple PHP script, render some code for the desired URL and then get the full web page up in the editor which I can then send"
Although these plans were somewhat thwarted when I noticed the SEND and save draft buttons had become completely defunct after rendering the url's html. I've given up re-writing the original email because I'm tired.I should also point out that this bug only occurs in firefox. Make of this what you will. Although I do fear it could open up some security issues such that the loading of malicious html within gmail could pose a serious threat.
Labels: Technical
Invision Power Board and SDK
Monday, July 04, 2005
The trivial being forums that I and my co-web host run use the "Invision Power Board". It has served us well and now accommodates over 50,000 posts and 1200 members. An aim for all of my websites is to make them community orientated. This has been fairly difficult with the minimal IPB-site integration I was capable of. However, now I have discovered IPB SDK.
I can now use the extensive and growing forums as the central hub to multiple user services, new sites and much much more. Additionally it is free and open source! I have already began incorporating it into my current sites, primarily my Evangelion Live Action site which I have recently redesigned. This new discovery will greatly enhance my future sites and provide highly valuable user interaction and member only sections.
As aforementioned, I decided to redesign the live action website. I really despised the old design, it looked hideous, consumed bandwidth and it was messy, incredibly messy, not only the look but the code running it. I have since completely revamped the site basing it around IPB SDK and a CSS style sheet to replace all the annoying font tags. This is version 4.0 of the site and people have been querying as to what v1-v3 looked like. I only have memories of them myself and I feel sometimes I would like to just glance at them again, for old times sake or something. So, if I ever change the current design (v4), here's an archived picture version of how it looks now:
IPB SDK is a library of PHP functions, which will help you develop advanced applications on your site. Integration between your forum and site is essential in the websites of today. IPB already has a great member system, why re-write another one if you can use one member database for both?
I can now use the extensive and growing forums as the central hub to multiple user services, new sites and much much more. Additionally it is free and open source! I have already began incorporating it into my current sites, primarily my Evangelion Live Action site which I have recently redesigned. This new discovery will greatly enhance my future sites and provide highly valuable user interaction and member only sections.
As aforementioned, I decided to redesign the live action website. I really despised the old design, it looked hideous, consumed bandwidth and it was messy, incredibly messy, not only the look but the code running it. I have since completely revamped the site basing it around IPB SDK and a CSS style sheet to replace all the annoying font tags. This is version 4.0 of the site and people have been querying as to what v1-v3 looked like. I only have memories of them myself and I feel sometimes I would like to just glance at them again, for old times sake or something. So, if I ever change the current design (v4), here's an archived picture version of how it looks now:
Video playback in google video
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Well, today I was treated with the pleasant surprise of google video adding fully functional video playing support to their google video service. People have gradually been uploading their videos to google and various television stations have submitted their shows with search able closed captions. Until now this was the extent of the video service, you could see when a show aired, search its script, seen when new shows were going to air and see a simple screen shot taken so far in. All this being pretty useless to someone living in the United Kingdom (although still very cool, I hope for some BBC integration soon). Now however, google video provides video. Google results that have a playable video show up with a little play icon next to them. Upon opening the page there are options to start the video from various 30 second increments, upon clicking, the video plays right there and then in the browser. Now, most in browser video players are fairly bulky, consume considerable resources, load the browser with unneeded hindrances, provide annoying applet controls and require buffering times. However, google video is based upon the popular and utterly fantastic open source "videolan player" open source setup. VLC generally plays all standard codecs with ease and has highly functional streaming options, subtitles, multiple video and audio stream capabilities and much much more (including the option to view a video in ASCII). This google video viewer loads seamlessly, has no nasty button interfaces, does not load the browser or cause over the top cpu usage and has a once click full-screen option (i.e. click the video for fullscreen). The video requires very little buffering time and is of suitable quality and resolution for fullscreen and television playback. I really do love it and I have been playing for the last hour or so.
Now all this needs is some content, currently the majority of videos are not playable, a nice option would be to search for playable videos only. As this resource grows it should become extremely valuable. Currently only a few providers such as gamespot and greenpeace have running videos on the search, but as more and more videos appear, the ability to search video descriptions and closed captions combined with the 30 second / full video playback options will take precedence over other current Internet services.
Here are some links:
http://video.google.com/video_about.html
Playstation 3 trailers such as Killzone
Google Blog Entry
"The clips play right in the page using the brand new Google Video Viewer, which was created by our engineer Aaron Lee using code from the open source Videolan project. It works great in both Firefox and IE, and we've designed it not to fight with any other video plugins you might have. We're releasing the Windows version first, with Mac coming soon."
Now all this needs is some content, currently the majority of videos are not playable, a nice option would be to search for playable videos only. As this resource grows it should become extremely valuable. Currently only a few providers such as gamespot and greenpeace have running videos on the search, but as more and more videos appear, the ability to search video descriptions and closed captions combined with the 30 second / full video playback options will take precedence over other current Internet services.
"A feature we're especially pleased with is search within a video, which means you will get a result pointing to the precise spot in the video that matches your query. Try looking for sergey brin and you'll see what I mean. There are even more people getting creative with video here. So have fun watching, or shoot your own videos - and keep sending them in!"
Here are some links:
http://video.google.com/video_about.html
Playstation 3 trailers such as Killzone
Google Blog Entry
"Our mission is to organize the world's information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day. Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows."
Labels: Technical
Helpful Software and Firefox Setup
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
I recently read an interesting SH/SC topic over at Something Awful concerning helpful programs and neat windows hacks, etc... . Incidentally, I now have some lovely and customizable programs on my desktop that I am now going to share.1. Rainlender - A program providing a fully functional, skin-able calendar on your desktop
2. Rainmeter - Made by "Rain" again, this program monitors your system and displays outputs on your desktop. E.g. HDD space, memory, cpu temperature, weather, net stats
3. CCleaner - "Crap Cleaner", cleans up mru lists, temp files and lots of unused leftovers from other programs. Lots of people were reporting deletion upwards of 4Gb, personally it only deleted 250mb on my system, mainly firefox temp files.
Additionally, something I have had for a long time and gradually added to:
I have some very cool quick search firefox bookmarks I made myself, i.e. I type "what giraffe" and it will load the page corresponding to Giraffes on www.answers.com. Similarly, "define giraffe" gives the google definition, "google giraffe" searches google, img - images, wiki - wikipedia, play - play.com product search, amg - allmusic guide, word - dictionary lookup, thes - thesaurus lookup. There are lots more but these are the ones I use most. Combine these features with my extensions: Gmail Email notifier, Adblock and extensive filter list of all major ad providers, BlogThis right click extension, Download Sort that automatically puts filetypes in specified folders without the annoying browse dialogue appearing all the time, Add Bookmark Here lets me quickly and easily organise favourites and finally Greasemonkey that lets me edit any site however I choose using javascript – i.e. allmusic.com no longer has annoying javascript links and aintitcool.com doesn't have a shitty design. Oh I also have live RSS feed bookmarks from the BBC and other news sources.
Labels: Technical
- foobar2000
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- A timely electronics rant
- Cursed Week for British Sport
- My New Flat in St Albans
- Amateur Alumni Adventures
- Now for the academics - My marks
- The end of an era
- Music Vision
- My Own Personal Appendectomy
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