Over a year ago, I posted about ZDNet’s 10 Most Annoying Programs on the Internet, where Apple was ranked #2, forcing users to install Quicktime with each upgrade of iTunes and also pre-selecting that the user wanted to install Safari and Mobile.me onto their computers as well. I’m a strategic marketer, so I understand the logic behind it. More than half of the users probably just click “Continue” without reading what they’re installing. It’s the same guiding principle behind bundling installers with Yahoo! and Google browser toolbars. Read more
Development
ERA404 Relaunches ArthurAshe.org
Back in February of 2007, I worked with Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe to create the introduction and site tour for the Official Site of tennis legend, Arthur Ashe (“Honoring Ashe”). Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of designing/developing her personal photography site, a promotional video for Barack Obama, and other work. But this Spring, Ms. Moutoussamy-Ashe returned to request we redesign the complete ArthurAshe.org site (which was originally designed by Sean Lightner and the good folks at Merrill Lynch).
Take a look at the new site, here: www.arthurashe.org
And our 2007 press release: ERA404 Hired to Design Site for Tennis Legend, Arthur Ashe:
“ERA404’s team is young and energetic. They were good listeners and had the ability to grasp the needs of the client,” said Moutoussamy-Ashe. “I had a very pleasant experience.”
Flash Filter Hotspot Interference
I wasted almost an entire day this week attempting to figure out why a link started pulsing when activated by a mouse. The link, a 0% alpha “hotspot” or “rollbox” (as it’s sometimes called) movieclip (mouse enabled) with a dynamic textbox (mouse disabled), was listening for onRollOver and onRollOut mouse events. OnRollOver, the link was expected to switch indexes to the front, grow to 3x the original size and then ColorTransform to an active color. The index switch was updated immediately, and the scaleX/scaleY and ColorTransform was a timed action handled by Tweener. With the exception of the re-indexing, these tweens were triggered onRollOut as well, though in reverse. There are obviously a million other ways to handle this, and numerous tweening engines that could be used instead of Tweener, but this was the method I’d used in the past and was most comfortable with.
Upon testing, I found that most of the menu items worked fine, but some “pulsed” or flickered between growing and shrinking, as well as changing color sharply. Moving the mouse over the words while the tween was occurring sometimes seemed to thwart the issue. And some links seemed unaffected by the bug. Also, I noticed that when the link hit the onComplete method of the tween (meaning, it had finished growing to 300% and colorTransforming to the active state), the pulsing stopped.
Facebook announces Fanboxes
Facebook and site developers/promoters as well as those keen on social networking for their business/band were excited to learn of the launch of “fanboxes” to drive traffic directly to their Facebook professional service page. Now, people wishing to take advantage of their social network and drive traffic to become their fans have a much simpler/easier process for doing this. In the past, you had to say “Log-in to Facebook, search for [company name], and from the results look for the one that has our logo and says ‘professional service’ below it.” Next Monday, Facebook will remove the restrictions on adding usernames to Pages. But Wednesday, they’ve announced the Fanbox:
Over 8 million users become fans of Facebook Pages every day to connect with their favorite public figures and organizations and get updates directly in their streams. Now, users can connect with brands, musicians, celebrities, businesses, and more, whether they’re on or off Facebook.
Today, we’re excited to launch the Fan Box, a Facebook Connect-enabled social widget that Page owners can add to their websites to allow users to fan and view the accompanying Facebook Page stream. With the Fan Box, brands can bring content from their Facebook Page into their website and help convert website visitors into Facebook fans. Users can view the most recent posts from the Page, see a list of other fans (including their friends), and, most importantly, become a fan without leaving the site. Additionally, if a user visits the site and isn’t logged in to Facebook, the user can log in and become a fan directly inline as well.
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of putting together a tutorial to teach [d]online readers how to implement a Fanbox into their site. If this is something you might be interested in reading, please drop a few comments and I’d be happy to oblige. If there isn’t much interest, I’ll go to Coney Island instead. Ta!
PatchMatch
Now I did fairly decent at math in high school and college. Senior year of PNHS, I dropped out of calculus to start a TV show for my activity period, rather than carry the ones and distribute irrational numbers. Since then, I keep wondering what sort of amazing magic I could’ve learned had I actually sat through Pete Jarrod’s lectures. In my mind, calculus could teach me to build coral castles and geodesic domes.
Thanks for the link, Zé.Flash Indexing with External Resource Loading
From Google’s Webmaster Central:
We just added external resource loading to our Flash indexing capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it’s text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too, and associate it with the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.
This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external resources to appear in response to users’ queries. For example, this result currently comes up in response to the query [2002 VW Transporter 888]:
Flash File Uploader – Allow All Filetypes
A [d]online reader recently requested that the Flash File Uploader allow provision to upload all filetypes. And while I’d previously decided against such an option—due to security/malicious action issues, this was not the first time I received such a request. In fact, since the uploader was created a few years back, I’ve gotten dozens of requests for this feature. As such, I’ve decided that my disclaimer for downloading the uploader should adequately cover me from any litigation and wrote the feature into the latest version of the uploader.
For people wishing to just use the uploader without understanding the changes, simply add “all” as an item under the extensions flash variable in the swfobject embed code:
fo.addVariable("types", "video|text|pdf|audio|archive|office|image|all"); |
For those that wish to know the changes, the Flash loop that adds the array extensions to the “allowed” list also looks for the “all” option and changes a variable to true, if all filetypes are allowed. This is then passed to “upload.php” and skips the extensions test. Lastly, it’s passed to index.php to properly display the success message.
For your convenience, the link is the same as the last one.
Comments and feedback always welcome. Thanks again, Mike, for the assistance and to all the [d]online readers and commenters for your interest in the FFU and readership.
Flash File Uploader v3.2 (RAR)
Complete FLA, PHP and file structure source files with options for Custom Directories, File Name Rewrite (with bugfix), international characters and “Allow All”.
Complete FLA, PHP and file structure source files with options for Custom Directories, File Name Rewrite (with bugfix), international characters and “Allow All”.