From mark at novemberborn.net Mon Apr 16 19:29:31 2007
From: mark at novemberborn.net (Mark Wubben)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:29:31 +0200
Subject: [sIFR3-dev] Progress
Message-ID: <1E4E0617-FC67-4915-89CA-25E468B3D39A@novemberborn.net>
Hey all,
Life has been a bit hectic lately, with university projects and exams
and traveling cross-small-country for work and family. Hopefully the
next couple of months will be less hectic, so I can work on sIFR
again. I did make some changes last week (which still require
documentation?) and these can be found in r241:
* More consistent handling of elements which are not rendered by the
browser. In other words, they or an ancestor have display: none; set.
These elements cannot be replaced.
* Fixed a bug in the content parsing code, which broke when replacing
elements like ``
* Added really cool support for rewriting the text *inside* the Flash
movies. For example you can now do:
sIFR.callbacks['h1'][0].write('Hello!');
sIFR.callbacks[2].write('Third sIFR element on the page');
The API for this has not stabilized yet, but it opens up quite a
few advanced use cases.
The plan for the coming period is to fix all outstanding bugs, and
then release the second beta. The documentation is going to see some
improvement for this release as well. I also want to heavily push it
as the successor to sIFR 2, it will have so many improvements and
even some bug fixes that sIFR 2 just isn't going to be worth using
anymore. This does pose a slight problem in that I'll be pushing
people to use beta software, but with the time between releases I'm
pretty confident the code is stable.
After this beta I'll be adding support for font and window resizing.
This is going to be an experimental feature, in that it will be
disabled by default. The code will rely on very specific browser
behaviour and is thus somewhat brittle. Having it disabled by default
should serve to make people aware of this. So, that'll be the third
beta, followed by a release candidate with any necessary bug fixes
and also speed improvements. And after that, a final release!
I'm not giving out timetables for the releases. I've always been
careful with this, which has proven to be a good thing. Life,
university and work can be unpredictable at times.
That's all for now, thanks!
--
Mark
From mark at novemberborn.net Mon Apr 16 19:29:57 2007
From: mark at novemberborn.net (Mark Wubben)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:29:57 +0200
Subject: [sIFR3-dev] London, April 18th - 19th
Message-ID: <816C7FA5-D76A-44D2-81FF-71C9C17DD7B4@novemberborn.net>
Hi,
Wednesday the 18th I'll be in London for the Future of Web Design
conference. I'm leaving Thursday afternoon already, so I'm afraid I
won't have much time to meet with people outside of the conference.
Nonetheless, if you're in town as well shoot me an e-mail and we'll
try to work something out.
Cheers!
--
Mark
From davebytes at comcast.net Tue Apr 17 22:37:52 2007
From: davebytes at comcast.net (David Chait)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:37:52 -0400
Subject: [sIFR3-dev] Progress
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <46254C40.4090702@comcast.net>
Sounds very cool. Your work is obviously appreciated by many.
Can I make two suggestions?
1. Some of the stuff sounds very cool, but yes also sounds experimental
and very 'advanced' usage that could be in a v3.1 release. Definitely
keep the focus on existing feature areas, and get 3.0 out and people
starting to use it, and get feedback on what else is most useful to
expand on (and play with next feature enhancements where you are
building an installed base of 3.0 users...).
2. I'd >really< like to see some investment outside the core code. I
agree with your push to show that S3 is the successor to S2 -- but I
don't think that'll be called into question. Work on docs is also
cool. But I'd like to see work on font tools, as fonts are the key to
the system, and a really good automated TT->font builder (commandline
for win/lin/osx is fine by me, take a text file with characters, or a
param to say all chars) could make or break S3 'conversion' -- given
that S2 fonts don't work at all in S3. Thoughts?
Obviously, I'm still working (in bits and pieces) on my CG-FlashyTitles
v3 plugin for WordPress, have some people testing it out with an older
S3 release now. Hoping when you get your next stable release out the
door that I can find cycles to focus on further enhancements to the
administrative UI. I might also look into whether it can be repurposed
as a general library for other systems.
-d
> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:29:31 +0200
> From: Mark Wubben
> Subject: [sIFR3-dev] Progress
> To: sIFR List
> Message-ID: <1E4E0617-FC67-4915-89CA-25E468B3D39A at novemberborn.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes;
> format=flowed
>
> Hey all,
>
> Life has been a bit hectic lately, with university projects and exams
> and traveling cross-small-country for work and family. Hopefully the
> next couple of months will be less hectic, so I can work on sIFR
> again. I did make some changes last week (which still require
> documentation?) and these can be found in r241:
>
> * More consistent handling of elements which are not rendered by the
> browser. In other words, they or an ancestor have display: none; set.
> These elements cannot be replaced.
>
> * Fixed a bug in the content parsing code, which broke when replacing
> elements like ``
>
> * Added really cool support for rewriting the text *inside* the Flash
> movies. For example you can now do:
>
> sIFR.callbacks['h1'][0].write('Hello!');
> sIFR.callbacks[2].write('Third sIFR element on the page');
>
> The API for this has not stabilized yet, but it opens up quite a
> few advanced use cases.
>
> The plan for the coming period is to fix all outstanding bugs, and
> then release the second beta. The documentation is going to see some
> improvement for this release as well. I also want to heavily push it
> as the successor to sIFR 2, it will have so many improvements and
> even some bug fixes that sIFR 2 just isn't going to be worth using
> anymore. This does pose a slight problem in that I'll be pushing
> people to use beta software, but with the time between releases I'm
> pretty confident the code is stable.
>
> After this beta I'll be adding support for font and window resizing.
> This is going to be an experimental feature, in that it will be
> disabled by default. The code will rely on very specific browser
> behaviour and is thus somewhat brittle. Having it disabled by default
> should serve to make people aware of this. So, that'll be the third
> beta, followed by a release candidate with any necessary bug fixes
> and also speed improvements. And after that, a final release!
>
> I'm not giving out timetables for the releases. I've always been
> careful with this, which has proven to be a good thing. Life,
> university and work can be unpredictable at times.
>
> That's all for now, thanks!
>
> --
> Mark
From angus at anguspratt.ca Wed Apr 18 12:28:03 2007
From: angus at anguspratt.ca (Angus Pratt)
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 05:28:03 -0700
Subject: [sIFR3-dev] sIFR 3 and Drupal
Message-ID: <46260ED3.5060406@anguspratt.ca>
I was implementing sIFR2 in a Drupal installation when I ran across your
work with 3. It does just what I need but because it it only beta at
this point no Drupal developer wants to move the sIFR module forward...
Get the existing features solid give us a release candidate... Then do
the "nice to have" in a 3.1.
--
*Angus Pratt
*
*Pratt Web Services logo* Poet, Consultant, Web Designer
http://anguspratt.ca
(604)351-6747
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From mark at novemberborn.net Thu Apr 19 14:06:40 2007
From: mark at novemberborn.net (Mark Wubben)
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:06:40 +0100
Subject: [sIFR3-dev] Progress
In-Reply-To: <46254C40.4090702@comcast.net>
References:
<46254C40.4090702@comcast.net>
Message-ID:
On Apr 17, 2007, at 11:37 PM, David Chait wrote:
> 1. Some of the stuff sounds very cool, but yes also sounds
> experimental
> and very 'advanced' usage that could be in a v3.1 release.
My thoughts played with that, and I'm happy you think so as well.
That'd be definitely no font resizing in 3.0. I do want to have a
look at adding some extra effects, which shouldn't be too hard. I
also want to handle window resizing, which isn't as experimental as
font resizing.
> 2. I'd >really< like to see some investment outside the core code. I
> agree with your push to show that S3 is the successor to S2 -- but I
> don't think that'll be called into question. Work on docs is also
> cool. But I'd like to see work on font tools, as fonts are the key to
> the system, and a really good automated TT->font builder (commandline
> for win/lin/osx is fine by me, take a text file with characters, or a
> param to say all chars) could make or break S3 'conversion' -- given
> that S2 fonts don't work at all in S3. Thoughts?
I'm with you. Something I did not allude to earlier is that I'm
planning debug code which should help with deploying sIFR. Think
about verifying the locations of the Flash movies and alerting users
to elements which cannot be replaced because they are not rendered. A
command-line tool to generate sIFR 3 movies shouldn't be too hard I
hope. There's a change in how typefaces are stored inside the Flash
movies though, which might cause some trouble. Because of this I
don't think there can be a convertor.
> Obviously, I'm still working (in bits and pieces) on my CG-
> FlashyTitles
> v3 plugin for WordPress, have some people testing it out with an older
> S3 release now. Hoping when you get your next stable release out the
> door that I can find cycles to focus on further enhancements to the
> administrative UI. I might also look into whether it can be
> repurposed
> as a general library for other systems.
Sounds great!
--
Mark