Software, Fitness, and Gaming – Jesse Warden

Blog

  • Jakob Nielsen on Flash Scrollbars

    I got this story last week from her majesty, and got a lot out of this article. Best quote (last sentence is the key):

    The main guideline for a scrollbar’s look-and-feel is simple: Use your platform’s standard scrollbar, which is what users know and expect. When designing for Windows, use Microsoft’s widgets. When designing for Mac, use Apple’s. And if you’re using Flash, use the standard built-in GUI components.

    That implies to me that Jakob Nielsen is recommending to use the v2 component framework. It’s really nice to see Jakob helping us Flash designer & developers, specifically. Thanks, J!

    Patrick and I had a 2 millisecond “negotiation” about who would blog this, but DigitalMediaMinute beat us both…

    Scrolling & Scrollbars

  • Flash Player 8 Beta: Please Test It

    Flash Player 8 Beta

    Like 2 years before, all you need to do is:

    • go to sites that have Flash and see if they still work and look like you expect
    • test on any Flash applications you know and make sure they are the same as above
    • install on a test target platform that you can install beta software on to ensure you have no installation issues
    • test the new update mechanism

    It comes with an uninstaller so you can easily uninstall when your done. The new update mechanism appears to be based off of the way Central installs products… sort of, so while it’s seamless and ubiqitous everywhere Flash Player 6.0.65.0 or above is installed, it’s a new way of doing things so it’s imperitive you test that, and give feedback and report bugs.

  • CaptivatePlayer v1.1

    *** Updated to 1.2 ***

    Updated my CaptivatePlayer to 1.1. New features:

    • added continous playback. Defaults to true so that if a movie finishes, the next one plays automatically without the user having to click.
    • added looping playback. Defaults to false, but if set to true, when the last movie is done, it’ll play the first one again. (for those with Kiosk needs)

    I think I squashed a volume bug as well, but not sure. Additionally, I removed the flashvar settings in the default index.html file I provide; people were getting confused, and rightly so, about having the XML file and the HTML both setting different values. Now, just the XML configures the player.

    The nested-menus, localization, and splash screen features are going to take awhile. I tried doing nested-menus, but my first attempt met with failure. I’ll get them in eventually in a future release, it’s just that the need for continous playback was constantly asked for so I figured I’d hurry up and release this version.

    CaptivatePlayer v1.1 – Article | Docs | v1.1 ZIP

  • VidiPost Test: Crazy Cow

    Testing the VidiPost service Graeme worked on (record video, publish to blog). Their signup process is a little tricky, some of the buttons on the service’s site itself are not very apparent nor obvious what they do, nor is the actual camera/mic settings brainless to setup… but man, how easy is that to just hit record, publish, copy paste some code and put on your blog? Wow… good job Graeme & team!