Microsoft Touch Mouse and The Art of Touch | Giveaway

Posted on December 6, 2011August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

Microsoft has a new line of TouchMouse. They have a campaign to cooinside with it called the Art of Touch and have invited a few artists to participate and more to drive interest with free shwag! Basically that boils down to me having a [amazon_link id=”B004HYGU18″ target=”_blank” ]Microsoft Touch Mouse[/amazon_link] to give away! So go play with the app and link a comment to your art. I’ll randomly select someone for the award as a christmas present! Be sure to comment with an email address you’ll reply to.

[amazon_image id=”B004HYGU18″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Microsoft Touch Mouse[/amazon_image]

I played with the drawing app, and while it’s not totally generative, it does add a sense of randomness to it. It’s fun in that it tried to incorporate a few different styles of artists, including one of my favorites, Erik Natzke. Here’s what Erik had to say:

Along with the custom brush that I designed for them, there are an assortment of brush styles they’ve designed to help hone in on your artistic flair that you can share, print & even compete to win some prizes. The link below will allow you to vote on the one I just made. I’m curious what other people will make.

And here’s what I came up with in a couple minutes:

Comment below with a link to your art to be entered to win a new [amazon_link id=”B004HYGU18″ target=”_blank” ]Microsoft Touch Mouse[/amazon_link] this Christmas.

Video Player 4 introduces interactive playlists, social sharing and more

Posted on December 22, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

I’ve been busy hardening and improving my video player lately and had so many updates for it I decided to upload it to activeden as a new file altogether. After some final bug fixes and testing it’s been approved for sale. I think it’s a huge improvement over the last video player. The video playing part is mainly the same (with a few small adjustments for better usability), but I’ve added tons to this update. It’s online at activeden for live preview and purchase.

An extensively customizable yet simple video player. Create and manage play lists for you video delivery as well as allow viewers to share and socially bookmark the video. Integrate the video into your user experience with javascript integration as well as Google Analytics tracking on the video interaction! Control functionality, layout and colors of the player easily! Plus don’t sweat the embed codes – an embed code generator included!

Check out the legend graphic for some views of the player and the different panes. There is the full video view, the playlist, share and detail panes. You can also view them all in fullscreen mode.

This new player has the following updates:

Includes an embed script generator built specifically for this video player! Embed script generator with a Live Preview!
Use an external xml playlist or set playlist values in flashvars settings. (No need for xml if you don’t want it)
Social Bookmarking with facebook, twitter, delicious, google buzz & linkedin
Send emails through the player to share the video with friends
Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses your analytics account on a per video setting in flashvars.
All colors fully customizable in flashvars or xml
Display video title and description – html content (may contain links) in the detail pane.
Video controls also in context menu (right-click menu)
Loop the video once, twice however many times you wish and even infinitely!
Disable tooltips completely if you wish
Keyboard shortcut integration! Press the space bar to pause/play the video just like in most video playback programs.
Volume setting cached across sessions for a better user experience
Double click video for fullscreen

As well as all that made version 3 video player great as well:

Supports flv, f4v and any container format using H.264: mp4, m4a, mov, mp4v, 3GP, 3G2.
All images and video loaded externally
Run this player without additional files, just pass in the flv path.
Supports most image file types: jpg, gif, png.
Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses your analytics account on a per video setting in flashvars.
Load any dimension video. Completely resizable
Set player width and height
Set video width and height
Full screen capabilities
All colors fully customizable
Use a preview/thumbnail image.
Auto play option
Auto load option – in case you had a bunch of video on one page you wouldn’t want them all to auto load.
Video scale/stretching options: none, exact, uniform, fill.
Javascript callback functions for loading video and finishing video playback.
Show/hide a big play button over the video option
Show/hide “vcr” video player controls or have them auto-hide
Advanced volume controls, click to mute or drag to desired volume. Volume fades rather than cuts.
Support for a logo
Controls auto-hide
Time code display in current time or elapsed time. click to toggle
Tooltips for controls
Send video files to player dynamically with javascript integration (with an html link on a page send a video to play)
Replay video after complete
Progressive play and load displays. Watch as the video loads and see the scrub bar update as you watch.
Scrub bar is interactive click and drag. Tooltip to display hovered time.
Animated play controls.
Buttons states & tooltips.
All player graphics are vector shapes and very small in size.
Fully rearrange player controls
Option to disable fullscreen
Display video title and description – html content (may contain links)

Here’s a screenshot of the embed code generator:

Style vs Design

Posted on December 10, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

So what’s the difference between design and style?

I’ve had to explain that to quite a few clients that think all they need is a good looking website and they will make millions. It has to work and the design has to (subconsciously) show users how it works and it’s a perk if it looks good (style).

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and about what a web designer should focus on. Is it all about functionality of a site and making everything “work” or is it all about making it look “pretty” and fresh. Facetious I know, obviously it sits happily in between the two somewhere. But where is the question. I love reading articles and stumbled on this (apparently 2005) gem for the first time recently: Jeffrey Zeldman’s Style vs Design. Don’t ask me how I haven’t come across it before, but it’s awesome and it hit the nail on the head for me so I thought I’d share.

Web designers need to not only make a site work, but make it appealing to the intended audience. What looks good on a website for one audience won’t necessarily apply to another.

The web used to look like a phone book. Now much of it looks like a design portfolio. In fact, it looks like the design portfolio of 20 well-known designers, whose style gets copied again and again by young designers who consider themselves disciples.
…
I worry because young designers who confuse style with design are learning to copy their heroes’ technical tricks and stylistic flourishes, but not necessarily learning to communicate in this medium.

It is cool to make a new effects and transitions with css3 and the like, but let’s not add these styles to a design that doesn’t call for them. We should ask each client/project what their needs and audience is and work on solving that problem aesthetically for that situation.

circlecube Relaunch

Posted on December 1, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

Not just a redesign but a whole new site and location! After having built loads of sites for clients/friends I kept learning things I wanted to employ on my own site, but the cobblers kids are always barefoot right? I kept implementing new things and knew that they were making my clients lives easier and I wanted it easier as well.

I’d already updated my logo a number of times since my last redesign and I wasn’t happy with how my collection of sites all looked different and required repetitive work to maintain. Well, I did some sketches and committed to working on it just a few minutes a day. I really work best as I visually think through a design so sketching is always the first step in my designs. After I nailed down the basic elements and concepts I needed in the site through sketches I installed a new wordpress site, the thematic framework and then got started on a child theme. I really surprised myself and in a mere couple weeks I had a short list of things to do before I could “flip the switch”. The hardest part by far was trying to do 301 redirects from all the old posts which lived on either my blog or portfolio sub-domains. But thanks to my friend we were able to iron that out and I learned more than I ever wanted to know about mod rewrites and such. I was able to combine my blog and portfolio and my home page all into one site. I always felt weird pushing friends/potential clients and everyone else to my blog or my landing page or portfolio… but now they can all simply go to the same place!

My goal was to enable all content to be updated in the back-end, I didn’t want any content in the theme. And I didn’t want to have to redo the css or layout to move something from the header to the footer or sidebar for example. I placed a lot of content in widgets and a few pages that were wholly widget areas. I also needed a portfolio section that displayed a little gallery of images and possibly flash content automatically. It needed to be easy if I were going to ever update the portfolio, so I used custom post types and custom fields to attach images and other data to each portfolio item. Then one of my favorite pages is the social page, it’s just a collection of my social feeds all displayed neatly in one place.

While I’d love to release the theme for everyone, I cheated and used quite a few plug-ins to accomplish my designs so the theme itself doesn’t include all the functionality and I’m pretty sure it’s bad for to require plug-ins and set up to get a theme functional, but if you’re interested, let me know.

As usually happens though, I learned some more tricks as I built this site. So I have a list of things I’m ready to write and share about on the blog: custom post types, custom taxonomies, thematic customizations, css tricks, fancybox, custom fields, jquery, widgets, htaccess, importing/exporting wordpress, new favorite plug-ins and more… So be excited!

My only regret so far is the lack of texture on the site so I may come back and apply slight noise to the site background to make it more tangible. But I also like the clean look. Well, to see snapshots of the site I added the circlecube redesign to the portfolio section of this site (cheesy to include my own site in my portfolio? yep, but I’m excited to use the feature and I always retrospectively wish I’d documented site updates).

Still, there may be a few things that don’t fully connect, so please, please let me know if you see anything broken or experience a broken link. But stay tuned for some posts since I’m not spending time building the site I’ll put a little time each day into putting content on the site again.

Circelcube Video Player 3.0 Stock Flash Video Player at ActiveDen

Posted on October 12, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

My latest stock flash video player of mine was just added to the database of stock flash items at activeDen. Go check it out and if you like it, download it for use in your projects! I’ve got lots in it for you. I’m using the principles I used as the architect for the video player for stomperNet and then at cornerstone media group in this decked out video player. Go get circlecube’s awesome stock flash video player.

An extensively customizable yet simple video player. Integrate the video into your user experience with javascript integration as well as Google Analytics tracking on the video interaction! Control functionality, layout and colors of the player easily! Plus don’t sweat the embed codes – an embed code generator included!

Let your video be the focus!

Features

Includes an embed script generator! With options for swfobject implementation or simple valid html object tags (or both)!
Embed generator makes setting your settings easy with a Live Preview!
Supports flv, f4v and any container format using H.264: mp4, m4a, mov, mp4v, 3GP, 3G2.
All images and video loaded externally
Run this player without additional files, just pass in the flv path and thumbnail path.
Supports most image file types: jpg, gif, png.
Google Analytics Integration (event tracking) – Uses on page analytics account or a specified account on a per video setting in flashvars.
Load any dimension video. Completely resizable
Set player width and height
Set video width and height
Full screen capabilities
All colors fully customizable in flashvars
Use a preview/thumbnail image.
Auto play option
Auto load option – in case you had a bunch of video on one page you wouldn’t want them all to auto load.
Supports Window Mode options. window, transparent, opaque
Video scale/stretching options: none, exact, uniform, fill.
Javascript callback functions for loading video and finishing video playback.
Show a big play button over the video
Show/hide “vcr” video player controls
Advanced volume controls, click to mute or drag to desired volume. Volume fades rather than cuts.
Support for a logo
Controls auto-hide
60k file size
Time code display in current time or elapsed time. click to toggle
Tooltips for controls
Send video files to player dynamically (with an html link on a page send a video to play)
Replay video after complete
Progressive play and load displays. Watch as the video loads and see the scrub bar update as you watch.
Scrub bar is interactive click and drag. Tooltip to display hovered time.
Animated play controls.
Buttons states & tooltips.

All player graphics are vector shapes and very small in size.
Fully rearrange player controls
Option to disable fullscreen
Display video title and description – html content (may contain links)
Video controls also in context menu

Javascript to show/hide elements update with jQuery

Posted on October 1, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

I never expected it, but one of the most popular (most commented) posts on this blog is a javascript post from about 3 years ago. I was showing how to hide and show elements on a web page with some simple javascript using getElementById and altering the display or visibility attributes of the element. It still works – although I hear every once in a while that certain browsers have issues with is sometimes, but the truth is I haven’t used this code almost since I wrote it. I have converted to jQuery! And it is much easier to code, easier to read and even nicer to browsers. So I’m writing this update post to proclaim the antiquity (3 years on the internet is a long time) of getElementById and the benefits of jQuery!

There isn’t much more to say about it really. I hope you’ve heard of jquery and if not, please go check it out it’s pretty easy to pick up! One thing I will mention is the potential bloat to having to load a javascript library. But most of my projects lately have included jQuery because I’ve been using it much more than just showing and hiding elements. But remember our friend cache? Remember that if you’re using jQuery on a whole site, the user only loads it once, and if you load it from the google hosted version of jQuery they likely will already have the script in their cache. The current version is hosted at http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js, so just link to that script on your page and you’re free to throw in any jquery onto your page.

Well, check out the code; I hope it’s pretty self explanatory and you can see it in action. I always have to see things work to understand them and learn from them.

Javascript

[cc lang=”javascript”]
$(document).ready(function() {

$(‘.hide_it’).click(function(){ $(‘.to_hide’).hide(); });

$(“.show_it”).click(function () { $(“.to_show”).show(“slow”); });

$(“#toggle_it”).click(function () { $(“.to_toggle”).toggle(); });

$(‘.fade_it’).click(function() { $(“.to_fade”).fadeTo(“slow”,0); });

$(‘.fade_out’).click(function() { $(“.to_fade_out”).fadeOut(); });

$(‘.reset_all’).click(function() {
$(‘.to_hide’).show();
$(“.to_show”).hide();
$(“.to_toggle”).show();
$(“.to_fade”).fadeTo(“slow”,100);
$(“.to_fade_out”).fadeIn();
});
});
[/cc]

HTML Code

see it in action on the demo page
[cc lang=”html”]

testing hide js div

hide it

testing the toggle functionality of jQuery

testing fade out. you’ll notice that this is set to display:none once the fade is complete.

fade out

testing fade to 0. this fades out just as fadeOut, but it does no make the display none, so the page layout isn’t modified, just the visibility of this element.

fade it

[/cc]

Notice that with jQuery we can use a class or an id as a selector. This is great because you can show a whole slew of elements that share the same class at once. Remember that you can only have one id on a page at once since it must be unique.

See the demo page for working examples.

And don’t forget to read up on the api for jQuery here jQuery hide, jQuery show, jQuery toggle, jQuery fadeOut, jQuery fadeIn, jQuery fadeTo.

Why I {heart} Flash and a Smart Point for Adobe

Posted on May 13, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

Checking out an interesting article about Diaspora (back the project and the cause if you can) on NYTimes and then I noticed the words adobe and Apple in the same space. The ad reads “We Love Apple” and is followed by the Adobe logo. What a joke I thought, it takes a lot of gumption for Adobe to say they love Apple right now, but I’m sure they really do. Despite all the negative things Apple has been doing and saying towards Flash and Adobe in general. I admit I’m biased, but…

I {heart} flash

I would rather stop using Apple than stop using Adobe. I agree with the openness and empowering software that Adobe provides. True, it’s expensive and true it’s not perfect, but I’ve found Adobe to be a great company that cares about the web and progress. During the whole Flash/iPhone debate I’ve been bothered by the lack of response from Adobe. It was nice that they were above the name calling and flat out lying that Steve Jobs and Apple have turned to, but to be honest- a little disheartening that they had nothing to say. Then the ‘Thoughts on Flash’ came out and I was amazed at the silence from Adobe. This is the perfect and genius response to the unprofessional lashes from Apple. From the 3.3.1 iPhone developer clause to the sheer CLOSEDness of Apple in general. I used to be a big fan of Apple because they made a great product. Perhaps I gave them a little boost because who doesn’t like an underdog. But they have proven to me at least to be more closed and more evil than even Microsoft when they packaged IE with their OS. (Although Apple has done that too with Safari and iTunes, but I digress).

What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.

I give props to Adobe. They were surely disturbed when Apple declared war on flash, but rather than stooping to the level of Steve Jobs, they thought it out and made an honorable move. I know it’s not the end, but if things continue a check-mate/game-point-match may be in order by the end of the decade…

Learn more at adobe. We love choice and the Truth about Flash.

Apple and Flash and HTML5 | Flash not dead

Posted on March 25, 2010August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

The main reason I decided to write this was foxtrot:

The “community” is bringing out so-called enemies of flash. But I think the web is what it is today to a great part because of flash. I hope apple will one day open up and actually make the best web experience possible by putting flash on the iProducts (but seriously doubt Mr Jobs will ever come to his senses). The way I see it, blocking flash on apple products is a business decision (as flash would compete with the cash flow of the app store) cloaked in a technical and sorry excuse and passing the blame onto the very company (Adobe) which has repeatedly tried to work with mac to achieve improvements.

HTML5 killing flash? Flash not dead!

I could write paragraphs about it, I for one am very excited about the new possibilities with html5 and css3 and even cs5! I could go on but I’ll just reference some of the best articles I’ve seen:
//links links links

Tutorial to Create a Responsive Image Scroller in ActionScript 3.0

Posted on August 26, 2009August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

I’ve written a tutorial which is published over at flash.tutsplus. This tutorial demonstrates how to create a horizontally scrolling image viewer and covers xml parsing, loading and resizing external images, and creating intuitive and responsive scrolling!

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”dynamic” fversion=”9.0.0″ movie=”https://circlecube.com/circlecube/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2009/07/image-scroller-example.swf” width=”550″ height=”137″ targetclass=”flashmovie”]

[/kml_flashembed]

So check out the Tutorial to Create a Responsive Image Scroller in ActionScript 3.0 over at flash.tutsplus.com!

You’ll find full source code available for download as well as the demo files and step by step milestones all throughout the tutorial.

Stock Flash Site, Introducing 'BuyStockFlash.com'

Posted on June 13, 2009August 29, 2014 by Evan Mullins

Buy Stock Flash

Sell & Buy Flash
Buy or Sell, Start Now –
Stock Flash – Royalty Free Stock Flash effects, Video, Audio

The New Kid on the block… it’s good to see some competition coming to the stock flash world. BuyStockFlash is revving it up. They are positioned to provide a place where flash-ers can upload components, templates, utilities, flv & mp3 players, logos & icons and any other flash elements to sell and earn at least 50% from the proceeds. I haven’t yet uploaded any files, but will once I have some time to do so. They also have a pretty rewarding affiliate program! They let the site speak for itself, displaying a gallery of available files on the homepage. The site just started last fall, is based in Prauge and since they have expanded to become buystocknetwork, including a site for flash, design templates, and sound files!

While the content is still somewhat bare, I’ve seen a few items that are top shelf! I see a lot of potential in this site! Good luck to them and to you, enjoy BuyStockFlash!

Tag: review