martijndevisser.com

I’m looking for bèta testers for a new version of FLV Player. Interested? Read this post to find out more on how to participate.

I’m looking for feedback on how to improve FLV Player. FLV Player is rather simple at the moment, but I want to make some time to improve it, as a lot of people seem to use and enjoy it. Also, I have been provided with a license for mProjector by the kind folks at Screentime, so that also brings a Mac version into view. Thanks guys!

My personal wishlist…

• better detection of available metadata, so resize buttons always work (I found a way to do this using good ol’ Video object instead of the MediaPlayback component I’m currently using)
• add fullscreen option
• add multi language system for texts in UI
• add possiblity to cueue FLV’s and play in sequence
• add access to deblocking filters and video smoothing
• check if FLV file association still exists on startup (and restore automatically)
• remember last position on screen
• error reporting if RTMP stream is not found
• check for new version automatically
• Mac OS X version

Wishlist from visitors so far:

• Display time in HH:MM:SS:MS format
• Optionally display video only, without UI
• Frame-by-frame comparison shortcut
• Zoom-lock, remember zoom preference
• Pallette swatch to change background color (perhaps even a “load background image” option?)
• Always on top option
• Save current FLV frame as JPEG

I’ve just released a new version of FLV Player. This is only a minor update that solves a glitch involving temporary files not being deleted when quitting FLV Player.

So, nothing fancy here. Still no fullscreen option :-). On a sidenote, I’m interested in users who are having problems with the zoom buttons and the backward / forward buttons.

On the zoom buttons: these may not work properly if the FLV you are playing doesn’t contain correct metadata. If you have an FLV that doesn’t zoom, please send me the file, so I can check if that is indeed the case. Incorrect or missing metadata info may affect the playback buttons as well.

Please note, if you are having problems, first check if updating your FLV file with Buraks FLV Metadata Injector solves the problem (for example, Sorenson Squeeze does NOT seem to inject correct metadata!).

If this step doesn’t help, please let me know (click the ‘About’ link in the upper right corner for my email address). When emailing me, the following information helps me identify the problem:

• what version of FLV Player you are using
• what operating system you are using (Windows XP and 2000 are supported)
• where do you play the flv’s from? local disk, network, streaming?
• could i get the offending flv?

UPDATE - As of April 13, 2006, Microsoft has included this patch in the ‘critical updates’ section of WindowsUpdate, so the adoption rate of this patch is very likely to soar.

It is important to start updating your Flash embedding technique as Microsofts’ patch 912945, which limits initial interaction with ActiveX plugins in Internet Explorer 6, will be more and more common in the future and will be included by default in Internet Explorer 7.

Why does Microsoft release such a patch, as it only seems to hinder user interaction with well known (and trusted) plugins such as Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer and Sun Java? It all comes down to the EOLAS patent, a legal affair between Microsoft on one side and the University of California and its licensee Eolas Technologies Inc on the other.

The patent describes a technique to embed programs in hypertext documents, much like data is embedded in HTML. The patent also says that no user interaction is required to start using the embedded program. This is exactly what the <object> tag does and that’s what Eoloas sues Microsoft for.

The patch released by Microsoft alters the way Internet Explorer handles embedded programs such as Flash Player and Quicktime. What happens is that user interaction with the embedded object is switched ‘off’ by default. A gray border and an explanatory tooltip appear when the user hovers the mouse over the object. After clicking the object, interaction is enabled:

In the two screenshots above I have illustrated the effect of this change. The top image shows a Flash movie embedded in an HTML page. The next image shows the gray border and the tooltip that appear.

The remedy to this is simple: the patent says the object has to be embedded inline in the document. This means that embedding the document through an external (Java)script is a perfectly legal way to circumvent the claims made by University of California and Eolas Technologies Inc. When you embed plugins through an external script, Internet Explorer will not show the gray border and tooltip, but will enable the plugin immediately instead and let it behave like we’re used to.

I highly recommend using Geoff Stearns’ FlashObject SWFObject to embed your Flash content with in your HTML documents. It’s not just an Eolas-proof and XHTML valid method, it’s also a very elegant and clean solution, which I have been using for quite some time now and very much to my satisfaction. Geoff wrote a similar Javascript to embed Quicktime, as did Apple.

Join the BBC Climate change experiment today and have your idle CPU time used for something valuable: Climate modeling.

The BBC is organising the world’s largest ever climate experiment, and they need all the help they can get. Calculating Climate models is hard, so the more computers work on it, the faster the results will come in.

I think this is very cool and I have already signed up. There’s also a nice looking screensaver that comes with the downloadable client which will visually represent the data your machine has been working on.

There’s just one thing I was wondering about: aren’t the CPU cycles that were normally unused but are now fully used for the experiment also contributing to an increase in CO₂ emissions? Hmmm…

From the BBC website:

Trying to predict climate change is hard. There are lots of factors involved - air temperature, sea temperature and cloud cover all play a part - as do dozens of other variables. Therefore, there are a huge number of calculations involved.

[...]

Using a technique known as distributed computing, we’re hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, we’ll be faster than the world’s biggest computer. And we’re hoping to be even better than that.

This is awesome: Edwin van Rijkom and Lennart Kats have released a plugin today which allows you to create and build Screenweaver project from within Eclipse!

This means that you will no longer have to start a seperate application to convert your SWF to a Windows app, it can all be done from the Eclipse environment. Another nice addition is the new SWX file format used by the commandline compiler. This file format is in plain XML, so other apps will also be able to read and write Screenweaver project files.

It basically comes down to this:

• Install the commandline compiler (and some more)
• Install the Eclipse plugin
• Tell the plugin where to look for the compiler
• Done!

Head over to this page for detailed instructions.

I’ve recently started exploring Nicolas Cannasse’s latest innovation: haXe. You can work with this new programming language in Eclipse using the HXDT plugin. I’ve been working on some basic build settings to enable easy compilation of haXe projects from within Eclipse.

If you’re new to haXe, I recommend you check out the official website first.

Next, what software do you need to get to know haXe using Eclipse?

• haXE (the haXe compiler)
• Eclipse (the editor we all love)
• HXDT (haXe plugin for Eclipse)

After installing these apps (I’m not going into the details in this article, it’s all pretty straightforward), the first thing that came to my attention was the fact that the HXDT plugin doesn’t (yet) support haXe compiler integration. That means that you cannot click ‘Run’ or ‘Debug’ and have HXDT instruct haXe to compile your project and run it for you.

You will need to make a seperate External Tools > Program profile in Eclipse for each haXe project you will be creating with HXDT to get this to work. I will share my settings here, perhaps they come in handy when you start playing around with haXe. Click the thumbnail on the left to see the settings I’m using.

I have included the last line (the ‘Arguments line’) for easy copy-paste below. Note that the -main Hello part refers to my main class file, you have to change that setting to reflect your project.

There’s one thing I haven’t yet done: automatically launch the .swf file that is generated with this task. Perhaps it would be possible to do that using ANT, but I haven’t had time to figue that part out yet.

By the way, the guys working on HXDT recently posted a nice list of improvements for HXDT version 0.2.0, including compiler integration, making this solution obsolete. Until then, this solution may streamline your workflow with haXe a bit.

About a week ago I was invited to participate in test-driving the preview version of Measure Map, a supposedly clean and comprehensive way of gathering blog visitor statistics. I’ve been playing around with Measure map for about a week now and I’m impressed.

Measure map is a nice mix of smart Flash based RIA’s and AJAX technology to make access to visitor statistics as easy as possible. Various kinds of data are available, the most important stuff like visitors, the comments they left and the posts they visited are already implemented, but the Measure Map people promise that more functionality may be added in the near future.

I like both the design and the clear way in which the data is presented. Keep in mind that Measure Map is not meant as a replacement for tools like Urchin or AWStats though, it is targeted towards blog owners, so you find detailed info on transferred bytes and the like, but the software does give you good insight in how frequently your blog is visited and what people are doing on your blog.

The icing on this (free) cake is the easy installation. After you subscribe to measure map, you’re asked what kind of blog software you are using. Most popular blog systems, like MovableType, Typepad, Blogger and WordPress are supported. Pick your blog system and simple instructions tell you where to place a piece of Javascript in your templates to enable Measure Map tracking on your blog.

Got curious? Head over to Measure Map and sign up for an invitation.