TyStreamer page moved to Still Designing

The TyStreamer page has moved from its old home on wiskars.com to the main Still Designing web site!  This by itself is not necessarily “blog-worthy” as the content hasn’t changed much… yet.  But some of you may have noticed that the VideoLAN team has just release VLC version 0.9.0-test1.  TyStreamer now requires version 0.9.0 for its ability to stream flash video, allowing you to use 98% of all web browser installations to watch video on your TiVo or home computer anywhere on the internet.  There hasn’t been a new release of TyStreamer in a while largely because VLC 0.9.0 has been a bit of a moving target.  Now that we’re starting to see some slightly more stable releases from VLC, TyStreamer can likewise start showing its stuff.  Some of the cool new features you can look forward to over previous versions:

  • Streams Flash video
  • View video files on your home computer as well as TiVo programs
  • Support for multiple video sources from the same TyStreamer installation
  • Cool new Web 2.0 user interface using jQuery!
  • Streams to the Nintendo Wii’s Internet Channel!
And much, much more!  For the more intrepid souls, you can try using the latest from svn, or you can wait for an official release “Real Soon Now”(TM).

Browser Watch 2008 – June Roundup

Big things are happening in the browser world these days. We haven’t seen this much action in browser development since the Netscape 4 / IE4 browser wars of the dot.com bubble, and back then it was only two browsers! Today, we have (arguably) no less than 4 major browsers, each with increasingly good levels of standards compliance. Even Internet Explorer’s latest offering looks to be reasonably standards compliant, and may finally remove that painful thorn called “Internet Explorer Compatibility” from our collective sides. Let’s take a look at what’s coming down the pike: Continue reading

Will Developing For IE Ever Really Be Easy?

We all know just how much “fun” it can be to test for all the different versions of Internet Explorer.  Multiple-IE kind of works, but the best solution so far is still using Virtual Machines.  Developer Jean-Fabrice Rabaute, the author of DebugBar for IE, has developed a new solution which allows you to compare web sites in different versions of IE side by side.  The software is still in alpha, so there are still some issues.  Most notably, Flash does not work under IE6; that can be something of a show-stopper for most of our sites.  IE6 may still be the anchor that drags our cool applications down into the abyss of compatibility nightmares, but when this tool is ready for prime-time it could really help make IE testing slightly less painful.

link: http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
Original Ajaxian article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/testing-ie-versions-just-got-a-little-easier 

Firefox 3.0 and FireBug 1.2 – An Addict’s Confession

Hello.  My name is David, and I’m a FireBug addict.

Hi, David!

It all started innocently enough.  I was introduced to FireBug about a year and a half ago.  “Hey, try this Firefox plugin.  It’ll make your web development experience incredible!  And the download is free!”  Being a modern-day developer, I was willing to try new things.  I can always uninstall it later; I’m in control.  Or so  I thought. Continue reading

New and improved – jQuery 1.2.5 is released!

After a very short-lived jQuery 1.2.4 (it was up for less than a day before being marked as a “bad build“), jQuery 1.2.5 has been released into the wild!  It contains the usual flurry of patches, optimizations and fixes which are all spelled out in the Release Notes.

Of course, what you really want to know is whether or not this release is compatible with the $.string plugin, and the answer is yes!  (Really, I’m sure that’s what was on your mind.)

An Urgent Energy Crisis

I’m diverting from my usual web development topics to day to write about what I consider to be a very serious development in our nation’s energy crisis.  No, I’m not talking about the price of gasoline which is hovering near $4/gallon.  I’m talking about caffeine.  I was in Trader Joe’s this morning to buy myself a supply of Trader Joe’s Energy Drinks.  I’ve been having trouble finding them lately.  The Orange Passion flavor, my personal favorite, is completely out at every location that I’ve visited (about 6 stores total at this point), and many locations are out of the Wild Berry flavor as well.  As I was checking out at the Culver City, CA store, I asked the clerk when they were expecting the Orange Passion flavor in.  He said that they weren’t!!!  The manager then spoke up and said that they were discontinuing the product due to poor sales chain-wide, although he confessed that it was actually a pretty big seller locally.  (I was walking out with 16 cans this morning.) Continue reading

dotString 1.0 for jQuery released

I love modern JavaScript libraries.  You get a lot of bang for your buck, keep your code clean, and make my life as a JavaScript developer easier in general.  I regularly use both jQuery and Prototype in my projects.  jQuery is a fantastic javascript library with excellent CSS selector capabilities and DOM manipulation. It’s light-weight and really fast. Prototype is an excellent all-purpose library with many great utility features, including string manipulation, enumerable arrays and hashes. I love using jQuery for its speed and simplicity, but I miss Prototype’s utilities. Luckily, jQuery is very extensible with its versatile plugin system.  dotString is a jQuery plugin that aims to bring Prototype’s string manipulation functions to jQuery. Continue reading

Welcome to the new StillDesigning.com

After four years, it was time to update stilldesigning.com and bring it into the the blogosphere.  Why does Still Designing need a blog?  Because we’re doing some really cool stuff these days, and this gives me a place to share thoughts on things that are happening with web technology.  New advances in javascript libraries and techniques allow for lots of cool things on your web page that were previously only available through Flash web sites, and Still Designing is going to be there.  Cheesy?  Maybe.  But it should be a pretty fun ride.