After using a virtual machine to run windows xp and then ie 6, I have finally found a very good solution to working with every version of Internet Explorer. It is a free download called IETester.
IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 RC1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.
After 32 hours, 13.4 miles of running, and 2 hours of sleep because of making this review about my experience of playing casino, I’m back from the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay of 2009. Thanks to Chase & Lindsey Brammer, Kellie and I were invited to join their VIP team along with Brady and Nicki Brammer. The other six teammates consisted of coworkers and friends from Rain Interactive. Hence the name of our team, “Make it Rain!”
The Ragnar is a relay race where a team of 12 people get two vans and run 188 miles divided into 36 legs from Logan to Park City (also known as the Wasatch Back). Each runner gets three legs where each leg varies in length from 3 to 9.6 miles and ranges in difficulty from Easy, Moderate, Hard, to Very Hard.
Thanks to everyone that came to the Adobe Flex presentation at BYU. It turned out great. Many people learned what Flex can do and found solutions to ideas they had. Thanks to Rain Interactive for sponsoring the event with Papa Johns Pizza. Special thanks to the Web Startup Group for hosting the event. They recorded my presentation and have my slides hosted on their site.
Today I downloaded the wordpress for iPhone app and I am currently writing this post from my iPhone. I am able to upload photos from my iPhone’s photo library and make edits to existing posts. All I can say is wow and go download it yourself.
Adobe just produced Tour De Flex an AIR app that allows you to tour all of Flex’s features. Great for those who are curious about what flex can do. For developers, this tool is great because it allows you to actually see the code to produce the feature that is shown.
Adobe states that Tour De Flex has three primary features:
For those of you who want HTML signatures using Gmail’s web interface, there is a Firefox add-on that supports HTML signatures for multiple email accounts and using soda pdf for customizing contents.
Download Blank Canvas Gmail SIgnatures
You must get an account with mozilla in order to download the add-on because it is an experimental plug-in. I haven’t had any problems with it.
In doing some research on filters in SVG I came across some new information regarding SVG. The reason that they have upgraded/changed focus for the SVG format to FXG was triggered when developing Thermo. They started using SVG and then they realized how difficult (and eventually deemed impossible) it was to easily translate SVG to Flash smoothly. So they developed FXG for Thermo & Flex 4 to replace SVG. Now we can just use FXG’s DropShadowFilter instead of copying the bitmap, offsetting it, applying a color fliter, blurring it, and then blending it.
What is FXG?
“FXG 1.0 describes an XML-based graphics interchange format for the Flash Platform. FXG contains high-level graphical and text primitives that can be used to create, group, transform and visually modify basic vector and bitmap shapes. The FXG rendering model follows very closely the Flash Player 10 rendering model and exposes all graphics capabilities of the Flash platform as well as offering expandable support to accommodate future capabilities of the Flash Player. The specification below dives into the technical details governing every element of FXG 1.0.”
FXG Specification:
FXG Specification Link
Blog Posts:
Mike Chamber Blog Post – Why Adobe Chose FXG Over SVG
Mark Ander’s Blog Post – Flash On The Beach – FXG & SVG
How to start playing with FXG:
Finally a file format that Adobe can share across its programs that can easily be written and displayed.
Update 13-Oct-2008 – I originally stated that Adobe was no longer continuing SVG support, when really they are discontinuing support for the Adobe SVG viewer. This article can be found here: Adobe Discontinues Support for SVG Viewer
Adobe Student Rep for RIA
Yesterday I was welcomed as an Adobe Student Rep for Rich Internet Applications. I am excited to get the Flex community going at BYU and educating other students about what Adobe Flex is and what an RIA is. Since I do this for work, I find it is easy to share my passion and my love for it with others.
I created a user group for BYU students. If you are a BYU student, join the group and enjoy the perks of being a member. You do not need to be an active Flex developer to join, you just need to be interested in what Flex is. I will be hosting an event this semester to get things kicked off.
Photoshop.com is a solution for online photo storage, photo back ups, and basic image editing in one location. Photoshop.com hooks into all my facebook and flickr photos and allows me to make touch ups like remove red-eye. Within minutes I had uploaded an album of pictures and had edited them. I was then able to share this album with friends and make it public at http://satara.photoshop.com
Photoshop.com features:
I highly recommend photoshop.com for all your online photoshopping needs.
Check out my Photoshop.com albums: Brady’s Photoshop.com Albums
Craigslist Desktop Application was released by Cobalt Fire Software. This application solves all the unusable elements about Craigslist. CLDesktop improves the design of Craigslist and utilizes its search features better. You can save your searches and refer back to them.
Download CL Desktop
(Available for both Windows and Mac OS X)
http://www.cldesktop.com/