Psyked*

it’s easy once you know how.

FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash

Posted by James - 15/05/08 at 08:05:20 am

FIVe3D is unlike other 3D engines ( such as Papervision or Alternitva3D ) in it’s approach.  We’re not talking shape primatives here, we’re talking extending the basic flash elements ( Sprites, Text, MovieClips ) to include Z-properties.  Looking at the demos, it’s not what you’d expect from ‘Flash 3D’, because we’re expecting another Papervision clone.  But no, the approach that Mathieu has taken when developing this is much different - and actually makes much more sense for a lot of situations.

Plus, it’s fun.  I’m a sucker for fun demos.

Continue reading FIVe3D - A different approach to 3D Flash…

A different approach to tagging?

Posted by James - 04/02/08 at 12:02:12 am

A very different approach to tagging? Well, comments are closed over on that site, so I thought I’d voice my opinions here. That is after all, what I have this site for. In his post, Ryan is sharing his thoughts on the approach to tagging on Ask E. T., where Edward Tufte has the tagging system displays links to related posts, based on the tags applied to the active post.

The comments thread (on Ryans’ post) may be full of critisim about the positioning of the links (on Edward Tuftes’ site) - something which I also take issue with - but the idea seems pretty solid. Of course, if you’re going to have related posts, it makes sense to draw them from the tagging system. Continue reading A different approach to tagging?…

BETT 2008

Posted by James - 08/01/08 at 09:01:31 pm

Well, I’m off to the BETT show on the 9th (tomorrow)  I forget what BETT stands for, but it’s an IT exhibition for schools / educational markets.  Dynamic Learning is being shown off there - as well as being shortlisted for an award - and there’s probably going to be a lot of SCORM / LMS related products on display so it should be an interesting one.

…

Although I suspect not quite interesting enough to warrent a followup post.

Identifying link targets with CSS

Posted by James - 05/12/07 at 09:12:19 am

So, you have links that open in new windows, and links that open in parent windows. Inconsistant behaviour is the primary usability nightmare, and your standard web browser doesn’t give you any feedback on just what is going to happen once you click that link. Popups galore? or damn-I-was-reading-that syndrome? If only there was some visual clue we could give about those pesky link behaviours.

Well, this isn’t something I’ve seen anyone do yet, but technically it should be possible. What we should be able to do is transport the same techniques we use for detecting file types - ie. the CSS 2.1 attribute selectors - and link them to the target attribute. Thankfully, this should be a pretty short bit of code, as there’s only really four target options that anyone uses anyway. These would be ‘_blank’, ‘_self’, ‘_top’ or ‘_parent’. So, working on our existing knowledge of detecting link file-types, we simply add the code;

a[target='_blank']

… and we should now be able to automatically attach icons to those links that target a new browser window. (_parent, _self, and _top nearly always open links in exactly the same window) Links to other websites already have a standard icon - pretty much set by wikipedia - but it’s not often that target-based links are seen, so there’s not much of a standard. Or is there?

Sitepoint has a short article on the problem of link targets - ‘Beware of Opening Links in a New Window‘ and also has a pretty simple icon to use for new windows. Perfect! Just like internal links don’t have an icon, and external ones do, so only links that open a new browser window should need this icon. Save the icon to your webserver, add your new CSS, and you’re away.

Pimp My PC - Improving the look, feel and general efficiency

Posted by James - 02/12/07 at 07:12:29 pm

From time to time it’s fun to give your computer an overhaul. Here’s a few simple, and not-so-simple ways rejuvinate your humdrum old Windows machine. And I’m assuming that we’re using Windows XP here - not ole’ Vista.

 

#1 A New theme!

You mightn’t like Vista, but I challenge you to say that the glassy Vista styles aren’t a million times nicer than the playdough style default XP ones. Microsoft it seems, missed a potential killer market by locking down the Windows themes to only Microsoft-certified ones. (Probably because they knew of hundreds of critical security flaws.)
Continue reading Pimp My PC - Improving the look, feel and general efficiency…

Development sneaky-peek

Posted by James - 17/11/07 at 12:11:31 pm

I just had to show off one of Marks’ little prototypes.

Continue reading Development sneaky-peek…

New theme!

Posted by James - 07/11/07 at 01:11:34 am

Well there we are, a new theme. It’s been needing an overhaul for a little while now, so this is phase one - Live implimentation. As usual, nothing is set in stone, and I imagine I’ll be spotting and squashing bugs or tweaking designs for a few more weeks to come.

Why the overhaul? #1 - I was never really happy with the construction of the first theme, being a little… ugly code wise. #2 - A chance to make the theme smarter, with more widgets support, and #3 Wordpress 2.3 broke a helluva lot of nasty hardcoded parts.

Good parts? I’ve cleaned the code up a bit and added smarter signposting. Some new custom pages are on their way, once I figure out all the php niggles I have left. Bad parts? Some of the older pages look nasty now.

So, anyone care to comment? I’m not exactly decided about the sidebar styles and a few other bits - but what do you think?