Categories
Animation

Pulp Fiction in Typography

I like this one: probably because I’m also in a transitional period!

Bad Mother Fucker

A Bad ass animation of Jarratt Moody

Categories
Flash FlashBox Open source / Freeware WordPress Plugin

FlashBox v1.1: fixed visibility bug FF2 (Apple)

Update #1: Tested on Opera on Apple and Pc

Update #2: Another bug seems to appear in Firefox 2 for the Mac: goto Flashbox directory, click on rel=”flashbox[test]” (you should see a mecha-robot with sword). If you scroll to the top of the page, FlashBox disappears and when you scroll down, you will see it again…

Update #3: Images of bug in Firefox 2 (Apple) [1] [2] [3]

Update #4: another bug, but for all browsers: if you type title=”bla bla bla, bla bla” (title with a komma) the images used in the won’t show.

I love feedback…. and the feedback on FlashBox was that it didn’t work correctly on Firefox 2 on the Mac.
This was a serious bug… and it took me some time to figure out where it was created.

You can follow my progress in the Flashbox directory. A gallery example: Badass Robots used in film.

Transformers Movie Optimus Prime
terminator
robocop
Robot B9 from Lost In Space
ABC Warrior from Judge Dredd
Cain
ed209
droideka
Roy Batty
cylon-centurian
cylons

So the code is tested on:

  • Firefox 2.0.0.2, Opera 9.10 and Safari 1.3.2 on Apple
  • Firefox 2.0.0.2, Opera 9.10 and IE 7.0 on Pc

Sadly I have no access to a Intel Mac with Flock

(Please let me know if it works / or not in other browsers)

Download WordPress Plugin – Download FlashBox v1.1

Download wp-FlashBox v1.1 wp-flashbox_v01.1.zip (19,2 kB)

I haven’t updated the link in wp-plugin.net, because I don’t want the same mistake (not testing on different browsers) twice

Categories
FlashBox WordPress Plugin

Flashbox is added to wp-plugin.net

For some shameless promotion of wp-flashbox plugin I added the plugin into http://wp-plugins.net/.

I hope the get some feedback soon. See if people are interested in “another box”.

Categories
Flash Flash experiments FlashBox Open source / Freeware WordPress Plugin

My second WordPress plugin: wp-flashbox

Update #1: There are some problems with the plugin in Firefox 2 for the Mac and Flock: FlashBox is loaded, the images are loaded into it, but FlashBox is not visible.
I am looking into it, sorry Mac users!
There is also a difference between Firefox for the PC and IE for the PC: it works perfectly, but in Firefox FlashBox will be restarted and in IE FlashBox starts where it left of (if it’s started before). These is not a bug this is a feature!

Update #2: A feature I forgot to tell about: you don’t have to change the rel="lightbox" tags, it will also work with FlashBox. If you’re planning to use both, you have to use rel="flashbox"– tag. But if you want to use FlashBox instead of Lightbox, you have te deactivate lightbox!

FlashBox is my attempt to create a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.

Read more about FlashBox in detail, the different post about FlashBoxor you can follow my progress in the Flashbox directory where my experiments are.

But to sum it up: It had to be smaller then the other (Lightbox, Thickbox and Graybox), but with the animation (like Lightbox).
Or just another alternative for Lightbox / Thickbox / Graybox?

And because I wanted to use it on my own blog, I wrote a plugin too. And I’m not afraid to share it with you.

Download WordPress Plugin – Download FlashBox v1.0

Check the latest Flashbox version: the category FlashBox

Download wp-flashbox wp-flashbox_v01.zip (17,9 kB)

Categories
Open source / Freeware WordPress Plugin

My first WordPress plugin: wp-downloadbtn

Yes, it had to happen sooner or later; my first WordPress plugin.

I can make it bigger then it is, but I won’t.
It’s just a download button, it works in WordPress 2.0.7 and WordPress 2.1.
I use it in combination with Download Counter WordPress Plugin

Download WordPress Plugin – Download Button v1.0

Categories
Flash Flash experiments FlashBox

Flash experiments: Flashbox – part 4

Update: Check the Flashbox directory or more post about FlashBox for recent update

Today I’m focusing on Flash.

  1. First task was of course the security-box from Flash (which seems to fail ???)
  2. Get the basic stuff in there (loader, navigation, image, caption)
  3. And get it to center after loading
  4. ….

Done
But ….
I’ve got everything working in Flash at this moment but to “copy” Lightbox I need to use animations.

Because the animations create with the default animations classes from Adobe (mx.transitions.Tween) are quite heavy, I was looking for an alternative.
Which I found in TweenLite an excellent piece op work by Jack Doyle.

TweenLite provides a lightweight (about 2k), easy way to tween almost any property over time including a MovieClip’s volume. You can easily tween multiple properties at the same time too.

And because size does matter in this project, this will be a life saver.

Preview:

[swf]http://www.matthijskamstra.nl/laboratory/flashbox/flashbox_v01.swf, 450,450[/swf]

View directly

Categories
Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Paper Robots

Optimus PrimeIn one of my rss feeds I came across the papermodel of Optimus Prime (yeah: nerd I know..)
I am truly amazed at this papermodel: it’s almost as good as a action figure. It has joints that move freely and smoothly but the best of it all is: it transforms into a truck: this papermodel is a real transformer.



blank robotPaperrobots1999.com has 4 models with the same flexibility, but I want to focus on the blank robot version.
I’ve written about my definition of urban-papercraft and I was not sure if this model would fit my definition.



Kami RoboUntil I read the story about another model of Paperrobots1999.com: the Kami Robo the Birdman.

This model is based upon the works of Tomohiro Yasui, who created over 200 of these papercraft wrestlers with there own name and a well-defined personality. And these wrestlers slug it out at kami-robo.com so check that out.



And so I started to realize that the blank robot is indeed a urban papercraft.
And for the inspiration you can check out the gallery of wrestlers made by Tomohiro Yasui.

Here two of my favourites:

Genie (King of evil)

Shark Hawk

And check out the rest of the wrestlers






















Our check this video at YouTube – Kami-Robo Part 1:
(thx Kamiel for pointing me to this video)

[swf]http://www.youtube.com/v/yDgLpzKoeKc,425,350[/swf]
Categories
Flash Flash experiments FlashBox

Flash experiments: Flashbox – part 3

Update: Check the Flashbox directory or more post about FlashBox for recent update

Lightbox Javascript to Flashbox Javascript
Bugs in the Lightbox script:

  1. Lightbox doesn’t follow when the window is scrolled, I’ve fixed this bug
  2. if no Image (broken link) is loaded, there is no way to stop this process, and you get no feedback

Bug #1: My fix for the scroll bug:


function onscrollChange ()
{
	var arrayPageSize = getPageSize ();
	var arrayPageScroll = getPageScroll ();
	var lightboxTop = arrayPageScroll [1] + (arrayPageSize [3] / 15);
	setTop ('flashcontent', arrayPageScroll [1]);

}

and in the showFlashbox function I started to check if the window is scrolled:
window.onscroll = onscrollChange;

Bug #2: This is a bug which will not be fixed in javascipt, but in Flash.

Lightbox HTML to Flashbox HTML

use this doctype in your html files, you need it if you want layers (

) to have a 100% width and height:



put the following lines in you directory structure and html:



Lightbox CSS to Flashbox CC


body,html  {height: 100%;margin: 0;padding: 0;}
#overlay{
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	z-index: 90;
	width: 100%;
	height: 500px;
	background-color: #000;
	filter: alpha(opacity=60);
	-moz-opacity: 0.6;
	opacity: 0.6;
}
#flashcontent{
	height: 100%;
	position: absolute;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	width: 100%;
	z-index: 100;
	text-align: center;
	line-height: 0;
}
Categories
Flash Flash experiments FlashBox

Flash experiments: Flashbox – part 2

Update: Check the Flashbox directory or more post about FlashBox for recent update

Flash and crossdomain

The first obstacle is the security box / crossdomain in Flash.
If you want to know more about the security box and crossdomain.xml, visit Martijn de Visser blog, he has an excellent explanation (with images!!!).

But in short, if you want to load images/ xml/ etc from a different server then your own, you need permission (crossdomain.xml) from that server.

This information is given to us by Macromedia Adobe:
loadClip (MovieClipLoader.loadClip method) which explains about crossdomain, security box and the MovieClipLoader (this is the method I use to load the images).

And here I seem to run into a bug: it should not be possible to load from another server without a crossdomain.xml, but I can.
When I follow my HTTP traffic between my machine and the Internet (using Charles) I don’t come across a crossdomain.xml when I load images but when I load xml form that same server I don’t get permission to do so (it can’t find a crossdomain.xml and so it’s not allowed to load xml from that server).

Xml loading from another server is not allowed without crossdomain.xml, but images doesn’t seem to be a problem.