Categories
Open source / Freeware

TinySpell

I have never been a great speller in my native tongue, and i’m even worse in a foreign language!
So I need all the help I can get.

And there is enough help: Word, Outlook, AbiWord, PsPad, (and so forth) all have spelling checkers. You can even translate text online with AltaVista Babel Fish, Worldlingo, Systran and many many more.

But there isn’t one in WordPress (or Se|py for example) …
So I want to promote the smallest program that I know and use. I am talking about TinySpell.

TinySpell is a spell checker hat isn’t tied to any specific program. It checks while you’re typing, in any program, website, blog, forum you might need a spelling check

I quote:

“TinySpell can watch your typing on the fly and alert you whenever it detects a misspelled word. It can also check the spelling of every word you copy to the clipboard.”

This program is helping me a lot, especially with my poor spelling.

Categories
Flash video player

Flash Video (FLV) Player 1.1 released

About the project

Read more about it here

flvPlayer mck v1.1

Download

I haven’t had the time to clean up the source code, so for now you can download the SWF and some other stuff in a ZIP

Get your stuff here: flvPlayer_mck_v1_1.zip

Licensing

Categories
Animation Flash Flash video player Open source / Freeware

Convert SWF to AVI (SWF2AVI or SWFtoAVI)

Update: are you looking for a userfriendly, free SWF>>AVI converter? Read also my post about SWF>>AVI

I was always under the assumption that you couldn’t export video with flash.
And yes I know …. there are couple ways to export video but they have some restrictions.

To export from Flash to Quicktime (MOV) means that you SWF can’t be higher than Flash 5 and in the standard export setting AVI and MOV can’t contain script, so everything has to be animated on root timeline even animation in movieclips don’t work.
There is also the possibility to export a sequence of images which has the same restriction…

swf2avi main

But since I use swf2avi I don’t have these restrictions no longer.
Swf2avi is very easy to use (what all programs with 1 aim should be). It’s quite intuitive! So no tutorial will be made by me, not even a small explanation.
Swf2avi will create a container (if necessary) to play your SWF frame-by-frame and creates screenshots of every frame in either BMP or JPG.
This sequence can be translated afterwards to AVI with swf2avi (with the possibility of compression), an AVI can be converted to FLV and play it with a flashVideoPlayer.

Categories
Flash video player Open source / Freeware

How can I make FLV (Flash Video) files?

Update #5: I’ve split this post in a couple specified post about this subject:
How can I make FLV with freeware / opensource software
Why do I need MetaData?
The best offline FLV player (not written yet)
And rewrite this post.

Update #3: Subtitle: “How can I make FLV with freeware / opensource software” or “How can I make FLV for free!”

For creating FLV I use Macromedia Flash 8 Video Encoder. I use it professionally (it’s part of Flash 8 Professional) but I understand that not everybody is able to get hold of this program.

How can we create FLV without an expensive program?

Riva FLV EncoderYou can use Riva FLV Encoder. This freeware program can be use to encode AVI, MPEG, Quicktime and WMV to FLV.
The same company also has a free Riva FLV Player which yoube used to play your FLV files.
Update #4: A program similar to Riva FLV Encoder is FLV Encoder from Digitalgroover.
It’s easy to use but for some reason I can’t get it to work with my computer at home (“Fail to transcode file!”), it works fine with the computer at work.
It’s freeware and they also have a FLV Player which is able to view and repair MetaData.

You can also use the FLV Player by Martijn de Visser for playing FLV.

Both FLV players come with their own installer so you can associate FLV files with one of these programs.

Update #2: VLC media player can also play FLV (and many more) but it seems to be an undocumented feature. And for some reason it doesn’t play all FLV files.

And of course you should use my FLV player for playing video on your site.

Categories
Flash video player

Flash Video (FLV) Player 1.0 released

Introduction

For some time I’ve been wanting to build a Flash video player, that’s easy to use in html, but can also be used in other Flash (OOP) projects.
After some research I came to the conclusion that enough people (http://www.flvplayer.com/) have already created their version of this… and also particularly good!

But that’s OK: as a good Dutch friend of mine once said:

“Alles is al een keer gemaakt, maar nog niet door mij!�
(translation: “Everything is already created once, but not by me!� )

With this in mind, I made MY version of a flv-player:

Categories
Firefox extensions

My top Firefox extensions

Everybody likes lists, so I made one to. This list is about the Firefox extensions that I (frequently) use.

What is a Firefox extension?

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features, while keeping Firefox small to download.

How to install a Firefox extension?

  1. Choose Your Firefox Extension
  2. Choose your extension and click “Install Now”
  3. Give Firefox permission to download from this website (First time only)
  4. Re-click on the “Install Now” button to continue the installation process
  5. Click “Install Now” to begin the automatic download and installation
  6. Close all Firefox windows and restart browser to complete installation

(source: about.com)

Here are my frequently used extenstion:

(in no particular order)Helpfull blog Firefox extensionsHelpfull blog Firefox extensions

Tab X – Adds a small close button to each of the browser tabs, and removes the close button from the end of the tab bar.
Update #1: I removed “Tab X” because “Tab Mix Plus” does the same thing and then some.

  • Tab Mix PlusTab Mix Plus – Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.
  • WikiPedia Lookup Extension (WLE)WikiPedia Lookup Extension (WLE) – Extension for the Firefox webbrowser which looksup the selected text in Wikipeida encyclopedia and presents the results. The extension will add a menu item when right-clicking in Firefox.
  • IE viewIE View – which allows the current page or a selected link to be opened in Internet Explorer.
  • SageSage – Sage is a lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader extension for Mozilla Firefox. It’s got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don’t. (http://sage.mozdev.org/)
  • StumbleUponStumbleUpon – StumbleUpon uses + / – ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like–minded stumblers have liked. (www.stumbleupon.com)
  • Web DeveloperWeb Developer – The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. (http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/)
  • miscViamatic foXpose – Click on the icon in the status bar to view all the browser windows with a single click.
  • miscDownload Statusbar – is a browser extension that allows you to keep track of ongoing and completed downloads in a hide-away statusbar.
  • Translate PageTranslate Page – Translate Page passes the current page to Google’s Translation Service and was made upon request to directly mimmick a feature of the Mozilla suite within Firefox.
  • DownThemAllDownThemAll – DtA lets you download in just one click all the links or images contained in a webpage
  • bookmarkddbookmarkdd is a very useful extension that helps you manage your bookmarks. (homepage bookmarkdd) [Why?]
  • PDF DownloadPDF Download – Allows to choose if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader, or if you want to download it! (www.pdfdownload.org). [Why?]
  • Mouse GesturesMouse Gestures – Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.
    You can also use click-only “rocker” gestures which are even faster than drawn gestures. [Why?]
  • FEBE Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE) – FEBE allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. [Why?]
  • Resizeable TextareaResizeable Textarea extension – Gives you the ability to change the size of a textarea so you don’t have to scroll up and down, to read what you have writen.[Why?]

Helpfull blog Firefox extensions

  • SignatureSignature – Can be used to insert something in the address bar, on a text box on a web page.
  • SpellboundSpellbound – This allows you to spell check forms (e.g. message board posts, blog entries, wysiwyg, etc.) before submitting them. Download directly
  • RiteOfTongueRiteOfTongue – Right-click on a typed word inside a web form to check if the word is spelt correctly and get alternate suggestions if it is wrong.
  • Translate PageTranslate Page – Translate Page passes the current page to Google’s Translation Service and was made upon request to directly mimmick a feature of the Mozilla suite within Firefox.
  • ImTranslatorImTranslator – ImTranslator provides additional multilingual capabilities to Firefox for more efficient communication in foreign languages.
  • Resizeable TextareaResizeable Textarea extension 0.1b – A lot of forums and boards provide very smal textareas for new postings. If you type a longer posting, you have to scroll up and down, to read, what you have writen and to proceed.
  • WikiPedia Lookup Extension (WLE)WikiPedia Lookup Extension (WLE) – Extension for the Firefox webbrowser which looksup the selected text in Wikipedia encyclopedia and presents the results.
  • Save image in folderSave image in folder – This extension helps you to quickly save images into different folders without having to click through your folder structure again and again.
  • Save As ImageSave As Image -Adds the ability to save a page, frame, or part of either as an image.
  • Pearl Crescent Page SaverPearl Crescent Page Saver – Lets you capture images of web pages in PNG format. The entire page or just the visible portion may be captured.
  • miscScreengrab – It saves webpages as images by scrolling around and stitching the result together. In particular it also will save just a frame as an image.
  • FlashTracerFlashTracer – While running any .swf Flash file in your browser you can see all the output generated by the “trace” flash functions in this sidebar component.
    You *NEED* the flash player debug version to run this extension correctly: flashplayer_9_plugin_debug[Why?]

Haven’t decided if these extensions are handy:

Categories
SE|PY ASEditor

SE|PY MTASC – Gui improvement

Ive been working with Sepy for a while and I’m using the mtasc gui more and more.

While I was working with it I saw some features that would improve it.

  1. First improvement would be to move the “compile button” outside …. so when you compile (you automatically go to the “Preview swf”-tab) you can change you’re code in sepy and compile again without having to change from “Preview swf” to “Compile swf” press compile and end up in “Preview swf” again.
  2. To make the gui realy a gui (header information is a good example) I’ve made a sketch of what i mean. The shape it is in now is a crossover between commandline and gui.
  3. The sepy / mtasc is now a under “flush” (where I would keep it) but it’s could easily be stored under “tools” that’s why I changed the top of the gui and gave it a “toolbar”
  4. I realy would like Mtasc to give me all the errors/faults/.. back so I made an extra tab for the errors
  5. A sepy tracer/logger: In the sketches I used “LuminicBox” version of it, but you should write your own.
  6. mtasc logo so I can see where sepy/mtasc gui when I alt+tab
  7. shortcuts should work here (Ctrl + return >> compile)

I’ve made some design to back my point up but WordPress (or Blix) chooses to mess the layout up when I show them here… man I need to create my own version of wp.

Oh well you can read it all here, and you can download the pictures.
And my suggestion got a priority 8 (from 1 to 9)

Categories
Open source / Freeware

The uploaded file could not be moved to .

Off course my first serious blog is not about the things I like to do but about thing that don’t work.

Yesterday I wanted to ad a picture to one of my test post and WordPress replied: “The uploaded file could not be moved to .�

WTF?… My brand new, super fresh WordPress did not / wanted not / could not move a file to …. nothing.

First I thought it was because I used Firefox, but when I used IE I smiled. No answer there, well I couldn’t be the first to have this problem so I searched for my answer at wordpress.org and found my answer

It is simple: “Using a FTP application (Filezilla), visit the directory that is specified in that URL (/wp-content/uploads) and right click, set the permissions to 777.�

Only one thing worries me: “You can probably use something less risky then 777 but its best to try with that and then reduce it.�
Risky?? Reduce it back to 755???

The uploaded file could not be moved to .
??

Update #1. a lot of more geektalk about this problem in WordPress support.