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MYCFMX
Monday, August 23, 2010
Google Chrome to Phone
Google has an app in the android market called “Google Chrome to Phone”.
They also have an extension for the Google Chrome web browser called “Google Chrome to Phone” – You need both pieces installed.
You install the Google Chrome extension in your web browser.
You install the Android App on your phone.
So what does it do?
It adds a button to Google Chrome that lets you send links to your phone. So, I just visited http://www.sitepoint.com, I click the Google Chrome to Phone button and my phone opens the website in the browser on the phone. Neat.
The project I'm working on involves taking a video heavy website and converting it into a HTML5 / CSS3 / Javascript / jQuery powered mobile website. The current site runs HTML4, Flash (of course!), CSS, and javascript. There are many events that occur in the flash file so its not going to be easy to convert this to HTML5. Not to mention, there are cookies being set and the page checks for there existance and actually changes what occurs on the page. Along the way, I'm going to ask the question, "Which is better for a developer? Flash or HTML5/CSS/Javascript?" I'm not an Apple fan and because I've used Flash for about 10 years and I've whipped up flash animations in no time, i don't see how html5 / css / js could possibly be better for a developer. I hope Adobe makes Flash Player 10 run really nice on the Android phones. I'm looking forward to it. I'm also interested to see how "painful" of a process it is to make a non-flash version of my site work across all browsers. For starters, I'm mainly concerned with Chrome and Safari because these are the two browsers found on the iPhone and Android devices. I have more research to do for RIM Blackberry phones.
The first step was taking one of the videos and getting it to the right format. I found a free open source program called HandBrake. So, I took a short video on my Android phone (I have the Droid) and I copied it to my computer and then I converted it to MP4 (H.264) format using HandBrake (just to see if it would work). I was then able to copy it to my cel phone and easily play it in the Android Gallery. Next test for video: Copy it to iPod Touch (oh boy, i have to use stupid iTunes to copy files to the iPod Touch. I can NOT just drag and drop files to the iPod Touch like i do with my Droid. Basically when i plug my Droid into the computer and hit the USB Mount button the phone shows up like another other external hard drive or USB Drive). Not being able to do this on the iPod Touch sucks! Everything goes through iTunes.).
The next thing i wanted to do was create a single HTML5 page and embed the video into the page using the HTML5 video tag to see what the player looked like. For now I'm mainly concerned with Safari and Chrome. I foresee, having to convert my files to OGG format too (can anyone suggest a free converter for this format too?) as well (This part is kind of sucks. Firefox won't adopt H.264 support because they fear sometime in the future that the license will be mighty expensive for H.264 have only promised free use of it since 2016. Then your guess is as good as mine. From what I've read, OGG sucks.
Google will be coming out with the open source VP8 codec. I'm looking forward to this because it will be something that likely all browsers will adopt (hopefully Apple will even embrace it.).
My page was pretty simple and so far i am impressed with the ease-of-use of the video tag. Seems to do exactly what one would expect and it does it very well. However i did notice that in Safari on PC when i went to fullscreen and then exited out of full screen the background color of my webpage changed from white to black. I think that is a bug. This bug might only appear if no background color is set, we will see during day 2 testing.
Here's my source code from my very first HTML 5 page.
Some quick things to point out. Notice the DOCTYPE at the top of the page. It's much shorter and cleaner then typical HTML4 DOCTYPEs. Kudos to HTML 5 for making that shorter and simple and backward compatible for older browsers.
The next few lines are basically the same as HTML4.
The next line is the HTML5 video tag. Nice! and it works as expected too. woot!
Note the line of text that says "Your browser does not support the video tag." In Internet Explorer, this message will display, so what this also means (i think) is that you could have a fall back Flash player for IE / Firefox and it will just work without any additional programming, so thats pretty cool (BUT, also very dumb at the same time. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all adopted H.264. Firefox and Opera aren't interested in H.264. They use OGG. I'm thinking maybe a mp4 as the primary video, then a OGG files for Firefox / Opera, and then for older versions of browsers using Flash player OR maybe MP4 for Safari, Chrome, IE9, and Flash player for everyone else. So this kind of sucks now because no matter what way we go, we will still have to make multiple versions of the same video shit. Honestly, this is bullshit!!! The purpose of having these standards is should be so that everyone can use it and it be available for free. This makes me think that H.264 is NOT the best choices because its eventually going to require a license (2016 - prepare to pay up). VP8 should replace the H.264 because it is open source, owned by Google, and is a very good video codec (According to the specs, i have not actually used it yet). At least then, we can have just 1 video file instead of multiple versions for each device.)
The dream is one universal, free, video codec for everyone ... That points to VP8 as the solution, not H.264.
Ideally, I'd like to see one video format that will work with both HTML5 and Flash.
So, i think the video playing in HTML5 seems to be very easy and i like it. The next few steps are going to be, well, painful, I am sure.
Google Fonts people! Check out the google fonts preview page. Fantastic implementation!
Ok so obviously the fonts i selected aren’t the best for this site. I mainly just wanted to make it very extreme so you could see the different fonts. Pretty amazing. This is the first time I’ve been able to use something other then Arial on my site simply by adding css style for the font specifiying the color, size, all the typical styles for a font and also another line of code that just sits in your header attack above your css. Google has a format for it, it does require a query string (come on, you’ve seen them before…they look like this somepage.html?QueryString=IsMe) - The query string is everything after the Question mark. The question tells the browser, hey! a query string is starting! Basically, 1 line + 1 block of css = Google Fonts.
I’m sure they plan to add a whole host of other popular fonts.
i was having this problem today and this fixed it for me. Editting a css file and getting the height to work across all browser was proving to be difficult. This fixed it.
1. Tip #1: See my previous post about Coldfusion issue when if you use SELECT * in your cfquery and then say you add a row to that table. That changes the query because you have now added another row for CF to grab. Apparently, CF doesn’t like that at all. It throws an error. All you have to do to fix the issue is Restart Coldfusion and then your site should be back up. I know it sucks, i shouldn’t have to restart CF when i add a new column to my table. Seems silly. And, I know SELECT * is not the correct or best way to write your query. You should always write out all of the columns and rows from all of the tables you are querying. The reason I am using SELECT * is because I want this query to work across multiple sites under different domains. I don’t want to have to go back and change every single query when i add a new column. That’s why i am doing it this way. One other added piece of information i should add here is that the error from coldfusion only occurs when you use cfqueryparam in your queries. CF must cache the query.
2. Tip #2: IF you have a Thankyou page that appears after you submit a form and you want to lock the page down be sure to add this little snippet of code at the top of your page. Say you have a form that accepts FirstName, LastName and EmailAddress. All of these are required. Pick one (or more) of the fields. At the very top of your page put this code:
<cfif NOT IsDefined(‘form.FirstName’)>
<cflocation url=“index.cfm” addtoken=“no”>
</cfif>
IF someone comes to the page and they try to see what you got without submitting your form they will get redirected to your homepage. Also, wrap the form.FirstName variable in single quotes. You need those. If you don’t use those, you will get a coldfusion error.
Coldfusion Error: Value can not be converted to requested type.
Have you ever encountered this error? Well I did today. It wasn’t the first time either. In my SELECT statement I was using “SELECT * FROM tblname WHERE ID =
“
Seems coldfusion has a problem with this after I added a new column to the table i was querying.
The solution is when you write your SELECT statement you should not use *. Instead consider listing out each and every column name in your query. This will prevent the error from occuring, but if you ever add another column to your table you have to rewrite that query. That kinda sucks.
You can also remove the cfqueryparam from your SELECT statement and that will fix it too (actually this is what I think is the root of the problem because the query runs perfectly without cfqueryparam - it only breaks when i’m using cfqueryparam and i modify the table.)
Evidentally, Apple is really afraid of Google. They’ve recently banned the word “Android” from the Apple App Store. They’ve banned multiple Google iPhone apps. No wonder Google went out and made there own devices. Now they don’t have to listen to those cry baby’s over at Apple.
I’m thinking its going to be way better. I really am looking forward to this game for sure.
Some of you may not know this, but I formerly worked at TalonSoft / Take 2 / Gathering of Developers. I was the Webmaster for Gathering here in the USA. I designed and programmed the original Mafia PC website. During this time, I also had the change to see the testing going for Mafia. I was very interested, but didn’t have much time to play it. I wanted to wait until the game launched to really enjoy the finished piece. I played for 2 weeks straight every day after work. I thought the game was great. The graphics, acting, storyline—all were fantastic. During the day at work I would be manning those forums assisting folks stuck on the infamous racing mission. My first impression was I felt I was living in that time. I am also a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. In some ways, I enjoyed Mafia linear storyline vs. GTA open storyline. In my opinion, having a nice, linear storyline is better if telling a story (like a movie) is important to you. I think Mafia definitely delivered in this area.
Here we are in 2010, I’ve moved on from the game business for the most part (I still play the hell out of them!) and I’m seeing information about the sequal to Mafia. Check out this trailer for this game…Be impressed!
In a few days, I’ll post some gameplay trailers. (If you can’t wait, then run over to YouTube and search for Mafia 2 Gameplay Trailers.)
I came along this really cool short film on YouTube after reading an article from the NewTek newsletter. You can visit Chris Jones' website at http://chrisjones.com.au/
He used Lightwave v6.5 to do most of this video. It's very cool. I would give it 5 out of 5 stars.
Actually, I take that back. The name is kinda stupid, but damn the photoshop brushes this site has are top notch. Great Photoshop to create all sorts of effects. They just released a new set today. Brush Strokes and Spills Brush Set.
If you haven’t seen Avatar yet, go see it now. Probably one of the best movies ever made. James Cameron hits another home run. The man is a genius.
So what makes Avatar such an awesome movie. 1. Excellent visuals. The entire world is 100% believable. The plants, the animals, The People. 2. The story is amazing. Brilliant writing + brilliant effects = Capital A AWESOME movie. 3. The movie is long, I think its close to 3hrs. But believe me, you won’t mind. Its never dull. 4. Did I mention that it was in 3D? wow, i remember when i was a kid and we have 3D movies that were in “black and white” and you had to wear those funny red lense, blue lense cardboard glasses. This is a huge step up from that. Imagine, the absolute very best special effects with the very best 3D? This was an amazing movie. Its one that you have to see in the theatres too—Blu-ray will be better and DVD won’t do it justice. See it in the theatres dammit! So, I spent 3hrs of my life on sunday just saying the word “Wow!” every 5 minutes. That’s how good it is.
Fans of the special effects used in the movie Beowolf will be quite pleased. Its not the same effect, but definitely along the same lines. You will not believe your eyes.
MYCFMX - IF MYCFMX were an acronym, what would it stand for?
Here’s the criteria:
- It must describe this website.
- It must not be vulgar.
- Feel free to get creative. All of the letters don’t have to be part of the acronym. You can use the “MY” to make the word “My” and then make up words for the other letters.
- “X” - the letter “X” is proving to be pretty difficult to come up with a word. So, feel free to choose that has “X” in it like “expensive, expression, exhausted, extreme” and so on.
Leave you comments below. The name will be featured on this website.
The name used to stand for “My ColdfusionMX” - But now the site is not in Coldfusion and they don’t use the MX extension anymore. They are also now on Coldfusion9. ColdfusionMX refers to an earlier version (I think version 6 or 7).