Monday, December 21, 2009

Troubles Embedding Fig?

There have been a lot of troubles reported by people trying to embed Fig in their website. In light of that, I have changed the embed code and rewritten the documentation on how to place fig in your website. All the examples on the demo page use the new simplified embed code. You can view the source on those pages for examples on how to embed fig.

I also suggest using a crossdomain.xml file to alleviate any problems, as is explained in the documentation on how to place fig in your website.

I was using the swfObject method for flash detection, but it was causing problems on different browsers. If you would still like to use swfObject, you can download it from their site.

The new method I am using for embedding flash content is to make it as simple as possible using the Flash Satay method. My theory is that people can get fig working quicker with this method and if they need a more robust solution they can add swfOject or something else later.

If you have been having troubles embedding fig, give the new documentation a look over.

Friday, December 18, 2009

FigPro Update: Flickr Integration

FigPro now has basic flickr integration for photostreams and photosets. More details on the flickr integration documentation page.

FigPro also has a new setting in the XML settings called galleryPadTop which will determine at what height thumbnails will start. Normally all thumbnails start just below the navigation menu, but that extra spacing is not needed when the removeNav setting is set to true and no navigation is shown. Now thumbnails can start at the top by setting galleryPadTop to zero.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Demo 5 - Light Window Integration

I put up one more demo on the demos page. Demo 5 uses the light window script to show how a link can be made anywhere in a website to display Fig in a popup using light window. Also in Demo 5 there is a second link that demonstrates sending the two flash vars that fig accepts through the querystring.

For the people that do a little digging, this can present one small problem:
  • How do you make a link to one gallery but still have a page where you show all your galleries?
This problem occurs because the removeNav setting is set in the settings.xml file. The solution is actually pretty simple. Make a second settings.xml file (maybe called settings_no_nav.xml) that has removeNav set to true and use that one for the settingsPath flash var along with setting the defaultGallery flash var.

If this is confusing, don't worry. I'm not explaining it that well. I just wanted to show another way that Fig can be used and hopefully Demo 5 shows that.

I need to do some editing on the demos page. Looks too crowded.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

FigPro For Sale

FigPro is now for sale on the downloads page. The price is $24.95 and this does not include the source actionscript files. The XML settings page has been updated to display the extra settings that the Pro Version has. A license page has also been added.

Please make sure to try out FigLite before making a purchase. It should give you a good idea if it's worth it for you or not.

I guess I'm going to transition to doing some marketing of Fig for a short while instead of more features. There haven't been any feature requests in the forum, but I have a few in mind.

In other news, I'm getting excited for the release of Expression Engine 2.0 on December 1st. It's a great CMS system and I'm looking forward in trying to integrate Fig with it and generally just playing around with it. Now I just need to scrounge up a $100 for a license to buy it.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Adventures in Selling Software

I have been looking for a way to sell figPro on the internet, but it seems the exact setup I want would need to be custom made. It's hard for me to believe that I can't find a service or system that can do the following:
  • Sell multiple licenses of the same product
  • Provide a members area to download updates
  • Tracks how many licenses of a product a member owns
aMember Pro is the closest solution, but some coding has to be done to allow multiple purchases of the same product. I did find a promising product called webber, but it is no longer actively supported.

I have decided to sign up with fastspring and will have to figure out something from there. They do not have subscriptions for memberships, so my thought is to offer a coupon discount (50% off?) to past purchasers when an update comes out. I'm not even sure that can be done.

After my disappointing search for the right solution, I did think about making a custom solution using PayPal IPN and a basic membership management area with MySQL and PHP. Given my lack of time, that would have been a longer process than I would like and there are always unforeseen problems. There would also be a need for more features like another gateway besides PayPal. And then there is the fact that I have no idea how many sales that might be done. If I only get two sales, then all my time would be for squat anyway. I'm better off using a service like fastspring to start and seeing what happens.

So, figPro should be up for purchase/download sometime this week if my fastspring account gets setup any time soon.

Monday, November 9, 2009

First Update to Fig

Wow. That didn't take long. The new Fig has been up for less than 24 hours and there is a new update. Sorry about that folks.

I added an XML setting called "navText" to the settings.xml file. This setting lets you change the standard "Navigation" text to any text you would like. This seemed like a crucial thing since different languages would need to translate this text. Started a change log in the documentation too.

On the same topic of making Fig multilingual, I updated the FAQ section to show people how to change the "Home" text that shows at the top of the navigation.

New Fig, New Website - New Problems?

I just put up the new Fig gallery I've been working on along with the new website. Everything is still a work in progress and I still don't have much time. I put up a Vanilla forum. I hope to eventually get that skinned to fit the site better and possibly change this blog to match the site as well. For now, this will do.

I don't have the Fig Pro version up yet. That might be a few more days or even a week.

Everything is new, so I am expecting some problems and possibly some bugs. Please let me know what you think or how you think things could be improved.

One thing different about the new version is that it does not have a web administration backend. I'm not sure whether to build one yet. I think it may be better to integrate it with a bunch of other CMS systems rather than make one just for Fig. I guess you can have both though.

Truly, this is all really dependant on whether or not people are willing the pay for the FigPro version, as I won't be able to keep this thing going on the free version alone. Guess we will see after I get that one up.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

New Fig Demos

Here are a few demos of the new Fig I've been working on.

  • Demo 1 - default settings
  • Demo 2 - default settings, no navigation, loads a default gallery set in flashVar of HTML. This one also is embedding the flash file from Demo 1 and using it's pictures. This shows how the gallery can be embedded any where on a website by changing a few settings while still keeping your pictures in the same spot.
  • Demo 3 - black theme, different size thumbnails, different font face and size.
  • Demo 4 - black theme, sized to 100% of window, fake navigation items to display how navigation works, larger thumbnails with no padding and no border.
In Demo 4 you can also resize the window while a gallery is open to see how Fig will reorder the pictures as you resize the window. All of the demos use the same flash file that is in example 1 and are changed using settings from an XML file or flashVar's.

It will be available for download as soon as I get the website done with all the details on how to install and use it and set up a forum. I haven't made the PHP script that makes the thumbnails yet either. Might be a couple more weeks until the website is done as I am currently trying to work on some remodeling of my girlfriends house and that doesn't leave much time after work.

Tell me what you think so far and let me know if you see anything that looks like a bug.

Oh... all images used in the demos above are copyright their respective owners... whoever that may be.

Friday, October 16, 2009

A New Beginning

About five years ago I made flashimagegallery.com for a little flash file that I used to make an image gallery. I thought that eventually people would stop using it since it is old and built on archaic actionscript 1 (maybe 2, I really can't remember it's been so long). To my surprise, interest in it has been steady for the last five years. I could never keep up with the emails so I just gave up. There were just too many things going on to try and maintain a free side project. It wasn't worth the time.

A couple months ago I started looking at the latest version of Actionscript 3. I wanted to learn it again and decided a good start would be remaking a flash image gallery. It's been a struggle to find the time, but it's nearly finished. The website will be remade and will have a forum for frequent questions, feature requests, bugs, and help. I will be making updates to this blog for news.

I am hoping to have a figLite and a figPro. The free figLite will have basic features, more on those below. The figPro will be actively updated with feedback from people and also my own ideas. I have no idea if the figPro idea will fly with people. I'm a complete newbie with this, but I don't have the time to maintain a free product indefinitely.

figLite will have these features:
  • Free for personal use
  • Unlimited galleries
  • Up to 30 pictures per gallery (figPro is unlimited)
  • Any size thumbnails
  • Any size of images
  • Can be embedded in any web page at any size
  • Full screen mode
  • Simple to use (upload files and images, run a php script to make thumbnails, good to go)
  • Simple interface
  • Two themes - black and white (figPro will have more)
  • Use any language for menu items
  • Use any system font and change font sizes
There will not be a web backend for uploading images at the start, but this will actually be a benefit. I am hoping FIG can possibly be integrated into various CMS systems and they can act as backend administrations. I really like expressionengine right now, so maybe that could be a possibility to start.

Now here is where some feedback would be good. I was thinking that the figPro version could sell for $25 for one license on any site and this would allow for 6 months of updates (No actionscript source included). At the start it will only be different from the lite version by having unlimited pictures per gallery and changing the colors, but here are some of the features that I was thinking could be integrated over time:
  • Video and mp3 support
  • Basic html pages
  • Flickr and Google Picasa support
  • Anything else I can think of, maybe some unique theming options
  • Integration into some CMS systems as said above
My only question is whether or not people will be willing to pay for the pro version. I'm not really comfortable selling the source for it at the moment as my code is horrendous. I have been learning Actionscript 3 all over again so you can imagine.

I will be posting a link to a demo of the new version soon. "Soon" is relative (like about a week).