Category: Geekery

jQuery Coverflow

My jQuery Coverflow….

So I’ve been hunting round for a coverflow plugin for jQuery.

Google search turned up both Blarnee Demo (or Blarnee Blog Post) and Paul Bakaus, both of which are quite good but don’t advise much on the use or implementation of.

Both of which are demos, using parts of jQuery and the jQuery UI, or elements of Canvas (which has been throwing odd errors in my firebug)

The second still being sat in the labs part of the UI svn, and not been touched for 6 months.

So further hunting found me, content flow, which looks quite good, but I couldn’t get it to implement properly or do quite what I wanted too, without throwing lots of errors and not working.

So, I thought about it for a while and heres the first result.

Video done on Mac Quicktime Player, (screen recording), web deploying soon…

I’ve used the jCarousel Plugin, which I already use on LSRfm.com for the LSRfm.com Twitter Rotator.

And using its callback functions and elements of jQuery’s animate library. I’ve created this iTunes/Apple Coverflow effect, still some work to do, and make it nice and configurable, so others can easily implement it, perhaps even make it and extension to jCarousel…

So a future blog post will describe the Javascript I used, and how to implement it.

Uploading LARGE files to Webservers

A quick run thru some of the jQuery file Upload options I’ve tried.

So, I have my server set up to accept large files, since I have built a nice new podcast submission system for LSRfm.com on the machine called LSR-LOCAL.

Now I decided that its all well and good trying to make it work/look nice, in terms of waiting for uploading for files and little feedback, we are dealing with the lesser tech orientated here.

So since I already have jQuery on the website, I started looking there.

The first one I found jcUpload looks rather good, and then I saw the multi file upload aspect of it and thought I can use that to do multi file transfers for LSRfm.com Production to bounce files around each other securely, rather than relying on email or rapidshare.

However that fails on files over 5Mb.

Went on a hunt around for general flash uploaders, since I read somewhere flash handles up to 100Mb or so nicely (I think it was on jcUpload’s website), I found SWFupload, however I couldn’t get it to configure properly.

During my initial search for jQuery plugins I found uploadify, which looked quite good, but got distracted by jcUpload. Uploadify essentially just kicks ass.

LSRlocal Snapshot 20022010
LSRlocal_20022010

And now I have a nice little production file sharer, that will handle multi file uploads, and look good in the process. Since it has a nice progress bar, and handles queueing nicely without have to have a shed load of configuration or extra files like SWFupload.

I did look at AJAX-Upload but decided I’d stick with the flash solution, since the AJAX solution didn’t have a upload progress bar.

Now that I’ve finished the nice uploader for production I can go back to the podcast uploader and add the flash uploader.

Of course with suitable javascript fail support.
Also need to figure out how to nicely remove a file element if the flash does the upload…. Probably a separate form but that will require a hefty recode of a lot of code that already works, but it will look and work nicer in the long run.

Long Time Since I blogged

A General Update….

Again, its been a while. Things have been pretty busy.

Currently I just fixed the LSRfm.com Podcasts, they were downloading a minute or two of audio the PHP was dying, FAST CGI php5 was being ghey.

So after a quick chat with Dreamhost over live chat, my script now rather than munch the file, just passes it off to a http location, less of a memory muncher too.

SRAchart is its usual self, tho we did get a full house of Charts last week, (well near enough), Ellie Goulding and Owl City are dominating, and Glee Started Charting too.

(Yes I am a Glee Fan)

Handed in the Motion Graphics Brief.

So Uni Wise I just need to sit down and code code code, both for Project 2 (ala 360gaming.net enhancements), and start planning and researching what I need for project 2.

And start writing an essay for Futures and Strategies, fun times.

I’ve not had any spare time to play Halo, tho the Reach Beta has been announced! Hurrah!

Now I must get back to coding stuff for LSRfm.com fixed the Jukebox, now to do the music db, tho I do have a nice IRC bot sat in the new LSRfm.com Chatbox

Also <3 jQuery....

Testing a LSRfm.com Podcast Player Embed

Testing embedding LSRfm.com Podcasts in a non LSRfm.com Place, with a nice Player

Testing embedding LSRfm.com Podcasts in a non LSRfm.com Place, with a nice Player

So heres all the LSRfm.com Podcasts, might take a while to load, as the big feed of all podcasts is rather, rather big.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[SWF]http://lsrfm.com/podcasts/playerembed/, 580, 400[/SWF]

Pretty nifty, Longtail Videos, player just munches on the LSRfm.com Podcast Feed, I had to add media:thumbnail for the images, but that is useful anyway.

Javascript Image.onLoad Broken

A Javascript Problem, and a Solution

Heres my code:

        var target = '';
        var loadstr = '';
        var webcamimg = '';

        function runwebcam(ttarget) {
                target = ttarget;
                webcamimg = new Image();
                loadstr = "http://lsrfm.com/images/webcam/lsr_studio.jpg?" + Math.random();
                webcamimg.src = loadstr;
                webcamimg.onLoad = gowebcam();
        }

        function gowebcam() {
                //stuff
        }

Thru the use of FireBug I’ve discovered that the function onLoad declared by onLoad is executing regardless of whether the image has finished being downloaded, which was my understanding as per TechRepublics Article.

So after a bit of hunting around I found this from Talideon.com.

So my adjusted code now reads:

        function runwebcam(ttarget) {
                target = ttarget;
                webcamimg = new Image();
                loadstr = "http://lsrfm.com/images/webcam/lsr_studio.jpg?" + Math.random();
                webcamimg.src = loadstr;
                webcamimg.onLoad = gowebcam();
        }
        function gowebcam() {
                if (!webcamimg.complete) {
                        setTimeout("gowebcam()", 500);
                        return;
                }
                //stuff
        }

Update:

Video of before/showing the fucked-upness

And Not fucked