Archive for the ‘Multimedia’ Category

File Under: Multimedia, operating systems, Web Standards
May
24
2012

Rumor: Internet Explorer 10 Metro to Run Flash After All

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The consumer preview of Windows 8 with no Flash support in IE 10 Metro.

Microsoft seems to have changed its mind about Adobe Flash and will include a bundled version of Flash with its upcoming Metro-style Internet Explorer 10 web browser. Previously Microsoft announced that the Metro version of IE 10 would run without plugins like Adobe Flash or even Microsoft’s own Silverlight.

The rumor of an about-face on Flash comes from leaked Windows 8 screenshots that have turned up on rumor sites WinUnleaked and WithinWindows. Microsoft declined to answer Webmonkey’s questions for this post, noting only that “Microsoft does not comment on rumors and speculation.”

Rumors and speculation though the conclusions may be, the screenshots tell the story and the story is simple: The latest developer builds include support for Flash in Metro IE 10.

To get around the “no plugins” policy for IE 10 Metro, Microsoft appears to have included the Flash runtime in the actual browser, meaning that it’s not technically a plugin. But even with the new plugin that’s not a plugin, don’t expect Flash to work everywhere. Instead, Metro IE 10′s Flash support looks more like a last-ditch effort to make sure that big-name legacy sites with popular content will work in the Metro version of IE 10.

Flash in Metro isn’t going to work everywhere, though. In fact, Microsoft will maintain a white-list of sites that can access the Flash player in Metro. Microsoft’s previously published Internet Explorer Compatibility View lists dozens of sites including Hulu, CNN, Amazon, Adobe Labs and other popular sites with older, Flash video. (Wired is on that list as well.)

It’s unclear how much of the leaked info represents a change in Microsoft’s policy toward HTML5 video and web standards. Historically, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to maintain backward compatibility and it may be that dropping Flash entirely was simply too much for the company to stomach all at once. Also bear in mind that these leaked screenshots are of early builds and things may well change considerably before the final version of Windows 8 is released.

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File Under: APIs, Multimedia, Web Services
May
24
2012

Flickr Amps Up the Social With New ‘Groups’ Features

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Flickr's new group pool pages, now with "justified" view.

Flickr has made some small but welcome upgrades to the cornerstone of its social features — Flickr Groups. The changes include a new way to view group pools and the ability to post directly to groups using Flickr’s new HTML5 uploader.

Flickr lacks the hype of more recent photo-sharing services like Instagram, but remains popular with pro and amateur photographers alike at least in part because of the community that continues, despite some stumbles, to exist on the site. Much of that community is built around Flickr Groups, like-minded photographers banding together to share images of anything from beautiful mountains to sushi to a shared love of RAW images from micro 4/3 cameras.

In an effort to make it easier for Flickr fans to contribute to Groups, Flickr’s recently updated photo uploader now offers an option to share your photos with any group you’ve joined directly from the upload page.

Perhaps more importantly, Flickr is extending the Flickr API with the same features, making it possible for third-party applications — like your favorite iOS and Android photo apps — to add the same group sharing features. Developers can check out the Flickr code blog for more on what’s new in the Flickr API.

As part of today’s Groups upgrade, Flickr is also extending its “justified” view — which tiles images to fit more photos at larger sizes in a smaller space — to Group photo pools. Along with the justified view, Group Photo Pool pages now have a persistent (but collapsible) sidebar where you can quickly access group discussion threads, view tags and see the top contributors.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
May
23
2012

I’m Feeling Moogy: Google Taps Native Web Audio for Awesome Moog Tribute

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The Web Audio API in action. Image: Evolver.fm

Google is celebrating electronic music pioneer Robert Moog’s 78th birthday with a Google doodle of the iconic Moog synthesizer. Like many past doodles today’s doodle doesn’t just look cool, thanks to the Web Audio API, it’s also a working synthesizer complete with a reel-to-reel tape machine for recording.

The Moog Google Doodle uses the nascent Web Audio API to create a mini Moog and power a mock reel-to-reel recorder. At the moment browser support for the Web Audio API is limited, but the doodle will work in most browsers since it falls back to Flash where the Audio API isn’t supported (the doodle does not work in Internet Explorer).

To play the Moog, just click any of the keys so that it gains focus and then you can play using your keyboard. All the nobs are fully functional as well, just click and drag to change the settings. Hit the record button and you can save your songs and share them with others.

Behind the scenes the Moog doodle also uses Closure libraries and some CSS 3 for the design and custom fonts. Developer’s interested in how the Moog doodle works can check out the archived doodle page and peruse the Moog.js JavaScript file for full details (as with all Google scripts, this one has been optimized for file size; you’ll want to run it through JSBeautifier or similar before you try to read it).

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File Under: Multimedia, Web Services
May
15
2012

Flickr Goes Big With Larger Images, Responsive Redesign

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Flickr: now with bigger images and a (mostly) responsive design.

Flickr recently changed its “lightbox” photo pages — the darker photo-friendly interface on the site — to display much larger photos. Now the grandfather of online photo-sharing sites is rolling out a site-wide redesign that uses the same big, beautiful images to put your photos front and center on every page.

The larger images in Flickr’s revamped photo pages put the emphasis where it belongs — on your photos. Peripheral information, like comments, maps, tags, set info and so on are still there, they’re just now (rightly) dwarfed by the actual image.

The result is a much more photo-centric site that does a nice job of differentiating itself from the current trend of low-res, filter-heavy photo0sharing services.

Web developers, take note: Flickr’s new layout isn’t just eye-catching, it’s also somewhat responsively designed — adjusting to the myriad screens on the web today and displaying the best photo possible without clogging your tubes with huge photo downloads. Flickr does stop short of scaling pages down to phone-size screens — for which there is a separate mobile website — but it resizes nicely to handle tablets.

That’s right, Flickr is the latest (and perhaps the largest) website to embrace not just a mostly responsive design with a liquid layout and media queries, but also a responsive approach to images.

We’ve looked at dozens of ways to handle images in a responsive design, but Flickr has opted for a custom setup that uses a bit of server-side PHP and some JavaScript to serve images based on screen size. Flickr is also using a custom algorithm that takes the width and height of the screen into account and “will display content at a width that will best showcase the most common photo ratio, the 4:3.”

For more details on how Flickr is handling the responsive aspects of the new design, check out the Flickr code blog.

Developers working with the Flickr API should note that the new photo sizes are now available through the Flickr API if your app or website would also like to display larger images.

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File Under: Multimedia, Web Services
Apr
25
2012

Easily Upload Photos With Flickr’s New Drag-and-Drop Tools

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Flickr's slick new HTML5 uploader.

Photo sharing service Flickr has announced a new HTML5-based photo uploader with drag-and-drop support and a better interface for adding captions, titles and other annotations to your uploaded images.

The new HTML5 photo uploading tool comes on the heels of Flickr’s recent move away from the Flash-based Picnik photo editor to a new HTML5-based image editor. Not only is the new uploader faster and better, it adds further foundation to the hope of Flickr fans everywhere — that, despite some recent personnel changes at Yahoo, the company still believes in and will continue to develop Flickr.

Despite the advances the web has made over the years, uploading files remains a clunky, confusing process for many users who always want to know why they can’t just drag and drop files like they do everywhere else. Like Gmail’s similar drag-and-drop file uploader, that’s exactly what Flickr users can now do, provided of course they’re using a supported web browser. Flickr’s new uploading tool will work in the latest versions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

The switch to an HTML5-based photo uploading tool means that you can now simply select a group of images on your hard drive, drag them over to your browser and drop them on the Flickr page. From there the uploader offers a revamped photo organizer page that now sports a darker look reminiscent of the interface in Adobe’s Lightroom editor. Click on an image and the left-hand sidebar will show fields for adding a title, description and tags to your image. You can also add the image to a set, tag any people that appear in the photo, as well as control privacy settings or change the license.

The new Flickr uploader's large image previews

To go along with the new uploader Flickr has also bumped the file size limits for both pro and ordinary users to 50MB and 30MB, respectively. For Flickr pros that’s enough space to handle photos taken with the latest DSLRs, though it’s worth noting that Flickr still doesn’t support storing RAW images.

Still, Flickr remains one of the web’s most popular photo sharing sites and while the new uploader and larger file size limits may not win it any converts from elsewhere, it should make current users happy. Note that, as with previous upgrades, Flickr will be rolling out the new uploader over the next week or so, if you don’t see it just yet, fear not, it’s coming.

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