kometbomb

Programming and stuff.

Author Archives: kometbomb

29 Jun

New Viewer2 Preview (Build 2289)

A lot of changes in this version of Viewer2. It is possible that your existing database won’t be compatible and dbtool certainly isn’t. Unofficially, the upcoming release is something comparable to a 1.0 release.

ss_buttons.png What is new? The interface is more mainstream in that there actually are clickable buttons (you can still use the keyboard shortcuts, too) and some ugly things have been deuglified. Also, rounded corners all over the place.

The search has been improved in speed and features. Viewer2 now also has a thumbnail cache which speeds up loading of views especially if there are huge images that need to be rescaled each time a thumbnail is needed. Viewer2 can now look in the IPTC metadata included in some image files and suggest tags based on the information.

As I said, there really are a lot of small (and not so small) changes and I have probably forgotten half of them. I hope the forthcoming demo videos will help everyone catch up (also I secretly try to make things logical enough you don’t even need to read the manual for basic use). The video below is a small demo, for proper help see the manual.

[flv:http://kometbomb.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/viewer2-2007-06-29-18-40-51-07.flv 640 480]

viewer2-installer-2298.exe

10 Jun

Five efficient ways to cripple your awesome Firefox extension

  1. Make sure the extension crashes the browser even if just once a week. What will your fellow developers say of you if you even can’t crash the environment with pure JavaScript? It’s sometimes enough if the extension simply doesn’t work.

  2. Stuff everything — and I mean everything — inside the right click context menu. Or, in fact you can add your menu items anywhere as long as it’s not that convenient for the user. Forget about nice buttons the user could move around in the toolbar.

  3. Keep the usual GUI design rules in mind. For example, if your feature is called, say, “dTaOneClick“, make sure the user can’t really just click once but maybe twice. No keyboard shortcuts allowed.

  4. Forget about other extensions. And stuff even more things inside the context menu with useless descriptions. Do not group your menu stuff inside a submenu.

  5. Never continue supporting your extension. After all, every Firefox user wants to install Nightly Tester Tools to be able to use your extension after a critical update from 2.0.0.3 to 2.0.0.4.