AWSOM.org = Artist Website Setup Options Markup

AWSOM Pixgallery updated to 4.6.1

harknell — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:26:24 +0000

Hi everyone,
AWSOM Pixgallery has been updated to version 4.6.1. and is available for download from the Pixgallery product page. This version changes the behavior of the “remove text under thumbnails” setting to display the names of folders, but not show names under the images. (this was a big requested change). It also makes a change so that showing the breadcrumb is the default setting in Pixgallery options (this was mistakenly set the opposite way in the previous release).

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AWSOM Pixgallery 2.6.0 released

harknell — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:50:52 +0000

Hi Everyone,
AWSOM Pixgallery 2.6.0 has been released and is now available through the WordPress Plugin repository, through Auto-upgrade, or from the AWSOM.org website.

Some of the new features for this version is the switch to a Visual Editor compatible gallery code (don’t worry, the old code still works though), persistent and customizable front end language and CSS changes, and some other bug fixes and minor updates.

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AWSOM Pixgallery Beta 2 now available

harknell — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:36:16 +0000

I’ve uploaded a new beta version of AWSOM Pixgallery version 4.6.0 that can be downloaded here. This version of the plugin adds in the new custom language capability. By editing the pixgallery_lang.php file you can change the display of all of the nav elements of the plugin. Additionally you can place a copy of this file into a new folder called custom_language so that updates to the plugin do not erase any of your changes.

I also made a small bug fix to correct an issue where the next/previous archive nav elements did not appear in the proper place, and they now follow the option for “extra nav bars” and appear at the bottom of the thumbnail gallery if this option is turned on in Pixgallery settings.

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ARGH! iPhone dev is stupid

harknell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:02:10 +0000

Ok, yet another example of how Apple drives us iPhone developers crazy. When you develop software you want your development and test environments to match as closely to the distribution version as possible. In this case you want the iphone simulator and iphone dev system for the iPhone hardware to match how the final bundled app works. We’ve hit some issues in the past with this not being close, but we’ve found another lovely glitch. In looks like the iPhone simulator, and the dev hardware loader allow things that the distribution version doesn’t: specifically how file names are handled. On the simulator a file called “test.jpg” and a file called “Test,jpg” are considered the same. Some file systems allow this, others don’t. Howewver, when you bundle the app this breaks. Now the files are not considered the same, and this leads to broken links and images not correctly appearing in an app.

While it was definitely a mistake to not check that the file name matched the image call in the app–it wasn’t made easier to find this problem since the simulator happily displayed the image “properly”.

Sigh, a new version of the affected app has been submitted, but i really wonder why these types of glitches in the dev tools happen.

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AWSOM Pixgallery 4.6.0 beta 1 now available

harknell — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:52:55 +0000

Hey everyone,
I have a beta version of AWSOM Pixgallery version 4.6.0 ready for download for those who like to look at things early. This version only has 2 new things in it: a fix setting that allows you to turn off post scanning of images (this will help with people who report slowdown of their index page when pixgallery is active), and also the redesigned settings page which groups things more logically.

I’m still working on the theme elements, but for those of you having the major slowdown issue this version will fix that while you wait for the next full release.

The files can be downloaded here: http://www.awsom.org/filerepository/awsom-pixgallery460beta1.zip. Just replace the files on your server with these and you should be good. Load the settings page and save the options to enable the new setting.

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Seriously, Pixgallery 4.6.0 is being developed

harknell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:19:54 +0000

I’m deep into the next version of AWSOM PIxgallery development, so I can let you guys know a few details on it so far.
One major fix will be the ability to turn off scanning of Posts. This will fix some reported issues where ad plugins or other image elements cause your site to load slowly with Pixgallery active.
Another major update will be for the “theme” system in Pixgallery. You’ll finally be able to dictate the displayed parts of the gallery (breadcrumb, caption, image name, etc.) as well as alter the language of the interface.
So yes, it’s on the way finally. I might post a few betas along the way. Details will be coming soon.

Advertisement: Check Out My Online Store

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Long Time Coming: Possible Pixgallery Post Issues Fix

harknell — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:18:47 +0000

I’m investigating a fix for Pixgallery that will alleviate the issues some users have encountered where the plugin interacts badly with images in their posts. One of the functions Pixgallery contains is the ability to “protect your theme” by automatically resizing any images in your posts/pages to a set maximum size. Unfortunately this sometimes causes bad behavior where page load delays or other unfortunate situations can occur when the plugin is active. I’ve finally worked out a possible solution to the issue. For the most part these problems occur in posts, not pages. For the most part users use galleries in their static pages, not posts. So the fix will involve a new admin setting that basically turns off all Pixgallery image scanning within posts. This is not a full fix for the issue, since of course some people may want to use galleries in posts–or they may have other images in pages that cause the underlying issues. But I think overall this addition to the plugin will get rid of 90% of the problems most people encounter ( i hope).

I’ll put up the new version as soon as I can confirm that nothing else goes boom when the fix code is active.

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Iphone Dev: Welcome to Xcode errors!

harknell — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:14:05 +0000

I wanted to relate an interesting issue I recently ran into using Xcode tools for iPhone development. Using iPhone SDK version 3.1.2 and Xcode 3.2.1 on Snow Leopard I ran into a weird crash issue. One of the new functions (and exclusive to Snow Leopard) is the “Rename Project” function in Xcode. Basically it’s normally a bitch to do this manually. Xcode places your project name all over the place in your app, so it’s a very likely situation that you’ll forget to change one somewhere and cause your app to crash or go crazy. So when they added the rename function it was a great relief to many programmers. In our case we use the function to make a new version of our “Central” app for usage by another webcomic in our Webcomic Central service.

Well, in short, the rename function was failing. After trying to do a rename Xcode would crash with an error– Internal error NSCFArray insertObject:atindex attempt to insert nil .

Yeah, not very helpful. The error seems to imply that something somewhere is being renamed but with nothing to input, or with something that’s nil already. So now I’m paranoid about our app. Did we make a mistake somewhere? Is there a cul-de-sac area of the program that doesn’t cause it to crash but is now showing an error when renamed? UGH!

I tried everything I could to find the issue, but it eluded me.

Then it struck me. Did any other apps rename properly? NOPE!

The rename function itself seemed screwed up. So I reinstalled Xcode. It still didn’t work!

What the hell? What do I do now? Then I started thinking. What’s the most basic thing that can go wrong in OS X? Yes, permissions issues.

So I moved the app out of the default applications folder in Xcode and moved it to the desktop. Guess what…it now worked to rename it!

All I can think is that at some point down the line something got screwed up with the permissions for the Xcode folders. It looks like a file with the xproj folder called foo.pbxuser didn’t have permissions to be rewritten with the renaming. So it failed.

Oh, BTW, when the rename failed it deleted the original xproj file for the app….so again with all things, always make a backup of your files before trying to do anything like this.

Anyway, I hope this helps anyone else who might have this issue.

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iPhone App Dev: The Start

harknell — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:16:03 +0000

I’d like to start my tales into iPhone development at the beginning. For all of you who think the hard part is the actual coding–Ha!

The first difficult part of the iPhone app store is getting your actual sign up approved. If you go to developer.apple.com you can start the process for signing up for your account. The one good thing about this is you can choose to go the “easy” route at first and only sign up for unpaid app (i.e. free apps) development. While this route is a bit easier, it still costs you some cash–$99 per year. Yes, you have to pay to develop apps that will make you no money from the store (of course, you can make money through other things other than purchases of the app).

One of the big pitfalls of this system is really the paid app sign up. This requires you to get a ton of financial info together and fax it off to Apple. (they want bank account and address info). Here’s where some major problems can crop up–You can’t easily change the data once they receive it. As part of your sign up you need to fill out some online forms with your company name and other info (tax, address, financial). If you make a mistake on some of these, you’re in trouble. There is no way to have this changed through the online interface. In fact, there’s no clear way to actually contact them over this.

We had an issue with our address. It looks like someone at Apple actually types in your info from the faxed forms you send over–and they did it wrong for us. What you end up with is a screen that shows you your info, but no clear location to contact Apple to correct it. I literally sent a customer contact email through every CSR interface on the Apple site and got no reply. About 2 months later I received an email from a CSR saying basically “Fax us a new copy of your company incorporation document” with the statement that they would then go in and make the necessary edits.

Look, 2 months is not a reasonable time frame for this type of thing. What if the issue had been with our financial info instead of something minor?

So, the main point of this is really think about what you will be entering into their sign up forms. As far as I can tell, you can’t make many changes later. (As a side note–there are reports that this is really a problem in other areas. It seems like it’s impossible to take over software from another account. For instance, if you were to buy another iPhone developer’s software business there isn’t a real way to combine accounts or move the apps without literally resubmitting them and losing any history or linkage.)

While Apple does a good job with their customer facing interface. Expect many hassles and surprising lapses with their business interfaces. This is just the beginning though, just wait until you here about the dev interfaces in the next posts.

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iPhone Development tales: The Start

harknell — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:12:19 +0000

AWSOM.org has, up until now, been primarily focused on setting up online sites for artists and comic creators. I do WordPress development, and host a few plugins here to add some features that might help out for the above purposes. Recently I’ve jumped into iPhone development, also to help out webcomic creators. Onezumi Studios just released a new service called the “Webcomics Central App Service“, which is designed to help webcomic creators connect with their fans through a branded iPhone app.

In many ways I see the iPhone service as similar to why I started this site. It’s not easy doing coding. Creators mostly don’t have time to even begin to look at this stuff. It’s also very hard and a very specialized skill, so it’s not something that many can even do. So once again we’ve stepped in to help in an area that we can provide our skill to the community.

So I plan on outlining some of the things we’ve discovered while developing our apps in hopes that it will make it easier for others to do so, and also outline why we decided to do the service in the first place (in other words, why it’s such a bitch to get anything developed for the iPhone).

So, the tales will soon begin. Brace yourself, it’s a bumpy ride.

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