In today’s first episode of Dev Ideas, I delve into the Haxe programming language. Haxe’s main claim to fame is as a free open-source alternative to the Flash development environment, but it is really a multiplatform language and toolkit. In addition to Flash .swf files, Haxe can target JavaScript, NekoVM, PHP, or C++ source code, making it possible to use the same language for all phases of a project. Haxe also gives you access to advanced language features like closures, type inference, and algebraic types. Come join me as I give a quick (23 minute) overview of what makes Haxe interesting and worth learning.

Watch the presentation now

• Fixed handling of dates. You can now use a Python datetime.date object anywhere the API calls for a date.
• Implemented recurring payments.
• Implemented Fraud Management Filters.
• Implement reference transactions.
• Changed the license from the Affero Public License to the GPL.

Why not head over there now and check it out?

Chicken Wing Software's Open Source Projects

There were some features that I wanted added and some bugs that needed fixing, but there did not seem to be much activity on the original app's message board (at least the English language version), so I decided to make the changes myself.

I took the "MAXI" version of the player, and added in some more JavaScript support, improved some performance issues, and fixed a couple bugs.

Here is what I changed:

• Fixed some bugs with the slider control.
• Added to the JavaScript interface the following functions:
  • playVideo
  • pauseVideo
  • getVolume - Gets the volume as a percentage.
  • setVolume - Sets the volume as a percentage.
  • getCurrentTime - Gets the current time in seconds.
  • setCurrentTime - Seeks: takes a new time in seconds
  • isSeeking - Returns true or false
  • isPaused - Returns true or false
  • getDuration - Gets the video length in seconds
• In the flashVars, you can set a percentage width or height by appending a percent sign to the value. If you set just width percentage and don't set height, the height will be automatically calculated to keep the aspect ratio. Be sure to escape the percent sign as %25. Something like: width=50%25
• Made seeking more efficient when using phpStream. Now doesn't
  initiate a new connection to the server unless necessary.

Download the player

Download the source code

Here's the original documentation as well as an HTML code generator.

If you have any issues or feature requests, feel free to contact me. Enjoy!

I am excited to announce Chicken Wing Software's online multimedia presentation system. The pilot presentation, created by Christine Perfetti of Perfetti Media, is online now. Facilitating a Usability Test is the first in what will be a series of presentations on usability testing techniques gleaned from her ten-plus years of experience in the field.

The system combines video with PowerPoint slides and text, all tied together with Dynamic HTML and JavaScript for a fully interactive experience. You can click on a slide thumbnail to advance the video to that spot in the presentation, and the displayed slide stays in synch with the video.

Even now, with only the first presentation, the system's potential is inspiring, and we are brimming with ideas for new features to add!

If you would be interested in using this technology for your own presentations, please contact us.

» Watch the presentation.

In my fantasy football and baseball leagues, we wanted to do a live draft, but we have players who live on both coasts, who work varying schedules, and some of whom have kids. Plus one of our rules is we allow keeping two to four players from year to year, to give some continuity.

Because of those two factors, it's impossible for us to use Yahoo!'s live draft or autodraft. So what does your trusty software engineer do? He codes up his own draft application, of course!

It's worked well for us for the last few years, so I thought I'd clean up the interface a bit and open it up to you, the public. It's free and has no ads or anything. Hopefully if you're in a similar situation as us, you will find it useful. It's still undergoing some updates, so if you find anything that doesn't work or you have any ideas on how to improve it, please let me know.

Technical details: This is written in Python using the Django framework running on my own lightweight single-threaded web server I wrote in C++. The front end is dynamic HTML and JavaScript, using the web technologies of AJAX and Comet.

Here is a link: Eddie's Fantasy Draught

Features

• Revolutionary three-tiered queue, to keep the draft moving. If you know you're not going to be around on your turn, you can set it up to draft some players automatically. The three tiers make sure you get only the players you want.
• Draft a large league on your own timeframe.
• Chat while the draft is going on.
• All stats available.
• League manager can enter "keepers" for each team before the draft.

To Get Started

1. Create an account.
2. Create a league.
3. Invite your league members to come draft.

Enjoy!

As of version 0.6, click here for the new home of PayPal on Python.

Thanks!

• Play online for FREE in your browser - no Flash or downloads required.
• Play against your friends, or meet new friends.
• Log in using your Twitter, Hotmail, or MySpace account.
• Challenge yourself against artificial intelligence robots.
• Get 1,000 free chips just for joining, plus another 500 chips for every day you log in.

It's still in its early stages, but gameplay is working. You can log in with a Yahoo, MySpace, or Hotmail account, or your email address (Facebook support coming soon).

Since it's brand new, there may not be anybody to play against right away, so you may have to check back, or better yet invite a friend, if there is nobody there. Soon enough there will be artificial intelligence support to fill in when necessary.

For the technically interested, the site is programmed in the Python programming language using the Django web framework, and hosted on a Slicehost server. The front end is pure JavaScript with no downloads or plugins required.

Give it a try if you get a chance, and please let me know if you find any
problems.
Thanks!

Since I'm using Django, I can piggyback on its useful authentication module. That's a nice start, but users still need to choose a username and password before they can use the site, not to mention filling out their name, email address, and date of birth. My goal is to lower the barriers to potential users - both psychologically and in terms of effort. Folks are hesitant to sign up for yet another login and password, and to go through a lengthy registration process

Enter OpenID. OpenID sounds like a very promising standard. Unfortunately, the standard promises more than the implementations deliver. Or rather, the standard doesn't quite promise what it seems to.

The idea is that our buddy "Frank the User," instead of having to create a new account on our site, can log in securely using his Google account, or his Yahoo! account, or any of a number of OpenID Providers. At our site, he enters a URL, gets redirected to the provider's site for authentication, then redirected back to our site, all nicely logged in.

Fine. The problem is we need more than just "logged in." After that whole dance of typing in yahoo.com, signing in to Yahoo!, then coming back, all we at the cient site have available to us is a randomly generated token and assurance from the provider site that the user is indeed logged in -- somewhere. We don't know that his name is Frank, we don't know he was born in 1962, we don't know his email address. In other words, we know nothing more than we did before the dance. On my Texas Hold'em site, as is the case on most sites, I need more. I need a way to identify the user to other users. Something like, oh, I don't know, a NAME? I'm shocked that not even the user's name is available from most OpenID providers.

The OpenID specification includes provisions for exchanging profile information. There is a long list of possible attributes. Unfortunately, none of these things are required, so each Provider can choose to share as much or as little as it wants. Google shares an email address, and nothing more. Yahoo! shares absolutely nothing. AOL has the potential to share a good set of information, but the user needs to individually enable each piece of data through a series of checkboxes.

What would be useful is if there were a defined minimum set of information, or even a way for the Client Site to request a certain set of information. And if that info is not available or the user does not want to share it, the login should fail.

Until that happens, OpenID is going to stay a nice idea with no real use in the real world.]]> http://www.chickenwingsw.com/scratches/programming/openid-is-useless/feed 0