Flash developer wanted!
I'm looking to make a new, better LibraryThing blog widget. Have you seen those Flickr badges? I've got one over on the right, although it may not work*. If it's not working, here's a verbal description: The badge presents a grid of small photographs that come and go dynamically and randomly. From time to time a square of four photos fades out and is replaced by a larger photo, which then shrinks back to full one of the small squares. You can click on a photo at any time to jump to Flickr's page for that photo.
Anyway, I'd like to do something similar for LibraryThing books—a Flash-based dynamic widget. It need not act like the Flickr badge at all, but it should be dynamic and fun—a little moving window into someone's library. I would handle the server end.
I'm open to different ways of doing this. If there was enough interest I'd do a contest or sponsor an open-source project. But I lean toward a straight contract job at market rates. Rather than post the job somewhere, I thought I'd start here. That way the money can go to someone who loves books as much as I do.
What do people think of my plan? How do you think a dynamic widget should work? Are you interested in the job? Do you know anyone who might be interested?
* It's trying to show all the public photos tagged "librarything," but it just shows "no such photos." For the life of me I can't figure out why it's not working. The process is simplicity itself—I CAN'T be doing it wrong. Does anyone know what's wrong here? Maybe it's just a server issue and it'll be working soon.
Anyway, I'd like to do something similar for LibraryThing books—a Flash-based dynamic widget. It need not act like the Flickr badge at all, but it should be dynamic and fun—a little moving window into someone's library. I would handle the server end.
I'm open to different ways of doing this. If there was enough interest I'd do a contest or sponsor an open-source project. But I lean toward a straight contract job at market rates. Rather than post the job somewhere, I thought I'd start here. That way the money can go to someone who loves books as much as I do.
What do people think of my plan? How do you think a dynamic widget should work? Are you interested in the job? Do you know anyone who might be interested?
* It's trying to show all the public photos tagged "librarything," but it just shows "no such photos." For the life of me I can't figure out why it's not working. The process is simplicity itself—I CAN'T be doing it wrong. Does anyone know what's wrong here? Maybe it's just a server issue and it'll be working soon.
posted by Tim at 2:04 AM
20 Comments:
I'm not a programmer and don't play one on TV, but there is a good chunk of irregular HTML in the vicinity of that widget: a style element before it and some kind of blog-server element after it. Perhaps they are causing problems (or perhaps not).
As far as I can tell it's on Flickr's part. (You can see the iframe it creates and independently ask for the URL that it's using.) I did move the style declaration, although that could never affect the action of the script.
Tim, it seems to be Flickr. I just went through the create badge thing on their website (all public photos tagged with librarything_ and the preview on their site produced the same result. A little experimenting seems to indicate that only your own photos are showing in the badge, even when you specify all public photos.
PS - Forgot to mention that you have in invalid character in your post on Combining Tags. (See validation). The character's not displaying in the blog, but it is causing my RSS reader to trip up (and possibly other people's too). Thanks.
One day, I'm going to do all my thinking before I post. But I wanted some input on this (though I can't program Flash). If the Flash thing took as it's input an RSS feed, that would make it much easier for other users to write their own widgets, etc. The you could just rewrite the existing widget to output RSS instead of javascript if you feed it a "type=rss" parameter. Should cut down on the 'server-stuff' you need to do, too.
If the Flash thing took as it's input an RSS feed, that would make it much easier for other users to write their own widgets, etc. The you could just rewrite the existing widget to output RSS instead of javascript if you feed it a "type=rss" parameter. Should cut down on the 'server-stuff' you need to do, too.
That was my guess as well - but it does go back to the conversation ages ago on how many RSS feeds should be here...
Um, I hate reading blogs with the Flickr badges. The status bar never settles down to Done. It just keeps showing all the server communication. Drives me nuts.
If you want me to post a static logo with a link to your site? Great, sign me up. Something that moves? No thanks.
[To be fair, it isn't just the Flickr badges, I'm not a fan of spinning pennies either. Anything animated that cannot be controled by the end user makes me cringe.]
Here's another vote for being able to opt out of flashy gew-gaws.
--peripatetic
RE: flashy gewgaws
I agree. They are almost as annoying as going to a site and being unexpectedly blasted out of your chair by annoying music.
Yours for simplicity and elegance in design,
Lilithcat
I cast my lot with dodi, brian and lilithcat. The bright, shiny, and new toys are not always the best.
You're killing me—Flickr badges are great! Well, they'll be optional, and I certainly don't want them to be fast-moving or obnoxious.
Nobody has a Flash designer friend who wants to make some money?
Hey, if you don't like the idea there's no reason to post it on your blog. I think it'd be kinda funky ;)
Tim, I know somebody who may be suitable. I'll put him in touch.
There's a Flashblock extension for Firefox. Flash animations will display an 'f' logo which sort of acts as a start button. No more unwated ads, but you can still play the animations you want to see.
Down with "Flash-y gew-gaws." Keep it simple, Tim. We would rather have you work on the important stuff that needs to be fixed (LC Subjects, anyone?).
Aye, but if the job is outsourced as appears to be the intention there'll be no detraction from the time spent on 'real' LibraryThing work.
Personally, the only place I could use to force this gee-gaw on an unwilling public is Myspace, which is all about the forcing of gee-gaws really. At least this one would have some merit.
And don't ignore the publicity angle - flashy gee-gaws attract paying customers. Tim does appear to be running this as a spare time activity so the more lifetime memberships he can scam* out of innocents the better he'll be placed to fix up the proper issues.
*put this down to an English drunk's sense of humour, please!
Dennis, I think I love you!
I've installed the flash animation blocker and a few other extentions.
Thank you!
I have an account on livejournal but it says that the widget won't work there.
Hopefully that can changed soon because I would love to link to lj.
I'm no Flash developer, so I can't volunteer any programming skills, and I'm not entirely sure if I'd _use_ a Flash-based widget (I stick to the HTML widget for my Flickr photos)...
...but...
...my first visual idea of what a LibraryThing widget would be was a hand trailing over a shelf of books like someone walking through a bookstore/library (the hand would be static, the books scrolling by behind). Every so often, the hand would stop to pull out a book and tilt the cover forward, showing the cover image. Books without cover images would just have the title printed on the cover. After a brief pause, the book would go back on the shelf, and the 'scanning' would start back up.
Now, I have _no_ idea how easy/possible this would be to program, nor do I know if the covers or text would be readable in such a widget. That's just the visual idea that popped into my head. Feel free to use or ignore as you see fit! :)
The flickr badge appears to work if you drop &zg_person_id=41695872%40N00 from the URL that it's trying to fetch (third line of the javascript). I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that that is restricting the photos fetched to your own, and it's not finding any.
Me, I like the badge, too.
Hey - it's working . . .
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