News archive
JPEG Saver 4.7
This is the first released version of JPEG Saver compiled with Visual C++ 2010. The previous version was compiled using the 2003 compiler, so I've avoided adding too many new features into this version in case the compiler change has caused any problems. The change of compiler also meant an update to the latest version of the DirectX 9 SDK, so this version relies on “d3dx9_43.dll” instead of “d3dx9_39.dll” - so I recommend ticking the “DirectX update” option in the installer.
I've improved the on-screen feedback in this version, so when you press one of the interactive keys that does something behind the scenes you will see a message in the middle of the screen that fades out after a couple of seconds. Pausing and resuming will display the standard pause and play icons in the bottom-right of the screen too.
There are a few new interactive features added - the “s” key will create a shortcut to the current file, and the “1”-“5” keys along the top of the main keyboard will set the image's rating, as used by Windows 7 and others. Rating is disabled by default since it modifies the image files, so you must enable it in the new interactive options dialog that is available via a button on the main tab. You can also set where the shortcuts are created in this dialog, instead of creating them on the desktop. The other new interactive option is a “help page” - a list of all the keys will be displayed for 10 seconds when you press the “h” key.
TagCanvas 1.19.1
There are two new options and one bug fixed in this minor update to TagCanvas.
The new weightSizeMin and weightSizeMax options can
be used to specify the minimum and maximum font sizes to use when using weighted
tags. This is instead of the normal method of determining the font size from
the tag itself or its data attribute.
The bug fixed in this version is the targetting of frames and iframes, which wasn't working before. One thing to note if you really must use a frameset is that IE9 puts the frame documents into quirks mode if you do not set the correct DOCTYPE for the frameset document. In quirks mode, TagCanvas doesn't work - the canvas element is not recognised.
The updated files are available from the TagCanvas page.
SVGGraph 2.10
This updated version contains a whole load of changes, and a few new graph types
too. The new CylinderGraph is shown below, and there are also new
StackedBar3DGraph and GroupedBar3DGraph classes for
3D versions of the stacked and grouped bar graphs.
The shading to add depth to the sides of the cylinders in the graph above is
also switched on by default in the updated 3D pie graphs. They both use a
horizontal gradient which can be modified with the new
depth_shade_gradient option. I've improved gradient handling
throughout the library, so gradients can now be used as the background for the
whole graph, for the grid area, and also for the legend and tooltips.
One huge change in this version is that I've set a fixed default colour set for the bars, pie slices, etc. In earlier versions the colours were chosen at random from the list of named colours supported in the SVG specification, but quite often the colours selected were not very helpful. The new colours are blue, red, yellow, green, orange and the same again in a darker shade.
Using the new TagCanvas centreFunc option
I've put together a new page that explains how to use the new
centreFunc option that arrived in version 1.19. It's not the kind
of thing that everyone will want to use, but it should be useful for some
people.
If you want to know what I'm talking about, visit the new centre callback function page, and everything will become clear.
TagCanvas 1.19
There are quite a few new features in this version of TagCanvas - more than I had intended, in fact. There are two new functions, two new shapes, several new options and a whole new control method. And some bugs fixed too.
The cloud above is an example of the new dragControl option in use.
I've attempted to make it iPad/iPhone compatible, but not having an iPad or
iPhone to play with means that I've had to do my testing with XCode's IOS
simulator. I've tested drag control with the Android emulator and the Windows
Phone emulator too, but the results are not encouraging. For some more details,
I've added a page about the new drag controls.
The new functions I mentioned are for pausing and resuming the cloud animation. Since there are now a grand total of three functions, I've added a function reference page explaining how to use the functions in both the stand-alone and jQuery plugin versions of TagCanvas.