ISSUES

So, it seems that there's an issue with Flash, such that if you're not loading a sound file from the local domain, you may or may not be able to get ID3 data. The SoundManager2 docs also say that this problem affects the frequency data, which is the basis for the visualizers.

This is clearly a problem.

The SM2 docs say that if you have a crossdomain.xml file, you can get around it. This is an issue with being able to load any file to play, so skreemr search is out, because I can't guarantee a crossdomain.xml. I'm going to use some files hosted on my webserver with a crossdomain.xml and see how that works. It kinda sucks, because I wanted to be able to do have visuals from any arbitrary URL, but I guess I can figure that out later. Getting it working is the priority.

PROJECT UPDATE

So, I haven't really said anything here about my project yet. Oops. I guess I've been too busy working on it :D

What I'm doing for my project is a music visualizer that can take requests, and can change the visualization based on tweets fired at an account set up for this.

The backend code is a webservice that gets the current @replies at the Death Star Visual account. This account will be able to take commands to choose which visualizer shows up next

The front-end code uses Soundmanager2 to transparently handle using Flash to load sounds, play them, and importantly, to get the frequency data as the sound plays that will drive the visualization.

The code will be custom drawing code to draw to the Canvas element. I know that this breaks in IE, but I'm going to look into some javascript library that makes it work. I think that IE 8 has canvas support too, so there's that.

There will also have to be some backend code to handle finding the URL to take requests, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet. A frontend to scrape Skreemr would be nice, but I think I'll start with just an input box.

So far, I have some twitter experiments up at this place over here. I've got the basic functionality for that working already. Next is Soundmanager. Then Canvas.

WEB SERVICE INFO

Just got some important web service info, for your dome.

So, when you make a web service, it'll test fine on your local machine, BUT it won't work when you deploy it, because GET and POST are disabled by default on a remote server.

There's just a little change that needs to go in your Web.config:

 <configuration>
  <system.web>
   <webServices>
    <protocols>
     <add name="HttpGet"/>
     <add name="HttpPost"/>
    </protocols>
   </webServices>
  </system.web>
 </configuration>


That's all there is to it!

Thanks to Steven Smith for this helpful article!

FROM CLASS

I'm doing this right now!

HELLO ALL!!!

DEALING WITH HUGE IMAGES

So, for the particular look and feel that I wanted for my page, I am using an enormous background image. I think that it's necessary, so don't hassle me about it. Anyway, I found that it was very awkward to have the page load in segments, so I thought I'd be cute and use some jQuery to make the page load less jarring.

What I have now, is that when the document is ready, $(document).ready(), we pass in a callback to hide all of the elements in the body. Then, when everything is loaded, $(window).load(), we pass in a callback to fade the page in, using jQuery's built in fadeIn() function.

I'm also using the fade-in code with my front page to stylize the loading of the latest blog entry. This code uses my MostRecentPost web service to get the HTML of the most recent blog post, and then inject it into the page at the appropriate location. To load the HTML, I use $.post("./MostRecentPost.asmx/GetPost", fn()) to AJAX the HTML in, then we use jQuery to find the right DOM element and inject the contents of the response into the page.