Category: dev

Hooray its customize day!

Wow, so much cool stuff today:

I just installed a fresh (obviously released yesterday) Find Toolbar Tweaks-version for Firefox 3 from Joji Ikeda. That addon is really a helper highlighting you every occurrence of your search in Firefox. It was already in Firefox 2 but it got outdated for the time being. I remember that there was an occurrence counter … maybe he adds it later.. dunno: More:

I was already digging in gmails DOM to maybe write a greasemonkey script that widens the darn message-box when reading and replying. but as I’m too dumb for that Raffles beat me to it with the userscript: Gmail Full Width 2

btw: On lifehacker – a nerdish website about customizing, tools, environment, fitness and cheapass stuff (whatta punchout combo!) – a best of the best list was just posted. “Best Digital Photo Organizer”, “Best Instant Messenger”, “Best Desktop Media Player”…. All collected over some months only voted by the users of the site. One special contestant triumphed at 3 disciplines:

Best GTD Application: Pen and Paper
Best Note-Taking Tool: Pen and Paper
Best To-Do List Manager: Pen and Paper

Okok 3 quite similar things and I don’t know whats the main difference between “GetThingsDone Application” and “To-Do List Manager” but very interesting that this made it to the tops so widely. 😀

So go download your copy of Pen and Paper now!!

YouTube Theater Black2

I finally created my first Greasemonkey userscript!: 😀
YouTube Theater Black2

And if you install it youtube looks like ->

OKOK, I didn’t do it from scratch. I’ve seen the yet a little puny but cool . And the there included YouTube Theater. But that cuts away a little too much in my opinion. Then there is YouTube Theater Black. It already keeps the stuff but leaves it cluttered around after resizing the player and Text that is still written in black of course is no longer visible. Ok Now I just hacked this one with a little help from FireBug.:

  • like the others do: enlargens the player (a little bigger in my version. you know size matters)
  • like the others do: hides crap
  • background black
  • black text white
  • places the boxes nicely far under the player
  • removes the background of the searchbar

So still lots of Kudos to : Erik Nomitch (YouTube Theater) and Ivan Ivanovic (YouTube Theater Black)

Btw: The video I linked in the image: Very very funny and from Paul Fenwick! I wish all presentations would be made up like that. I wish I could do then when talking about scripting so people don’t hurt their heads no more on the table edges when dozing off.
There are other ones on his youtube page but very funny too was : SweeperBot 2000.

YouTube Theater Black2

Ich hab endlich mal ein Greasemonkey userscript geschrieben!: 😀
YouTube Theater Black2

Und wenn mans sich installiert sieht Youtube so aus ->

OKOK, Ich habs nun nicht komplett alleine gemacht. Ich hab mir mal angesehen (Firefox extension) und da gibts schon YouTube Theater (anderes userscript) mit drin. Allerdings hauts ganz schön viel weg. Und dann gibts da noch YouTube Theater Black. Das lässt die meinermeinung nach interessanten Elemente noch drin aber lässt sie einfach so rumliegen nachdem der Player größer skaliert wurde. Und schwarzer Text bleibt einfach schwarz. Kann man natürlich nich mehr lesen. Ok Nun hab ich das Ding einfach ma nen bißchen weitergehackt mithilfe von FireBug.:

  • wie bei den anderen: Macht den Player größer (nochn bißchen größer in meiner Version. Ihr wisst schon Es kommt auf die Größe an ;] )
  • wie bei den anderen: versteckt uninteressanten Dreck
  • Hintergrund schwaz
  • schwazer Text weiss
  • verschiebt die Bedienelemente vernünftig angeordnet weit unter den Player
  • versteckt den Hintergrund der Suchleiste

Vielen Dank trotzdem an: Erik Nomitch (YouTube Theater) & Ivan Ivanovic (YouTube Theater Black)

Btw: Das Video das ich in dem Bild verlinkt hab is sehr sehr geil! Von Paul Fenwick. Ich wünschte alle solche Präsentationen wären so aufgemacht. Wünschte ich könnt das auch, so daß die Studenten sich nicht mehr die Köpfe am Tisch aufschlagen wenn sie beim einschlafen abrutschen.
Auf Pauls youtube Seite sind noch andere videos. Sehr lustig war noch : SweeperBot 2000.

blogging about Maya Mel

Well.. as I want to use the site as platform for my MEL-publications and babbling about that I think I might introduce this a little. For you that don’t even know what I’m talking about: Don’t bother reading on :]

Maya is a great tool. Of course its not perfect. But there it reveals another greatness: Its own built in scripting language MEL. As Maya is actually almost completely build by MEL itself its really mighty in Maya.

So when working I asways come across stuff to add and change, making my workflow more and more efficient. Quite often my colleagues and even our companys production pipeline tool profits from these efforts. After years of scripting there is still a lot to learn but I already know quite some about making games with Maya.

I developed myself a kind of manifest to make my tools like. Its not always possible to fulfil all rules and its never finished. But here I think its a very good place to write it down and maybe amend it in the future.

Ok. What can I do to make a tool most enjoyable in Maya:

  • give it a nice selfexplaining name (eriXSuperTool)
  • make it multi-name safe (`ls -sl -l`)
  • make it quite fool safe (at least when its possible to mess stuff up)
  • make stuff context-sensitive (if applicable, if not: )
  • make stuff optional
  • select Maya Window after the action (simple custom windows don’t have hotkeys in Maya, if MayaWindow is selected after the action you can undo, scrubb or pan the view without extra clicking)
  • make UIs sizable if helpful (e.g. for sliders)
  • make values persistent if helpful (if there are many settings to do)
  • close on action if helpful (maybe even optional)
  • auto-convert selection if helpful (context-sensitivity as well, if a tool modifies vertices, why not let the user select faces to modify the verices of the faces)

I’d love to read comments about this. Maybe you have other nice ideas about that of critics. OK. Now I can post a script :]