sIFR 3: Updates

Life’s busy as usual, but it’s been too long since I last wrote about sIFR. Using the wonders of modern technology I’ve been writing and posting this from a train speeding towards Rotterdam, where I’ll be dropping by at the Xopus booth at ECM Plaza. Afterwards I’ll be going to a place-supposedly-unknown on a company holiday with Q42 and Xopus. (How cool is that, eh?! We’re hiring, too) So anyway, that’s just to tell you that I won’t be responding to questions in the next few days.

I’ve been working on sIFR on and off, so it’s moving slowly. That’s not to say nothing is happening, though! Since the last post there have been 40 new revisions. As usual they can be found through the nightlies. I’ve also created a RSS feed for the nightlies. This is the best way to stay up to date on development.

Which Version to Use?

An oft-asked question is which revision should be used. Since sIFR is under constant development, it’s always a good idea to use the most recent nightly. Using the feed you can keep an eye on bug fixes. sIFR is beta software. Even though I would totally recommend it over version 2, it is your responsibility to stay somewhat up to date and not miss out on important bug fixes. As usual, installing a new version means replacing the JavaScript file and re-exporting the Flash movie. It’s also a good idea to look at the changes between the revision you’re currently using and the new revision, you may have to change some other things.

Roadmap

So what’s the plan going forward? I intend to stabilize the current code base and release a second beta. After the beta is out I’ll be improving the speed of the code and writing documentation – this will likely result in some refactoring. Then one or two release candidates and we’re good to go for 3.0. I’m not giving dates because I honestly have no idea when this’ll be happening. You can view a list of known issues.

Documentation

The documentation is running behind on the code, for which I apologize. Right now I’d prefer to write code rather than text, so it’ll stay this way for a while. Of course you’re welcome to chip in on the wiki.

sIFR on Tour

Last Friday I gave two presentations about sIFR. One at Onstuimig in Amersfoort (they’re hiring too!) and one at Info.nl. In the presentations I talked about the history of sIFR and explained how version 3 works. You can read Tom Greuter’s report of my talk at Info.nl at their weblog. I had a great time giving these talks and meeting web people here in Holland, so I’d like to do this more often. Let me know if you’re interested!

Links

Some useful links regarding sIFR 3:

link | sifr3 | 11 October 2007, 11:33

Comments

I haven’t read your blog for a long time. But I must say sIFR sounds very interesting. I’ll spend some time investigating it.

Mark Monster | 12 October 2007, 07:08 | link
I am new to sifr 3… i hav a older Flash Version 7 and am unable to open your ver 3 beta flash files in the same… pls. explain… i am right now using sifr ver 2 but as i am unable to show sifr fonts in IE with a .shtml version am looking out for a solution. thought ver 3 would help… pls help

uma | 15 October 2007, 08:21 | link
Using a nightly build is great for development but what version is stable and tested. You should separate beta’s from official releases for guys who are implementing sIFR on production websites.

The last thing that you would want to find is that you not escape some reserved character or some other little bug on a version that gets put on a popular site. Not like that would be your problem but better to cover your ass for the hell of it.

Collin | 15 October 2007, 08:42 | link
uma, sIFR 3 requires Flash 8 or CS 3. There shouldn’t be a problem with .shtml files, but perhaps you should post an example in the forum so people can have a look.

Collin, that’s the responsibility of the company implementing sIFR. Typically there’ll be some time between the first implementation and the launch of the project. It’d be wise to update sIFR before launching and picking a new revision only if bugs have been fixed and no new radical features have been added that can’t be disabled. This won’t always be possible, but you should be able to get pretty close.

Mark Wubben | 15 October 2007, 19:42 | link
Hi! I get a format error when i´m trying to open your zip-files. It says: “An error occured attempting to expand ‘sifr-r318.zip’. Format error.” “Error #17540”

I´m using a Macbook Intel and the program “Stuffit” to open the file….

Patrik | 16 October 2007, 13:18 | link
If you right-click and choose “Open With” and then “BOM Archive Helper” does it unpack?

Mark Wubben | 16 October 2007, 18:53 | link
Thanks for the work on sIFR and the version clarification. I’ll start playing with version 3 in the next month, for now 2 will do.

Magento | 17 October 2007, 19:44 | link
Are there any plans to add the ability to include HTML (specifically Registered Trademarks ( ® ), Super Scripted items, etc.) in a sIFR replaced item? While I’d love to use this for headings within a website I’m building for a client, they have headings that do require these marks as it’s specifically referring to a trademarked or service marked item.

As always, this tool is great and any advances are much appreciated.

George Walters | 24 October 2007, 15:57 | link
George, while sub/superscript isn’t supported, you can use any character that Flash is capable of embedding. So ® should work just fine.

Mark Wubben | 24 October 2007, 18:33 | link
Just discovered a bug involving RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin 1.0 with FF2. I know, what am i doing with this plugin, but anyways. When this plugin (add-on) is enabled, Firefox either crashes or will only display one or two sifr headers. If it doesn’t crash it spawns a message saying that a script is taking too long to complete. Disabling the plugin fixed the problem. Sorry if this isn’t the place to report bugs, but didn’t see anywhere else.

Josh | 29 October 2007, 21:43 | link
Cheers, I’ll have a look.

Mark Wubben | 30 October 2007, 08:49 | link
I’m having trouble getting r318 to recognize · and/or · from my html. It appears to just ignore them entirely, even if I embed the character (by using shift+option+9) on my Mac.

Any ideas?

Jared Fager | 5 November 2007, 20:56 | link
It could be that Flash is unable to embed that specific character.

Mark Wubben | 6 November 2007, 09:09 | link
Hey, I’m having trouble with sIFR3 (r323) on Opera 9.21 (OSX). The siFR text is not wrapping at all, you can see the first few words up until the containing element ends.

James Crossett | 21 November 2007, 17:23 | link
Not sure what you mean by not wrapping, but the Flash-JS communication is broken in recent Opera versions which kinda breaks sIFR.

Mark Wubben | 21 November 2007, 20:13 | link
Hey, I got a problem with sIFR and display in Firefox. I’ve got two h2’s, one with CSS ‘display:block’, and the other CSS ‘display:none;’.

On a mouseover on another object, the first h2 display-style changes in none, the second h2 display-style changes in block. In IE this works, but in Firefox the hidden h2 is not set to Flash, so on a mouseover I don’t see anything. And on mouseout everything is gone!

Do you know what the problem is / how I can fix this? Thanks.

Rick | 30 November 2007, 15:24 | link
You cannot replace non-displayed elements. On the first display switch you’ll have to replace the display:none element.

Mark Wubben | 1 December 2007, 13:59 | link
Josh, I looked into this today, and yep I saw the problem. However it appears to be a conflict between the plugin and Flash. From the Flash 9 Release Candidate release notes:

The Real Player 11 beta is known to cause issues with some Flash and Flex content. Content may fail to render, or the browser may crash. If you have Real Player 11 beta installed, please disable the add-on to ensure issues you encounter are with Flash Player and not the Real Player beta.

So the issue is known, but not entirely fixed.

Mark Wubben | 1 December 2007, 16:13 | link
Hi Mark, I’m mailing you about a possible bug, but whether it’s the flashplayer or sifr 2, I don’t know yet. I”ve got sifr implemented on many sites, and i discovered today that from flash version 9,0,115,0, sifr will not follow the hrefs when i use it in an unordered list. You kan check it here in an example site: http://www.degrootencompagnons.nl/ Did we make a mistake in the html? I’m getting a bit worried, as I’ve got a dozen or so sites live….

Mark | 5 December 2007, 18:14 | link
The site isn’t working that great on Firefox/Mac. Could you make a post in the forum?

Mark Wubben | 6 December 2007, 08:18 | link
When using “fitexactly” with inline sifr-replaced elements on firefox/WIN, there is a flicker for a microsecond (on load) when the flash movie resizes to the correct dimensions. any workaround or fixes?

And also any way to style sifr’d links on tab focus?

Thanks in advaance. Tunde.

Tunde Ashafa | 6 December 2007, 20:03 | link
Aside from specifying ratios, you can’t really prevent the flickering. You can’t style on focus either (at least, not without a lot of custom hacking).

Mark Wubben | 6 December 2007, 20:25 | link
Mark -

Any thoughts on providing some sort of tool to generate sIRF3 files for those of us without Flash? (see a much earlier reply of yours along these lines: http://novemberborn.net/sifr3/look-into-the-future, comment #29)

Or maybe someone else knows of an “unofficial” one?

Thanks, - Vince

Vince | 6 December 2007, 22:59 | link
Hi Vince, I’m still not really interested in building that rather than working on sIFR itself.

Mark Wubben | 8 December 2007, 20:45 | link
Is this available for download anywhere on this site? I can’t find it.

Frank Jonen | 11 December 2007, 07:47 | link
ok found it. btw D O W N L O A D. I can create a button for you if you like. 30 minutes searching on your site already tripled the cost on what I would have spent on donating.

Frank Jonen | 11 December 2007, 07:52 | link
Mark: Have you considered hosting SIFR on Google Code or Sourceforge? It might help you harness the community interest in SIFR.

Colin Scroggins | 16 December 2007, 19:27 | link
Mark, I know that sIFR is supposed to degrade properly with Flashblock but I’m finding it’s not. I’m testing on FF3b2 on OSX. Am I the only one?

Jonathan | 19 December 2007, 23:31 | link
Sorry, a little more detail in comment 28 would probably help :)

I’m finding that in Firefox (with Flashblock) sIFR is trying to use the .sIFR-alternate class and the Flash element is being replaced by a tiny 1x1 (ish) pixel square. This square is actually clickable and when clicked, the sIFR Flash element pops up and displays properly. Albeit, it’s not actually degrading at this point.

Jonathan | 19 December 2007, 23:35 | link
Hi,

Before all sorry for my poor english (i’m french)

I have 2 probleme with sifr3 (last nighly build r344) it’s the first time i use sifr3

sIFR.wmode(transparent); make all disapear :’( and some h3 and h3 stay black.

can you help me to fix it ? blog.imwgfx.com

thx a lot

Ifmy | 20 December 2007, 17:19 | link
lfmy, I’m going to have to ask you to post this question to the forum. This is not the right place for support questions.

Mark Wubben | 20 December 2007, 20:12 | link
Jonathan, cheers. I’ve reported this to the FlashBlock crew.

Mark Wubben | 26 December 2007, 19:53 | link
Hi Mark,

Just downloaded your latest nightly build r358, and when I try to compile a new swf I get 3 compile-time errors. Can you look into this?

I can try fixing them, but I think you should take a look.

Cheers, NH

Nir Hodara | 31 December 2007, 19:22 | link
Just noticed you released another two versions, and they work fine. Thanks,

NH

Nir Hodara | 31 December 2007, 19:36 | link
I am having problmes with the New sIFR 3 Beta 2, I am using it on this website http://newweb.l22.co.uk/ but in Internet explorer 7, when i overlay an absolute position div over it the text disappears… can anyone help? email me at richard - l22.co.uk

Richard Leishman | 1 January 2008, 13:12 | link
sIFR3-r370 successfully installed on a new site.

at first i had some problems with the advanced anti-aliasing because of the outside cutoff, but i used “Options.as” to force sIFR (as suggested) to use the animation anti-aliasing and now i am a happy camper.

thanks to everyone who‘ve put his efforts into this great piece of web-typography!

Manuel Martensen | 24 January 2008, 20:42 | link
I’ve noticed the same bug as Josh. One of my colleagues had to reinstall Real Player with the automatic add-on of the Browser Record Plugin 1.0 and it caused one of our sites with sIFR to crash instantly in Firefox. Glad to get to the bottom of it but not really keen on the only solution being just to disable it.

We’re about to start the build of a major site using sIFR and a bit concerned about what the implications of this bug might be. I appreciate that it’s the fault of Real Player and not sIFR but I just wondered what others thought. And was interested to know how many other people may have this add-on installed.

Sorry if this post is in the wrong place

Kathryn Bastow | 25 January 2008, 12:58 | link
Kathryn, if I understand the problem correctly, it’s not just sIFR sites, but all sites using Flash content which crash the browser. Is this correct?

It may be possible to detect the presence of that plugin and not run sIFR if it’s installed – but if it crashes the browser when visiting any page with Flash installed, what’s the point really?

Mark Wubben | 26 January 2008, 09:56 | link
I having no luck getting sifr3-r372 to start. I am new to this, but firebug says: sIFR is not defined [Break on this error] sIFR.activate(glcsifr);

What does this error mean? Also is it okay to increase the jpg quality setting in flash export for 80 to say 95 or 100? Any difference other than size?

Jefbak | 31 January 2008, 21:52 | link
Jef, that’s because you’re loading sifr-config.js before sifr.js. As for the JPEG settings, no idea. Why not give it a try?

Anyway, I’m closing comments here since this post is outdated.

Mark Wubben | 31 January 2008, 22:31 | link