Barklund.org » Konstellation

iPad detection the right way

Barklund — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:22:34 +0000

The famous large flat thing slightly more useful than a rock

Here at Konstellation, we just launched the PageGangster for mobile devices including iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Android. I developed the clientside for this in JavaScript and we launched it with automatic user agent detection serverside. But this had some problems.

I read some info about this and conclude, that some iPad user agent strings include the word “iPhone” and some users of all types of devices fake their user agent strings.

But then I read on the above link, that no matter what, the navigator.platform attribute would always be set to the right type of device. So in the regular web version of the publication viewer we have now (which uses Flash), we have added a JavaScript detecting if the serverside script did not redirect the client properly:

if (navigator && navigator.platform && navigator.platform.match(/^(iPad|iPod|iPhone)$/)) {
	location.replace(location.href+"?force-mobile");
}

It seems simple, but solves the problem of some users seeing the dreaded blue box instead of their publication optimized for their device.

On another node, this experience of developing a web application for the iPad/iPhone was very rewarding and I gained many insights, which might spawn other posts. And if you have any questions about it in any way, feel free to ask here – but please do not submit bug reports about the PageGangster for mobile – do that via info@pagegangster.com instead.

GTween is the bomb for rapid prototyping

Barklund — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:11:55 +0000

I’ve been using tweens a lot recently – for example while developing the small campaign site for the new Peugeot 206+ and Peugeot Blue Drive campaign (in Danish). I used GTween and GTweenTimeline to a great extent to really make it easy for me to implement and update.

One of the main things, that I conceptually did in a different way on this site is, that I created tweens before I needed them. Actually, I created tween objects without even knowing what I wanted to tween at the time.

E.g. the “sound on/off” button (which unfortunately was removed just before launch) was implemented in a very simple way. On the class I kept a reference to a tween-object, and I created an instance for this as soon as the sound started playing (in continuous loop):

var background_music:Sound = new BackgroundMusic();
var sc:SoundChannel = background_music.play(0,100000); // to infinity and beyond
soundtween = new GTween(sc.soundTransform, 0.3);

In this way, I can simply make the sound start fading by changing the volume-attribute on the proxy object of the soundtween-property:

soundtween.proxy.volume = 0; // fade out

Though, as some might remember, you cannot simply change the volume-attribute directly on the soundTransform-property of your SoundChannel. You need to copy the SoundTransform instance to a local variable, change the volume and re-assign the soundTransform-property. However, GTween takes care of this in a very simple way:

soundtween.setAssignment(sc, "soundTransform");

This is not only useful for sounds but also for all the other transform objects like DisplayObject.transform.colorTransform, DisplayObject.transform.matrix and other objects that require re-assignment before having an effect.

I will furthermore in additional posts describe how I have used GTweenTimeline for rapid prototype development with very nice transitions.

No related posts.

My new job: Web Guru at Konstellation

Barklund — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:02:54 +0000

After having worked at Shockwaved, TBWA\PLAY and TBWA\Denmark through 7 years (same company, different name), I finally grew the nuts to find a new job. Actually the new job found me, as it was a bunch of former colleagues at Konstellation, who had started up 2-3 years ago and now have grown into an interesting company. I started here May 1st, 2009. They even blogged me (in Danish).

My primary work will be somewhat the same just more hands-on with projects and not too much specification and handing it over to external parties for actual implementation. This will be a comeback to ActionScript for me and a lot of other practical programming, which will come hand in hand with this blog (and the Konstellation blog) to be used for a lot of posts about my experiences with different frameworks, methodologies, libraries, languages etc.

No related posts.