Release Notes

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4577.28555 - July 13, 2012
Today's release resolves the state variable naming issue in buttons and the image backslash issue reported earlier today.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4583.24620 - 07/19/2012

This release

1) Fixes a host of small copy and paste bugs.

2) Enhances the core JavaScript files to increase efficiency of execution.

3) Adds a new button on the main menu that will refresh the support files in your projects. When you click on this button it will copy the updated CSS, Images and JavaScript from the Sample Project into your active project. You'll want to do this once every time a new version of the designer is released.

4) Adds a new Movie Browser object as one of the insertable objects. This will greatly reduce the amount of time required to build a movie browser page. The object supports paging using left and right swipes. It is also fully configurable. If you find this type of object really useful then look for similar objects for Music, Netflix, etc. Feedback is welcomed.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4584.28081 - 07/20/2012

Fixed a major bug in file save affecting images. Any scene with a Weather image on it would be messed up on a file save prior to this released.

Adds the 210 Font Awesome icons to the list of available button icons. Seems the Pictos font does not work on all Android tablets. Font Awsome has similar icons.

[ronsatter]

Dave,

Nice work on the new Movie Browser object. Looking forward to the Netflix and MusicLobby versions. I don't do HTML, but I can appreciate the amount of work it must take to build an object. Especially ones which give users options for look and function!

Question:

Is it possible to integrate all the great library objects from the existing ML Libraries into this Designer?

Ron

[CinemarDave]

Thanks, that one was a bit of a challenge. The good news is that Music and Netflix are clones of the first with just variable name changes.

What objects are you looking for from the old libraries? There is no easy conversion from Flash to JavaScript but anything is doable with a little effort.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4587.19501 - 07/23/2012

This version adds an updated Pictos font that should be more compatible with Android devices.
Cleans up some of the underlying css styles.
Cleans up some of the JavaScript functions.
Removes the noise from the index.html file when creating a new project.
Turns on the Shift-Click and Ctrl-Click selectors while in design mode.

The most important feature of this update is the new page loading metaphor. Pages are now loaded by dynamically injecting the html from the new page into the existing page. This will allow for quicker page refreshes and far less screen flicker. Please make sure that you also update MLServer to the version (4.0.4587.28140) that was released today too. Since the new page updating required a change to some of the code in MLServer's user web server.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4588.15935 - 07/24/2012

Today's update
Fixes the copy and paste of multiple items bug.
Adds the ability to create a new Scene or Overlay from the main menu.
The File Tree will remember it's state when a new file or project is added.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4589.29930 - 07/25/2012

Fixed issues with state variables in buttons that were discovered while building out the sample DVDLobby scenes.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4594.24561 - 07/30/2012

This version adds a HTML 5 Video Player as a new insertable object. This will be used for things like watching your movies on the device or viewing live feeds from security cameras. The sample web apps show this object being used to stream movie trailers from our database server. See the attached image.

The Scripts.js and styles.css files have been updated to reflect the changes needs to support the video object.

The logic for state variables on button objects has been reworked to be more flexible. You can now make the background of a button transparent and use the label text as the visible portion of the button. If any of your existing scenes were using state variables in buttons then you should redo those buttons to make sure they get the new markup.

You will also see the first releases of the new sample iPad and Android projects available as separate downloads. Each of these apps currently have a fully functional DVDLobby emulation that shows all of the available insertable objects in play. Both of these apps were completely done using the Designer so there is good confidence that the Designer is maturing nicely.

In order to make use of the DVDLobby section of these apps you will have to make sure you also update DVDLobby and Content Manager to the versions that were released today too. DVDLobby adds some additional server variables that these apps require.

Finally, if you want to experiment with viewing the movie trailers then you will have to use Content Manager to refresh your movie metadata with the latest updates from our database. After installing the new content manager select the "Add Movies" menu option then the "Refresh Movie Data" option. When the new dialog is displayed click start and let it refresh the movie data. It will only fill in the missing data. It does not overwrite any existing artwork that you may have.

Over the weekend we added nearly 26,000 movie trailers to our movie database for all the popular movies from 1925 to present. The trailers are not downloaded to your server PC. They are streamed off our master database server.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4601.25644 - 08/06/2012

This version adds two new insertable objects. A Music browser and a scrolling text box.
The number of overlays for a page has been increased from 5 to 7.
The Javascript support file names have been normalized by removing the version numbers in the name.

The sample Android and iPad web apps have also been updated. (Version 4.0.0.1) Both now contain a complete MusicLobby section. You'll see the new Music browser in action here along with the scrolling text box in the lyrics overlay.

Here's what the music section should look like.

NOTE: You need to upgrade to the latest MLServer and MusicLobby versions as they have been updated too.

[indecision]

Looking really nice Dave!

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4604.29632 - 08/10/2012

Adds new Netflix insertable object
Adds text scroller as an insertable object
Fixes a bug that put the Designer into an infinite loop if a server variable had mismatched {{ }} in it.

The iPad and Android sample apps have been refreshed. Both apps now contain complete media sections. There are sample scenes for all the media apps. See the following.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4609.23546 - 08/14/2012

This version
1) Adds the right-click "Select All" and "Select None" functions in the editor.
2) Modifies the ctrl-click Select function so that it will toggle a selection.
3) Updates the default index.html file used when creating a new project.
4) Will dynamically use web sockets for server variable updates if the host browser supports it.

Web sockets is a new HTML5 technology that allows a browser to open a permanent connection to the host server. Once the communication channel is open the server can then dynamically send data to the client when it needs to. This means no more polling for updates in the client. You will notice page updates are a lot smoother and faster when web sockets are enabled.

How do you know if web sockets are in use? The sample apps have been updated so that the Home button will be green when web sockets are in use. Otherwise it will stay white. Not all devices currently support web sockets. All iOS devices currently do. Android added web sockets in its Jellybean (4.1) release. So most Android devices in the wild do not support web sockets at this time. My Asus ePad doesn't by my iPad does.

Please make sure you also install the version of MLServer that was released today as this is the version that enables web sockets on the server. We are using port 8181 for web socket communication.

The sample apps were updated to version 4.0.0.3. Mainly to add support for the web sockets and Home button changes. A few minor bugs that were discovered since the .2 release were also fixed.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4610.24478 - 08/15/2012

Fixes a small bug in the web sockets JavaScript code.
Install the new MLServer that was released today also.

The Sample web apps have been updated to add new scenes for the RSS update that was released today.

[CinemarDave]

Version 4.0.4615.26726 - 08/20/2012

This update
1) Resolves the issues trying to set individual background images and colors for scenes.
2) Adds a new Generic Progress bar insertable object. This is a general purpose progress bar that allows you to specify min and max scale values. You can also define up to 7 different background colors in the gradient. Height and width are fully customizable and you have the ability to rotate the object a full 360 degrees. You can see this object in use on the Weather Pollen scene.
3) Adds the ability to rotate image objects a full 360 degrees.
4) Updates the underlying JavaScript to support the new objects.
5) Resolves an issue where scenes with more than 5 embedded overlays did not get saved properly

The sample iPad and Android apps have also been updated. You will now find a complete Weather and Security Camera scenes. The Camera scene will really only work well with V4 video drivers. Currently there is only a Toshiba V4 camera driver. More will be released soon.