I'm trying to use the PictureChooser plugin, specifically the ChoosePictureFromLibrary method, and I have a few questions.
Is it possible to show more than just .jpg? I'd like at least .png as well, though maybe other picture types too.
Is it possible not to resize chosen pictures? The maxPixelDimension parameter seems to always resize the image to that size.
Is it possible to have access to the original file name of the chosen picture?
The PictureChooser is really quite a small plugin - it really only has one small class per platform - https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross/tree/v3.1/Plugins/Cirrious/PictureChooser
Because of this, the easiest route forwards for your specialist needs is probably to "branch" this small part of the code (by repo-forking or just by "copy and paste"). You should then find it straightforward to get hold of filenames, to avoid resizing, and to add any other features you need on the platforms you need to support.
If you create features that you think others may want, then mvx would love to see them open sourced back to the community - but that's not priority 1 - instead, the most important thing is making your app awesome and shipping it.
Related
I'd like to have the users desktop or whatever windows they have open show through the background with a slight bit of opacity. I did a quick mockup in photoshop to try and illustrate what I'm aiming for
I'm fine with using a bit of jQuery if need be, but would prefer to keep the foot print light. I don't really want to add a ton of overhead just for a fancy effect.
No. You cannot make the browser window translucent.
This is completely impossible... using current APIs. It's theoretically possible that one might be implemented in the future, but for now, the best you can do is transparency to the user desired color.
I doubt this is possible since it requires the actual browser window to be transparent, which is almost surely not the case.
Maybe with some plugin for the browser, but not by code in your website.
No, this is impossible.
99.99% of the time, if you've never seen it before, there's a good reason*.
*EDIT: These comments are specific to web programming... not meant to apply to the sum total of human innovation.
The term is Form Opacity, and you have to have access to the applications source code, in most cases to manipulate it. Several programs already have this as a standard or hidden feature, i.e. Trillian, and iCalenderLite, to name a couple.... Windows 7 allows you to do it to any open window.
form.opacity
EDIT: Answer has been getting downvoted without comment, so I added the OP's and my additional remarks here.
Would this still be out of bounds for a website to change though? FREX I couldn't have my website turn form opacity on (just for site X) if it wasn't already? – aslum Jun 7 '11 at 23:33
For that, I would have to say "not possible", unless it was a "live" control, loaded by the browser to begin with. You most likely would not be able to do it on a "by site" basis only. And even though most user initiated events are "technically" replicable via script or code, proper security levels, would render such an event, inaccessible to outside manipulation. – tahwos Jun 8 '11 at 22:04
I am seeing a lot of this is impossible. The correct answer is currently mostly impossible ;) Using programming, you can create a window or application that is transparent. I have never done anything of the sort, but I have used several programs that allow you to control transparency.
My best bet for controlling opacity of a window is DirectX. So If you were to make a browser with DirectX, you could control the opacity of the window by reading the CSS.
So basicly, you could do it your self, much like mozilla firefox reads their own css (-moz-radius) just make your own DirectX based Web browser. I could see someone getting a lot of support on a project like that.
I am using Sikulix for UI testing, the problem is that when ever there are changes in UI I need to replace all the images which got changed using the IDE and I need to again describe the actions ( accuracy, click position) which is becoming a sort of overhead in my case. Is there any work around by which I can simply replace the new UI images in the project folder with the same old name ( It wont work directly as the new coordinates might be different + the new image should be of same resolution that of older one)
PS: I have completely understood that sikuli works at pixel level, but still curious to find out if any one has found a work around.
Unfortunately, you will need to recreate the images. What could make it a bit easier, is if you had more descriptive names than the ones generated by Sikuli IDE automatically. Keep in mind these are just image files stored on your PC. If you have names like button1.png, button1.png, etc.., it will make your life easier.
This may or may not work for you depending on your project development:
In my case, the changes that occur at times reduces the image similarity from say 0.9 defined to ~0.7. Now, rather than going ahead to replace the image with a totally new image where i would have to manipulate the offsets as well now, I capture the same region image at 0.7 similarity and replace it. You can easily create a script for this and even integrate it into your project. Use find to figure out the matching region and capture to take the screenshot of the area. The image caught using this way will now again match at 100% for you also, you have rid yourself from the headache of adjusting the targetoffset. Hope this helps.
I've been asked to make an interactive site map for a local development which has a few houses on it, so users can click on the relevant house within an aerial site layout, and see it's details listed, and whether or not it's sold.
Staff need to be able to mark houses as 'sold'.
It's been a while since I've done anything like this - in the past I would have used flash and had the sold status updated via actionscript and php, but things have moved on. What are some of the most popular methods now?
I've included an example below which is a lot larger scale than what I'm looking to do, but the same principle. I can't work out how they did it though, and I'd really like it to be vector so it can be zoomed into without losing quality, plus have the option to animate things like the popup bubbles etc if the tech allows.
Also, I'd probably be looking to include this in a Kirby CMS site, and hopefully have the updating done through that, but it's fairly flexible.
Thoughts appreciated!
https://www.redrow.co.uk/developments/the-sycamores-162433/interactive-site-map-4803v1
we have website with slideshow control which display a set of images. Client requested to "protect" them from downloading. I know about simple ways to do this:
Disable right click
Put transparent overlay on top of the real image
Use CSS background
Use canvas
Watermarking
etc...
all of these are only for "casual" users - those ones who are not aware of Dev Tools in chrome.
Are there other ways to "protect" images? The only approach I could think of is to develop custom flash (or silverlight) plugin which will send image ID to the webserver and receive "encoded" byte stream - and decode it and display it. Am I over-complicating this? are there other ways to prevent image download?
if flash plugin + webservice approach is the right way to go - are there any ready-to-go solutions, or I should develop everything from scratch?
Thank you.
THere's no way to protect your image against being downloaded. Your users have to download it to view it. Your proprietary player will fail too if someone uses screen capture tools.
EDIT:
The best thing you can to is to make the reuse (I assume you don't want your visitors to use it elsewhere?) of the image as difficult as possible. Watermarks might be a good start to deter some people because they don't have the resource and expertise to de-watermark. Or you can embed steganography as a proof of origin so you can sue them afterward. Again, it's all about trade off between cost to do this and benefit from this.
It's impossible to prevent people from downloading your images. But, I want to offer another perspective -- you can create images that people like to view and play with but don't necessarily want to download.
Here's an example:
xkcd: Click and Drag
If the images have an intrinsic value that the client wants to protect, yet has to allow potential purchasers to view prior to purchase, then you need to minimize the value of the pre-purchase image. Only displaying thumbnails, adding visible watermarks, and otherwise distorting the image in ways that humans can easily see past, but will still see are usual here.
Then there is the issue of protecting the post-purchase images. Invisible watermarking (one example here, another here) can allow the customer to purchase and use the image as you allow, but if the image appears somewhere, used in an inappropriate manner, you can use the ID embedded invisibly (to a human) to identify just which customer violated the Terms of Use. These watermarks may even survive a degree of image manipulation and even digital photography of the image on a monitor.
If any user of the site has to be able to view the full, un-devalued image, you could add an unique ID linked to their IP address to the image as it is delivered to the slideshow control, so that each user receives a unique "copy", and you can trace misuse of an image to an IP address (and date, as many users have dynamic IPs, but ISPs keep records of IP assignments over time) for potential prosecution.
So I was looking at the facebook HTML with firebug, and I chanced upon this image
and came to the conclusion that facebook uses this large image (with tricky image positioning code) rather than many small ones for its graphical elements. Is this more efficient than storing many small images?
Can anybody give any clues as to why facebook would do this.
These are called CSS sprites, and yes, they're more efficient - the user only has to download one file, which reduces the number of HTTP requests to load the page. See this page for more info.
The problem with the pro-performance viewpoint is that it always seems to present the "Why" (performance), often without the "How", and never "Why Not".
CSS Sprites do have a positive impact on performance, for reasons that other posters here have gone into in detail. However, they do have a downside: maintainability; removing, changing, and particularly resizing images becomes more difficult - mostly because of the alterations that need to be made to the background-position-riddled stylesheet along with every change to the size of a sprite, or to the shape of the map.
I think it's a minority view, but I firmly believe that maintainability concerns should outweigh performance concerns in the vast majority of cases. If the performance is necessary, then go ahead, but be aware of the cost.
That said, the performance impact is massive - particularly when you're using rollovers and want to avoid that effect you get when you mouseover an image then the browser goes away to request the rollover. It's appropriate to refactor your images into a sprite map once your requirements have settled down - particularly if your site is going to be under heavy traffic (and certainly the big examples people have been pulling out - facebook, amazon, yahoo - all fit that profile).
There are a few cases where you can use them with basically no cost. Any time you're slicing an image, using a single image and background-position tags is probably cheaper. Any time you've got a standard set of icons - especially if they're of uniform size and unlikely to change. Plus, of course, any time when the performance really matters, and you've got the budget to cover the maintenance.
If at all possible, use a tool and document your use of it so that whoever has to maintain your sprites knows about it. http://csssprites.org/ is the only tool I've looked into in any detail, but http://spriteme.org/ looks seriously awesome.
The technique is dubbed "css sprites".
See:
What are the advantages of using CSS
Sprites in web applications?
Performance of css sprites
How do CSS sprites speed up a web
site?
Since other users have answered this already, here's how to do it, and another way is here.
Opening connections is more costly than simply continuing a transfer. Similarly, the browser only needs to cache one file instead of hundreds.
yet another resource: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/27/the-mystery-of-css-sprites-techniques-tools-and-tutorials/
One of the major benefits of CSS sprites is that it add virtually 0 server overhead and is all calculated client side. A huge gain for no server side performance hit.
Simple answer, you only have to 'fetch' one image file and it is 'cut' for different views, if you used multiple images that would be multiple files you would need to download, which simply would equate into additional time to download everything.
Cutting up the large image into 'sprites' makes one HTTP request and provides a no flicker approach as well to 'onmouseover' elements (if you reuse the same large image for a mouse over effect).
Css Sprites tecnique is a method for reducing the number of image requests using background position.
Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death
Google also does it - I've written a blog post on it here: http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/200905/Blog/Google-Uses-Image-Sprites/
But the essence of it is that you make a single http request for one big image, rather than 20 small http requests.
If you watch a http request, they spend more time waiting to start downloading than actually downloading, so it's much faster to do it in one hit - chunky, not chatty!