Dukt

Dukt Videos (Open Source)

2013-04-10T09:57:02+00:00

Dukt Videos (formerly Video Player) has been around for a few years now, and we've worked a lot on abstracting Vimeo and YouTube video services into a video manager add-on providing you the same features for both services.

A lot of open source software is being used in our products, and it's now time to contribute and give back to the community. Today, we're releasing one of the core features of Dukt Videos as open source : the video services abstraction library.

Dukt Videos (Open Source) is a platform agnostic PHP library which let's you communicate the same way with YouTube and Vimeo.

Once connected to a video service, it's easy to retrieve a video with all its metadata such as title, description, thumbnails, etc. You can also list videos for your uploads, favorites, and all of your playlists for YouTube and for Vimeo. Check out the complete list of services methods.

The library relies on Composer for package dependencies, PHPUnit for testing, and various other open source libraries. You can check them out in the composer.json file, we'll be talking about these libraries in future posts.

We haven't reached a final release yet as we're still fixing bugs, moving and renaming things, but most of the features are already implemented, you can already use them and give us your feedback.

Dukt / Videos GitHub repository

Tags : Composer, Dukt Videos, Git, Open Source, PHP, PHPUnit, Silex, Testing

The Glass Bicycle

2013-04-10T09:23:01+00:00

Used to dismiss Google Glasses before reading this great piece from Dustin Curtis.

When you're first shown the future, it's hard to see it. If you don't immediately use some imagination to evolve what you're being shown into what it can or will become, you might dismiss it as something frivolous or a mere curiosity.

Tags : Inspiration, Project Management, Technology

Skinny Ties

2013-03-05T11:19:33+00:00

Tags : CSS, E-commerce, Inspiration, Mobile, Responsive

Tala Payments (Omnipay), open source, platform agnostic payment processing library

2013-02-03T02:44:43+00:00

Adrian Macneil, from Crescendo, is working on a new payment processing library called Tala Payments. His experience with CI-Merchant has led him to build this platform agnostic library. It's still under development, but everything works as expected. It already support more than a dozen payment gateways. We should be adding some for France as well.

Update : Tala Payments is getting closer to its first release and has been renamed to Omnipay.

Tags : E-commerce, Open Source, PHP

Dukt Videos for ExpressionEngine

2013-01-12T07:20:34+00:00

Yesterday we've released Dukt Videos which lets you manage and publish YouTube and Vimeo videos from your ExpressionEngine website. This add-on has been designed from Video Player and adds new features and enhancements.

New name

Dukt Videos replaces our most popular add-on, Video Player. We wanted to update its identity in order to reflect the changes that we've made and the new things that we are cooking up for this add-on in 2013.

Authentication

Some of the authentication methods we were using have been deprecated. Vimeo was using simple authentication and YouTube was using AuthSub. We've changed all of this and OAuth 2.0 is now being used for both services.

Smarter & Faster Interface

The interface has been redesigned in order to be snappier. Things are loaded in the background only when they are needed and a multi-view mechanism makes switching from one section to another faster than ever.

The visual interface hasn't changed much from Video Player, some simple tweaks, converted css scripts to less and that was it.

One more thing : it's multi-platform

All of the reusable code has been moved to a package called Dukt Videos Universal. The ExpressionEngine add-on specific code represents only 27% of the whole add-on. This means that if we were to port the add-on to another platform, 73% of the code would be already written.

Making Dukt Videos available for another platform was so easy that we decided to do it. Indeed, in took 4 days to port months of work and features to another platform.

The cool thing is that when we add new features to the ExpressionEngine add-on, they are also available for this yet-to-be-revealed CMS add-on. The same goes for debugging, fixing a bug a one platform fixes it on all platforms.

Keep in mind that this remains true for only 73% of the code, and that there still are CMS specific situations to handle, such as how to store data in the database or handle control panel navigation.

Get your hands on it !

Dukt Videos for ExpressionEngine is available for €49, it's a free update for existing Video Player 3 users. We hope you'll have as much fun using it as we had developing it.

Tags : Add-ons, Dukt Videos, ExpressionEngine, Video Player

Open source payment gateways for CodeIgniter

2012-12-13T12:36:53+00:00

E-commerce payment library for CodeIgniter from the guys at Crescendo (NZ). It already supports several gateways, it's great, and it's open source !

CI-Merchant is a driver-based payment processing library built specifically for use in CodeIgniter web applications. It allows you to integrate any supported payment gateway using a consistent API. It was originally developed as part of Expresso Store, an e-commerce module for ExpressionEngine, and is now used on hundreds of e-commerce sites worldwide.

CI-Merchant is released under the open source MIT license, and is actively maintained.

Crescendo makes use of this library in their Exp:resso Store for ExpressionEngine, and a new free and open source e-commerce module has just popped up for PyroCMS, FireSale which also relies on CI Merchant.

Tags : Code Igniter, E-commerce, ExpressionEngine, Open Source, PyroCMS

Maximizing Your Startup Dollars Through Great Design

2012-12-03T20:55:17+00:00

Ian Landsman explains how their "Futuristic email & Facebook helpdesk" product Snappy became popular before its launch thanks to its great design.

Let’s start with this. In 7 years of selling HelpSpot we’ve never generated as much buzz, sign ups or interest with any of dozens of advertising campaigns as our work with Focus Lab has for Snappy. The power of great design to inspire and motivate people is astounding.

The key is to shape this power and focus it. In our case, I was very clear with Focus Lab that I wanted them to speak about Snappy as much as possible from day 1. That the opportunity to leverage their reach was a significant aspect of why I thought they were a good fit. That their amazing work shouldn’t be buried in some project management app, but shared as we went so people could follow our progress.

Tags : Marketing, Social, UX Design

No submodule mapping found in .gitmodules

2012-11-28T01:07:46+00:00

When moving or deleting git submodules, this command :

$ git submodule update

Might produce this error :

No submodule mapping found in .gitmodules for path 'submodules/bootstrap'

In order to fix this situation, run the following command :

$ git rm --cached submodules/bootstrap

And then update the submodule again.

Tags : Git

Microsoft’s Death Spiral

2012-11-26T11:18:02+00:00

Charlie Demerjian at SemiAccurate :

The problem is that if you are locked in with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, once someone goes, it isn’t a baby step, they are gone. Once you start using Google Docs and the related suites, you have no need for Office. That means you, or likely your company, saves several hundred dollars a head. No need for Office means no need for Exchange. No need for Exchange means no need for Windows Server. No need for Office means no need for Windows. Once the snowball starts rolling, it picks up speed at a frightening pace. And that is where we are. The barriers to exit are now even more potent barriers to entry.

(via Daring Fireball)

Tags : Technology

Republic Structure Tweaks

2012-11-13T10:29:37+00:00

If you already like Structure add-on for ExpressionEngine you will love the improvements brought by the Republic Structure Tweaks add-on.

What Republic Structure Tweaks brings to the table:

Customize the “Add page” dialog

Remove the “Add page” link for specific channels and pages

Shows the channel name for a page on hover, useful if you have a lot of content types

Shows a (closed) indicator after closed pages

The biggest thing is that you can easily select which channels that should be used in the Add page dialog. From our experience, this really makes content editors happy and dramatically makes adding new content a lot less prone to errors.

Tags : Add-ons, ExpressionEngine

StatNut App

2012-11-10T13:57:44+00:00

Nice little stats app for iPhone. It currently supports : Dribbble, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook.

StatNut gives you a central location for all your web stats in one lovely and colourful app.

Tags : iOS, iPhone, Mobile

WordPress Plugin Comparison - Content Type / Custom Fields

2012-11-10T12:45:58+00:00

Custom fields have always been such a mess in WordPress compared to ExpressionEngine fieldtypes. This document will help you make a smarter choice between the existing WordPress custom fields solutions.

Tags : Tips & Tricks, WordPress

WordPress Bootstrap

2012-11-09T23:33:20+00:00

Seems like a nice theme to start from when building a responsive WordPress website.

We’ve built the WordPress Bootstrap theme so that it could be used as-is or as a starting point for theme developers. It’s built on top of the brilliant Bones theme framework by Eddie Machado and based on v2.1.1 of Twitter’s Bootstrap.

All the beauty of Twitter’s Bootstrap – Built on v.2.1.1

Built with LESS

Homepage carousel

Bootswatch themes!

Responsive

Four different page templates

Configurable via theme options panel

Twitter Bootstrap shortcodes

Two different sidebars

It’s FREE!

Tags : Bootstrap, WordPress

The User Experience Designer

2012-11-09T22:48:23+00:00

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Tags : UX Design

Adaptive vs. Responsive Layouts and Optimal Form Field Label

2012-11-09T20:07:29+00:00

Great UX article from Christian Holst for Smashing Magazine:

The concept of your product, service, app or website is at the core of your user experience. It’s where you differentiate yourself from the competition and where you create true value to the customer. So develop your concept as creatively as possible and make it as original as possible. Then, when it comes to the real-life implementation, read up on user research, study UI conventions and perform usability testing as much as your concept allows.

Tags : Usability, User Experience, UX Design

Your Content, Now Mobile

2012-11-09T19:54:47+00:00

The future is now. Get ready, get mobile.

Making your content mobile-ready isn’t easy, but if you take the time now to examine your content and structure it for maximum flexibility and reuse, you’ll have stripped away all the bad, irrelevant bits, and be better prepared the next time a new gadget rolls around.

Tags : Content Strategy, Mobile

Fitts’ law and web design

2012-11-09T19:46:26+00:00

Used in the air force for the design of dashboard buttons in aircrafts, Fitt's law can be applied in web design :

Essentially Fitts’ law describes how long it takes you to point to an object. This is a pretty basic concept, but the mathematical formula gives us a framework to know exactly how to build things.

Tags : Usability, User Experience, UX Design

Converting curly braces to html entities with Wygwam

2012-11-07T10:33:07+00:00

Curly braces use to be a nightmare to use in Wygwam. You could convert them manually to their HTML entities but even doing so, the save - reopen - save operation was "unconverting" them from html entities to actual curly braces. Pretty ennoying, particularly if you are writing some documentation code for an ExpressionEngine add-on.

Thanks to great tip from GWcode on Pixel Tonic's forums, you can fix this situation by telling Wygwam advanced settings to encode curly braces to html entities each time the entry is being save :

The problem is that ckeditor doesn't convert the opening and closing curly braces into their html entities.

To instruct ckeditor to do this (so you can safely write EE code within pre tags without it actually getting parsed), all you have to do is this:

Go to your Wygwam settings: Add-ons > Fieldtypes > Wygwam.

Click on the configuration you're using

Under "Advanced Settings", select "entities_additional".

Add the html entities for the opening and closing curly braces, next to the one that's already in there by default, so you would get this: #39,#123,#125

Save the configuration.

That's it! All curly braces are now converted into their html entities so they can be used to highlight EE code with syntaxhighlight.

No more template crashing and unwanted parsed variables, curly braces in Wygwam won't hurt you anymore.

Tags : ExpressionEngine, Tips & Tricks

Video Player 3

2012-08-27T14:42:16+00:00

I'm pleased to announce that after months of hard work, Video Player 3 for ExpressionEngine is finally here with tons of new features !

Video Player is a fieldtype that lets you connect to YouTube and Vimeo and retrieve videos that can be added to your entries. Search videos, retrieve favorites and uploaded videos for both services. You can even set videos as favorites !

Click on a video you are interested in and it plays the video so you can preview it or check its description. If you're happy with the video you've chosen, click the "Select Video" button in order to add it to your entry.

YouTube & Vimeo, in a snap

The interface enables you to switch between YouTube and Vimeo in a snap. If you are looking for "australia" videos on YouTube, a simple click will lead you to "australia" Vimeo search results.

Thumbnails & meta data

In addition to the default video embed, you can access more informations on your video : title, thumbnails, description, duration, play count, and more... See the documentation for the full list of supported meta data.

Player customization

Video Player 3 supports all the YouTube and Vimeo player parameters and gives you more control on your videos. Change the color of the player, start the video at the 10th second, loop it, auto play it. I told you, more control !

Video Player 3 is available now for €49, I hope you'll like it !

Tags : Add-ons, ExpressionEngine, Video Player

Video Player 2.6 : autoplay and related videos

2012-05-17T14:44:02+00:00

We're releasing a minor update to Video Player in order to bring two features that some of you have been requesting : autoplay and related_videos.

You will all guess what the autoplay parameter is all about, so let's talk about related_videos. This parameter is YouTube specific and let's you enable or disable the video thumbnails that are showing up when you are at the end of the video. When set to "yes", the related_videos parameter will display the related videos, otherwise the user will just get a black screen at the end of the video. Check out Video Player User Guide for more informations.

A small but useful update that prevents you to display videos from your competitors at the end of your product videos.

Video Player 3 is on its way, we will soon need some volunteers for the final crash tests before go live, just say hello if you're interested !

Thanks a lot for your support and feedback.

Tags : Add-ons, ExpressionEngine, Video Player