Nyx - The FlashTease Editor - Public Preview Release

All about the past, current and future webteases and the art of webteasing in general.
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seraph0x
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Nyx - The FlashTease Editor - Public Preview Release

Post by seraph0x »

July 28th. That's when I wrote the first line of code. Now, 55 days and many, many lines later I present to you:

Nyx! - The Milovana FlashTease Editor

It's named after Nyx, the Greek black bird who gave birth to Eros which I thought was kind of fitting since the editor will give birth to webteases. Let's hope those teases will bring pleasure to a lot of people.

What's a public preview?

It means you can try it out, but you can't publish the teases you create yet. If the testing goes well, you will have that option very soon. Please report back in case you have any problems with the editor and also if everything seems to be running fine.

How to use it

First of all: You need to be logged in. Then you go to http://www.milovana.com/nyx/ to start the editor.

- Create a tease
- Go to the Media tab to upload a few images
- Go to the Visual tab and create a few pages by clicking the little page icon with the plus next to it.
- In the box to the right you can enter any text for that page.
- When renaming the page use a name that has only letters and numbers (no spaces) and ends with a #-sign
- On the left you can select an image. If you don't select an image it will display a random image.
- To add interactivity look at the bottom, you can add a delay or buttons.
- Buttons have a label and a target (the page that you go to once you click it)
- A target must be the name of a page, for example page2#
- You can either create buttons with custom labels or use the predefined button configurations continue and yes/no.
- When defining a delay you need to choose a duration and a target (again, the page that will be shown once the timer runs out.)
- There are three types of delay: Normal is a full timer that shows the users how much time is left. Secret shows the user that there is a timer, but not how much is left on it. And hidden doesn't show anything at all.
- You can combine delays and buttons, for example to make someone choose within a certain time frame or to have a "Give up" button on a particularly long page.
- Make sure you hit the save button (the one with the floppy on it), before you go to the preview.

The script view
Right now, you can look at what script the visual editor generated for you. If you're the investigative kind - feel free to play around with it, too. For everyone else, we will release a help system that will make it really easy to learn for those who need more functionality than the visual editor can offer.

That's it from me, although I'll also post a list of known issues in a minute for your information.
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Post by seraph0x »

Known Issues/Upcoming Features:
- Sound in the viewer is currently broken - URGENT! FIXED!
- Flickering Preview on Media Tab FIXED!
- Delay and Buttons don't get parsed properly FIXED!
- Performance for wildcards (e.g. "*.jpg") sucks FIXED!
- No delay target selectable FIXED!
- Deleting files doesn't work currently FIXED!
- "Set as thumbnail" feature doesn't work FIXED!
- Timer displays don't work in the preview viewer FIXED!
- Image Uploader not working in IE FIXED!
- Invalid target names should be fixed automatically where possible DONE!
- Text editor: No selection -> change formatting for all text DONE!
- Text editor: Highlight color DONE!
- Ability to rename teases
- Loading indicator for preview
- Debug console for preview DONE!
- Ability to upload MP3 files DONE!
- Ability to upload WAV files (to be automatically converted to MP3)
- Ability to add sounds in the visual editor
- Ability to add video in the visual editor
- How to designate the end of the tease?
- Scrollbar for text in viewer
- Text editor: Formatting bugs FIXED!
- Text editor: Allow change of alignment DONE!
- MP3 Files are not correctly displayed in media tab FIXED!
- Allow custom background color
- Controls in viewer to allow rating of teases
- End of tease command
- Visual editor: Random delay
- Visual editor: Allow delays with an offset
- Visual editor: Next page as default target
- Visual editor: Add # to page names automatically
- Layout issues
- "Resizing timer" bug
- "Could not be parsed" message should not be greyed out FIXED!
- Visual editor: Allow wildcarded random images
- Test whether PushXML brings performance benefits over SimpleXML and SimpleXML/memcache
- Visual editor: Not updated after code is changed in script view
- Undead delay()s can cause problems
- Preview reset button should reset PCM2 compatibility functions
- Viewer inexplicably stops loading media
- Continue with spacebar
- Range prefix feature
- Mac upload problem (and related phenomena) FIX AVAILABLE!
- Persistent elements

(This list is a work-in-progress.)

Would you like to see another feature that is not in this list? Speak up!
Last edited by seraph0x on Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:58 pm, edited 15 times in total.
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Post by Salerio »

I've been poking around with it, and just wanted to say that it's remarkably polished for something that's a preview.

Considering it was done for free, remarkably doesn't do it justice. I mean, I am functionally illiterate when it comes to computers, and am not having any difficulty here.

So, in sum, many thanks.
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Post by avatarbr »

Great work seraph0x :beer2:

You will release the PCM -> Flash convert tool too? :-D
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Post by maleslave1984 »

Umm...I might just be a technological idiot, but I can't seem to get the "preview" function to work. The screen just stays blank. Am I missing something?
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Looks great

Post by camel »

This is awesome!

I'm putting my tech issues in the support forum. I hope that's where you want them.
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Post by seraph0x »

Thanks for the great feedback! Authors: If you need any help with anything or any other features, please let me know right away!
avatarbr wrote:You will release the PCM -> Flash convert tool too? :-D
Yes, of course. But our focus right now is clearly on original content. :-)

Also, we might want to do the converting ourselves. This way we can make sure it's done properly and also get permission from the various authors.
maleslave1984 wrote:Umm...I might just be a technological idiot, but I can't seem to get the "preview" function to work. The screen just stays blank. Am I missing something?
Mmhh. The preview feature isn't too robust yet. It will react to pretty much any problem by simply showing up with a blank screen. :lol:

If you want to help us track down that bug, please go to the preview tab, look for this handle: Image

When you've found the handle, drag it to the right. Some text will show up. Send me that text in a PM and I'll see what I can find out. :-)
camel wrote:I'm putting my tech issues in the support forum. I hope that's where you want them.
There or here, it's both fine. :-)
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Post by avatarbr »

OK, I will try "convert in manual mode" :-P
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Try saving

Post by camel »

maleslave1984 wrote:Umm...I might just be a technological idiot, but I can't seem to get the "preview" function to work. The screen just stays blank. Am I missing something?

The preview doesn't show my changes unless I save to server first. I'm guessing it's a refresh issue. Until they fix it, just save to server often.
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Post by mae0314 »

That's some pretty nifty stuff. :w00t:

Some quick notes:
- It's easy to forget the # at the end in visual mode. Maybe it could be added automatically, if it's not there in a target or name field.
- When adding a delay or button to a page, it would be nice if it defaulted to the one added after it, if there already is such a page. Would make linear parts more convenient. Just add a bunch of pages, and set the button type to continue or set a delay. Done. No typing in page names. ;-)
- Is picture rescaling in preview mode done by flash, or is it done server side? Whichever it is, the result looks a bit jaggy with my flash (r60 on Linux). :-/

Apart from that, I really like it so far. :-D
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Why not gifs?

Post by camel »

If you allow something heavy like mp3s, why not animated gifs? There are some good ones that are less than 300kb
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Post by seraph0x »

camel wrote:The preview doesn't show my changes unless I save to server first. I'm guessing it's a refresh issue. Until they fix it, just save to server often.
Yes, I mentioned this in the "How to use it" intro above. This has to do with the way the editor handles compiling the tease and there is no easy way around it, so it's not going to be changed anytime soon. But I am planning a "Save and Preview" button. Actually, let me put that on the list. ;-)

Edit: Ok, the "Save and Preview" button is done. But my Internet connection does it's cute little break-down-every-two-minutes-and-be-painfully-slow thing, so I'll upload it tomorrow.
mae0314 wrote:That's some pretty nifty stuff. :w00t:

Some quick notes:
- It's easy to forget the # at the end in visual mode. Maybe it could be added automatically, if it's not there in a target or name field.
Good point. And on the list it goes.
mae0314 wrote:- When adding a delay or button to a page, it would be nice if it defaulted to the one added after it, if there already is such a page. Would make linear parts more convenient. Just add a bunch of pages, and set the button type to continue or set a delay. Done. No typing in page names. ;-)
Sure thing! Also one for the list. :smile:
mae0314 wrote:- Is picture rescaling in preview mode done by flash, or is it done server side? Whichever it is, the result looks a bit jaggy with my flash (r60 on Linux). :-/
Could you post or send me a screenshot please? I need to find out whether it's due to the resizing or due to jpeg quality limitations.
Last edited by seraph0x on Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why not gifs?

Post by seraph0x »

camel wrote:If you allow something heavy like mp3s, why not animated gifs? There are some good ones that are less than 300kb
If you want a video, you will soon be able to upload it in any of the common formats at blip.tv and use it in your teases.

If you want a picture slideshow, please use multiple pages. (Maybe we will also add a command to create slideshows more quickly one day.)

Animated GIFs suck at both tasks. :-P They don't have any useful compression for video and for the slideshow they lack image quality.

I can see some use for them in little symbolic animations that explain something, but unfortunately Flash doesn't support them. (In 1997 when Flash was created GIF was already considered outdated :-D) Therefore I don't see a way to support them in the foreseeable future. Sorry. :-/
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Post by joeliwan »

First off, the system is relatively slick and easy to use. Great job Seraph!!!

One issue:
If I label a button with more than a very brief one or two words, most of the label isn't displayed. Is it possible to make the buttons automatically resize to fit longer labels such as, 'I'm done now, M'am' or 'Yes please, Mistress'?

Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns, and keep up the great work!

~joeliwan
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Post by seraph0x »

joeliwan wrote:If I label a button with more than a very brief one or two words, most of the label isn't displayed. Is it possible to make the buttons automatically resize to fit longer labels such as, 'I'm done now, M'am' or 'Yes please, Mistress'?
Yes, the testing team brought that one up as well. It falls under "we need a better layout engine" and therefore is quite a big change. Here's the short explanation: In order to get the whole thing done quicker, we chose a authoritative layout system, meaning the parent elements dictate how much space their children have. What we will do in the future is a flexibla layout system, meaning that the children will be able to ask for more space. Obviously this will take some time and a bit of sweat, so we'll take care of some easier stuff first. :-P
joeliwan wrote:Thanks for taking the time to address my concerns,
Always! :-)
joeliwan wrote:and keep up the great work!
Will try. ;-)
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