...because a "news" section sounded lame.

Huge Stack Editor Improvements and New Export-Embedding

by Josh Gertzen on September 25, 2008 at 6:14 PM

Well, it's been about a month and a half since we pushed out an update to TileStack. That's a few weeks longer than I like to go, but we spent most of the time working on the absolutely most important feature of TileStack... wait for it...

The Stack Editor

Yeah, we know it's been less than stellar. Ok, it's actually been down right terrible to use in a number of ways. We admit it and we apologize if you have been discouraged by its state of affairs. The truth is that none of us have been happy with the editor since we first launched the beta, but we thought it would be a good idea to start getting feedback on what we were up to so that we could take things in the right direction. Looking back on it, we probably should have called our initial launch an "alpha" or "preview", but there's not much we can do about that now :) What we can do however, is fix it.

That's why today, I'm happy to announce a redesigned, simplified, and nearly problem free Stack Editor:



And this is just the beginning. In future updates to the site, you are going to see the editor improve in a number of new ways. Additionally, we are going to be investing heavily in our HyperCard compatibility goal as well as our help documentation. But for now, here's a great video introduction to the new editor:


New Export / Embedding Options

We've also been quite busy adding new export & embedding options for the stacks you create. New options include export as a Facebook Application and Google Gadget as well as improved exporting to a OS X Dashboard Widget:


Everything That's New, Enhanced or Fixed


For the intently curious, here's the complete list of what's changed... and that's a boiled down list :)

Stack Editor:
  • Simplified and combined the five separate editor tabs into a single "Design" mode tab
  • Added a dedicated "Browse" mode tab for interacting with your stack
  • Design mode is now only for editing. No System Messages (ex: openTile) are generated
  • Design mode has four top-level actions: "New Button", "New Field", "New Tile" and "Stack Info"
  • When in "Background" mode, the "New Tile" button changes to "New Background"
  • Added hover over tool tip help to all action buttons lacking text
  • Hovering over a Part on your Stack, now shows a tool tip with the Part's id and name
  • Just click to select a Part to edit and the toolbar will change to the correct editing tools
  • Similarly, to edit the Tile or Background, just click on a Stack's surface
  • Alternatively, select a Part to edit via the new part selector popup on the left of the editor
  • Resizing or moving a Part causes a tool tip to be shown with the Part's size or location
  • Selecting a Background Button or Background Field for editing, switches to "Background" mode
  • Added "Bring Closer" and "Send Farther" layer control buttons to the tool bar
  • Text toolbar is now only shown when a Button or Field is selected for editing
  • Both the "Message Box" & "Background" buttons were moved to the right and given icons
  • Replaced all button icons to help clarify each available action
  • Moved "Delete" button to the far left to avoid unintentional clicks
  • Improved the color selector with a palette of standard colors and a transparent option
  • Starter script is inserted when you open the script editor on something without a script
  • Script editor is now functional in Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, IE 7+ and Opera 9+
  • Fixed numerous bugs with the script editor and added better indention and key navigation
  • Added code snippets and basic completion support to the editor (ex: if)
  • Changed the default font for a new Button or Field to be platform independent
  • Removed auto-delete of unused images and added the ability to delete images in the editor
  • Added support for uploading sounds to the Icon or Picture popup. This is temporary, but works
  • Added support for uploading compressed zip files that contain images or sounds
  • Added proper arrowKey navigation to the editor so that using left/right transitions tiles
  • Replaced the "number of" display in the navigation bar with a Tile/Background popup selector
  • Added visible toggle in the options toolbar for Button's & Field's
Web Site
  • New generated Stack preview images throughout the site
  • New embed as Facebook Application feature. Access under "Embed/Export..." on a published Stack
  • New export to Google Gadget. Access under "Embed/Export..." on a published Stack
  • Enhanced OS X Dashboard Widget exporting
  • Enhanced pulling up a page that requires you to log in. It will now go to the page after login
  • Enhanced "Ask This Question" in Help section so it asks a question with 3 minutes to change it
  • Enhanced presentation of options for an action so they are now shown in an overlay window
  • Enhanced the mini-feed so that it shows shorter descriptions for items with long text
  • Fixed "Search Answers" & "Ask This Question" in Help section so they always work when clicked
  • Fixed the search box on the site. It no longer requires you be logged in to use search
Speak Language
  • New 'play' command for sound playback (ex: play boing). Does not support note, pitch or tempo yet
  • New 'beep' command for making an auditory beep
  • New 'dial' command for sound playback of phone keypad sounds. Does not support "with modem" ;
  • Fixed comparisons between Parts and values (ex: tile field 1 = "Hello")
  • Fixed "contains" and "is in" use with Parts and values (ex: the icon of button 1 contains "Smile")
Stack Player
  • New support for setting the icon or pict to a URL (ex: http://www.mysite.com/mypic.png )
  • New pre-loading of image & sound resources. This makes resource intense stacks perform much better
  • Enhanced the look of Button & Field styles and added proper transparency so borders look correct
  • Enhanced the popup Button so that the 'text' properties change the font of the drop-down
  • Fixed the popup Button so that the first line is selected correctly.
  • Fixed the partNumber property so that it works and Speak can be used to control part layering
  • Fixed the icon & color properties of Button so their values can be retrieved with a 'get' command
  • Fixed the 'arrowKey' system message so 'right' & 'left' are sent properly. They were inverted
  • Fixed the 'keyDown' system message so it's sent to the current Tile first instead of the Stack
  • Fixed the 'enabled' property of Button so mouse up/down handlers will not execute when disabled
  • Fixed some bugs in the Stack saving routine that in some cases, were causing changes to be lost

0% useful
digitalnative Sep 29, 2008 5:46:08 PM
Looks good man... I like the new editor a whole lot more than the last design. Can't wait to see what's coming.