Archive for February, 2007

Here’s a quick overview of what’s changed between revision 209 and 229:

• Automatic ratio approximation.

  The font size does not correspond directly to the height of the Flash movie. The relation between the font size, the number of lines and the height of the Flash movie is called the ratio. By defining ratios you’ll stop the Flash movies from abruptly resizing, or at least you’ll be able to lessen the impact. You can now use sIFR.debug.ratios() instead of sIFR.replace() to find an approximation of the ratios. For more information see Ratios.

• Fixed leading for single-line text.

  If you had specified leading, and the text would occupy only one line, the Flash movie would still have the leading applied. This is now fixed. (Thanks, Marty Stake!)

• Fixed stuck hover effect (except for Opera).

  The hover effect for links inside the Flash movie would get stuck if you moved the mouse away too quickly. I’ve implemented a workaround, which works in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. No luck in Opera so far.

• Fixes the movie in Internet Explorer after it’s HTML has been reset.

  If you change the innerHTML of an element which contains sIFR movies, the text inside the movies would get lost. This is due to a bug in Internet Explorer. With the Flash-to-JavaScript callbacks I’ve been able to implement a workaround. As this problem exists in sIFR 2.0.2, this is yet another reason to switch to sIFR 3!

• Improved callbacks, callback access.

  Flash-to-JavaScript callbacks have been improved. You can now get a reference to a callback object, which for example will let you change the text inside the movie.

• Domain control is now the same in Flash as in JS.

  You can now use the same value for sIFR.domains in the document and in Options.as.

• Hide movies until rendered

  There’s now a sIFR.delayCss option which will hide the Flash movies until they have finished rendering. It is only supported in Firefox and Safari, and it’s a bit of a risky setting. In Internet Explorer and Opera the callbacks don’t work if the Flash movie is hidden, in the future this might be the case for Firefox and Safari as well. Use with care.

• As a bonus: as of revision 230 the Flash movies will show their revision

  If you open the Flash movie directly it’ll show it’s revision number. This is an easy way to verify the version of your Flash movies.

And to conclude with some cool news: Ethan Marcotte, designer and CSS wizard, will be making a really flashy sIFR demo. Thank you Ethan!

You can download r230 and subsequent versions from the nightlies.