Firefox 2/3 and The Bragosphere

I was able to fix most of the issues affecting Firefox users. All Brag Page functionality now works in Firefox, except Full Screen Mode intermittently. this is a documented bug in Silverlight 2 Beta 2, and will hopefully be fixed by the time the final version rolls out. That said, yesterday I couldn't use full screen in Firefox, and today I can. I'm not sure what triggers the failure, but if I find out, I'll post it here. The updates to The Bragosphere will be slower and slower now that the majority of the functionality is complete. Watch this blog for details of new enhancements!

New Look and Feel

Swami has put together a great new UI for The Bragosphere. Check it out! Now on to the cross-browser fixes... Firefox/Safari users -- we haven't forgotten about you!

It's Here!

I can finally announce that The Bragosphere is live! One more feature I never mentioned before: full screen mode. That's right, you can view your page layout in full-screen to get a better look at all your photos and videos! Go. Check. It. Out. Now. The Bragosphere

Customizing a Silverlight Install Experience

A while back when I first started the Bragosphere project, I came across this excellent post by Tim Heuer. I put this off until now, but I think I've put together a decent installation experience with the help of some browser and platform detection javascript Here are the results:

Standard Install Experience

*Nix Install Experience

Unsupported Experience

I still have to skin the popup a bit, but the detection is working great!

The Bragosphere Is Coming!

Well, it's about time I posted some screenshots here to show exactly what I've been up to. I won't make any promises about a release date, but I can tell you that The Bragosphere will be here very soon. I just finished the integration with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, and have some minor tweaking to do on the site itself, but here is an early view of what it looks like: In the above picture you see a simple "Brag Page" that I've created with some standard Windows Vista Sample Pictures. The site allows users to upload pictures in bulk, complete with a progress bar with thumbnail images showing what file is currently being uploaded. Once uploaded, pictures can be arranged any way the page creator wants by resizing, positioning, and rotating the pictures. A few different page backgrounds can then be chosen, the default of which is designed to look like a photo album page. Once the design is complete, security settings can be configured. The page can be public, private, or assigned to groups created by the user. Once saved, the page is visible to other (allowed) users. These users can manipulate the page in any way they like to create their own layout, and can even print it off if they like. They cannot save the layout and at any time they can reset the layout back to its original state. The controls available to users include double clicking on an image to zoom in/out; right clicking on an image to zoom in/out, reset state, or download the image; right clicking on the page background to reset the entire page state, or download all the images in a zip file. Multiple "Brag Pages" can be combined to create a "Brag Book", which can then be flipped through with the mouse just like you were turning the pages of an actual photo album! If the mouse is hovered over the top-left corner of the page, and a previous page is available, the corner will turn gold. Clicking and dragging will turn the page. Similarly, the bottom-right corner of the page allows you to go to the next page. Did you think I was done going over all of the features? Well, not quite. As you can see in the above screenshot, there is also full-motion-video support! Keep watching this space for more updates, and get ready to join The Bragosphere!