The day is upon us Internet! We at CDOT and Mozilla Foundation have been working hard over the past couple weeks to create the latest, and first true release of Popcorn-Maker.
Whats new in this 0.1 release? Visually, not too much, as the decision was made to make this release focus primarily on fixing existing bugs before we start implementing more features. despite that there are several notable changes to the UI present in the Alpha version.
One of the biggest changes to Popcorn Maker is the use of require.js. The require.js framework allows the building of dependency trees, which enabled Bobby Richter to split up Butter and its modules into different files. Each file can declare it's dependencies and lets require.js do the heavy lifting to make sure dependencies are loaded before scripts execute. This change makes developing on the app SO MUCH easier. From a user's standpoint, there's nothing different in the app, which is a huge win in my books.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="409" caption="Manage Projects better by a factor of over 9000"]
[/caption]
Other changes include an all new Project Menu that I built to make loading, renaming and deleting saved projects much more fluid. We've added in an early version of help documentation, and did some work to clean up the welcome screen. I redesigned the Track Editor menu to look like other menus in the App, and also enabled changing of the track title, which makes labeling tracks by the type of plug-ins it contains possible. A small, but incredibly useful feature for larger projects.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="550" caption="Re-name your Tracks!!"]
[/caption]
Another really useful addition to the App comes in the form of media error detection. Previously, when Popcorn Maker tried to load a media source ( HTML5, Vimeo, Youtube ) if there was a problem, the loading screen would never disappear and a user would have to reload the app. I took on this bug and enabled detection of errors from HTML5 Media, as well as other players ( assuming they throw errors ). If a media file fails to load, a user is notified of the error and can choose a new media source. In addition to this, a timer has also been implemented. The reasoning behind this is if something in the loading of the media goes wrong and a proper ready state is never reached ( > 3 ) then, the user will be asked if they would like to choose a new media or continue waiting for the media to load. Bobby further took the code and enhanced the work I had done.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="145" caption=""Yeah, that URL is definitely where I put my video""]
[/caption]
So go ahead, test out the app, and please remember to let us know of any bugs you find so that we can further work towards a solid 1.0 release!