New Site Functionality Upcoming

[bfrd]

All,

I have some (hopefully) good news for the forum. I have been working on making it easier for us to post pictures from Flickr onto the forum. Along with this change are a couple of other goodies.

So how will this work?

Hopefully fairly seamlessly...

Once the extension (that is what the forum software calls add-on software) is installed we will all have a new tab in our User Control Panel. In order to enable the Flickr integration you will simply have to enter the email address associated with your Flickr account. We won't save the address, we just have to use it to look up your Flickr id.

Then all you have to do is post normally! My main goal was to be able to post without having to open up Flickr in one window and the forum in the other. Or being on my tablet and not being able to get to the "Share" portion of Flickr at all!

Here is a screen shot of what the new message window could look like. The editor is a little different, that may or may not get changed here.



Below the normal message window you will see your 25 most recently uploaded images (newest to oldest). These come from the Flickr photostream which you are probably already familiar with if you use Flickr. It scrolls horizontally to not add too much vertical space. There is also a drop-down box that has a list of all of your albums (or photosets).



Here is a shot after selecting one of my albums.



In order to add the image to your post, just click on it! The BBCode is added pointing to the "medium" size of your image. The size may or may not become an option (depending on feedback). Most of us chop off the extra url anyway, so that has been omitted from the start. Flickr terms of service require that all images link back to the Flickr site, so that url remains.

The Preview works just like it did before, and changing albums will not cause you to lose any of your message. It is designed to "just work" with minimal effort. It is being tested on mobile devices and so far looks promising.

So far this is project that is still in process and since this is Paul's site he will have the final approval. I wanted to let you guys know what is being planned so that I can get some feedback.

What about the other "goodies"?

The other piece of my extension will add a few static pages that meant to be custom modules specifically for the scale modeller. Right now I only have two, but with your help we can create more.

The first is a simple application that helps us thin our paint. It is based on Ultimate Thinners and Paul's research into the best amount of thinners to use. It can be found on a demo site using the link below:

http://www.scale-modeller.com/app.php/paintmixer

The next is an application that helps us choose the appropriate glue to use when using different materials. It's data is derived from this chart. You can access this application from this link:

http://www.scale-modeller.com/app.php/whatglue


Right now my test server has registration disabled as it is just for testing. Perhaps once it is nearer to completion I may ask for some beta testers. Realistically there is not much left to do on the Flickr part, just the add-on pages are still up in the air. I have an idea for a scale calculator that will help us determine the scale size conversion for a real life object. I think that could possibly be handy. Other than that I am open to suggestions.

Let me know what you think. Your thoughts are way more important than mine!

[Paul]

I've tested this and it works brilliantly so simple and quick, well done to Mathew for sorting it out

[Stokesy44]

Top stuff. Thank the maker for those of us with tech smarts!

[chief5437]

This looks great! Well done for putting in the hard work to make our lives easier!
For a suggestion, and I don’t know if its possible, what about a paint mixer ‘thing’ a bit like the iModelKit app before they hid everything behind a paywall?
Once again, great work buddy!

[Twokidsnosleep]

Watching with great interest

[bfrd]

This looks great! Well done for putting in the hard work to make our lives easier!
For a suggestion, and I don’t know if its possible, what about a paint mixer ‘thing’ a bit like the iModelKit app before they hid everything behind a paywall?
Once again, great work buddy!

That app looks pretty cool. I did think about a color mixer I just wasn’t sure that it would work very well with the difference in monitor color calibration. But, I can give it a shot.

[ElCapitan]

Matthew, you're a genius! The Flickr integration will make everything so much easier

Now how about a time machine app that gives me more time to model?

[BobM]

This is really cool! It will really simplify posting.

One question, will it work on an iPhone? Is there enough room? If so, then it looks like you made my iOS app obsolete!

[Fridgy]

And in line with bobs ?
Will it work on mobile devices or just laptops and desktops?

[bfrd]

It does, but there is still an issue to sort out.



That is a screen cap from my phone. The only thing that does not function at the moment is the album selector. The JQuery call to populate the album list is not firing on mobile devices. I doubt that will be difficult to fix, I just need to research a little.

[Tomcat64]

Superb work Matthew!

[bfrd]

I have decided to work on a color project, but not exactly the mixer idea. It is more of a cross-reference for paint ranges. Not all of us use the paints called out in the instructions so I thought I would come up with a cross reference. I have begun the arduous process of collecting information from various paint ranges. Now due to differences in monitors this information isn't going to be perfect, but it should be a start. So to start you would select the paint range called out by the instructions and select the call outs. Then you would select the range of paint you want to use. The application will use math to figure out the closest matches. I suspect I will have to add a mixer in there at some point. I am interested in seeing how close a mathematical function is at guessing a close match in color.

I hope to have a prototype up in the next couple of weeks. So far I have gathered information from Tamiya's acryllic line and Vallejo's Model Air line. I can get Vallejo's paint ranges fairly easily. I have some Gunze information as well I just need to parse it out. I think in order to have a decent working prototype I plan on having Tamiya (Flat and Gloss combined?), Mr Hobby (Gunze), Vallejo, and Hataka. Keep in mind that metallic and pearl paint will not come across and neither will translucent colors.

Due to the time this project will take, I don't think it makes sense to combine with Flickr project. That portion is almost complete and it would be silly to tie it up waiting on a completely new project to get finished.

[chief5437]

That sounds great! Matching different makes of paint is what I mainly use the mixer app for, so this will be very useful. Hope all the work doesn’t stop you from building kits though!!

[bfrd]

I spent the majority of the weekend gathering paint range data from various websites. For some sites I was able to grab HTML color codes directly from the website, others I had to download the paint images and take color samples. Vallejo was different in that I had to sample their PDF data card for the colors. It was a bit of a challenge, but I have a fair bit of color ranges to start with. Here is the raw data if you want to take a look. Use the middle mouse button when clicking on the link to open in a new window.

Ammo of Mig
Hataka - Blue Line (Brush Paints)
Hataka - Orange Line (Lacquer)
Hataka - Red Line (Acrylic)
Mr. Color
Mr. Color Aqueous
Revell Aqua Color
Tamiya (Flats)
Tamiya (Glosses)
Vallejo Game Air
Vallejo Game Color
Vallejo Model Air
Vallejo Model Color
Vallejo Panzer Aces

If anyone is interested in the technical details of how I did the color captures I would be happy to share the code I used.

[bfrd]

Ok, I think the Flickr integration is ready for it to be installed here. I just need some beta testers. I have opened up the registration settings on my test site.

http://www.scale-modeller.com/

Please give it a try on both desktops, macs, tablets, or phones. Whatever you use to post on ISM. Register just like you would on any forum then go to the User Control Panel. Once in the UCP you should see a new tab called Flickr Integration. Click on it! It should look like the screen shot below:



In the first box labled "Flickr Email" enter the email address associated with your account. This address is NOT saved. I only use it to lookup your Flickr ID. Once you have the email filled out, click the "Lookup Email" button. It should fill out the ID field below. Once that is populated click "Submit". That's it, you are all setup.

Now just make a post or reply to a post.

Please let me know how it works (or doesn't work). The sooner we can get it through beta testing the sooner we can get it installed here!

Thanks for your help!



**Please note that no posts will be kept long-term. I will blow away the phpBB install once I am done with testing. So don't bother with signatures or anything else. Those pieces are just stock phpBB. I also am not putting any registration checks, so I suspect spammers will hit it soon.

[pourquoi61]

Sorry but I will stick with my trusted imgur.com, as in life when a company get big it gets greedy.
Never put all your eggs in one basket springs to mind.

[bfrd]

Sorry but I will stick with my trusted imgur.com, as in life when a company get big it gets greedy.
Never put all your eggs in one basket springs to mind.

I think it would make sense for me to try and expand functionality to other image repos as well. DeviantArt.com, imgur.com, and photobucket.com all have API's just like the one I use for Flickr. I think it makes sense to integrate these as well. It was always my intention to expand, but since the PB hijack *many* of our users here switched to Flickr, it made sense to start there. Since I have gone through most of the infrastructure issues with the Flickr integration, adding in the others shouldn't be more than a few hours of work.

There are a ton of sites that offer hosting, look for a new post with a poll.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Sorry but I will stick with my trusted imgur.com, as in life when a company get big it gets greedy.
Never put all your eggs in one basket springs to mind.

I think it would make sense for me to try and expand functionality to other image repos as well. DeviantArt.com, imgur.com, and photobucket.com all have API's just like the one I use for Flickr. I think it makes sense to integrate these as well. It was always my intention to expand, but since the PB hijack *many* of our users here switched to Flickr, it made sense to start there. Since I have gone through most of the infrastructure issues with the Flickr integration, adding in the others shouldn't be more than a few hours of work.

There are a ton of sites that offer hosting, look for a new post with a poll.

You are doing an awesome job and putting in some hard work
It is all well over my head as I certainly am not a programmer.
Hopefully this helps gets people’s heads out of their buts and back into posting on the forum after the PB hostage taking.
FB posting is less than impressive to me so far so I hope for a return to forum based sites
I applaud all the effort you have done

[ElCapitan]

You'll see a test from me on there now. I love it!

[pourquoi61]

Sorry but I will stick with my trusted imgur.com, as in life when a company get big it gets greedy.
Never put all your eggs in one basket springs to mind.

I think it would make sense for me to try and expand functionality to other image repos as well. DeviantArt.com, imgur.com, and photobucket.com all have API's just like the one I use for Flickr. I think it makes sense to integrate these as well. It was always my intention to expand, but since the PB hijack *many* of our users here switched to Flickr, it made sense to start there. Since I have gone through most of the infrastructure issues with the Flickr integration, adding in the others shouldn't be more than a few hours of work.

There are a ton of sites that offer hosting, look for a new post with a poll.

Sounds good to me.

[Tomcat64]

Worked a treat once you pointed me at the right e-mail address!

If it helps track things my test was from Win 10 using Edge

Absolutely love the way this works - great work Matthew

[bfrd]

Thanks for the help in testing. I have the imgur.com integration about 50% complete. Photobucket’s API seems to be inaccessible for the immediate future. However, I don’t think anybody would care if we didn’t support PB.

[kiwigav]

Nice work, from reading your posts it should be a remarkable change and make life even easier that it is.
No doubt ther will be some notification when testing is done and its all up and running?

great work again

[bfrd]

The imgur.com integration is now ready for testing. It requires a bit more interaction than the flickr integration. Imgur.com users will have to specifically allow the forum to access their public images. I have no idea why since they are public. In order to use your imgur account, you will have to do the following:



1. Enter your imgur.com username
2. Click the "Launch imgur.com" button
3. If neccessary, log into imgur.com and click "allow"
4. Copy the PIN code from the imgur.com site
5. Enter the PIN code into the U.C.P. text box labeled "imgur.com PIN code"
6. Click "Use PIN"
7. Ensure that values are entered for the two remaining boxes
8. Click "Submit"

Now you are setup with imgur.com image integration. It will operate just like the flickr.com integration. You may certainly use both.