-
WebKit now supports alpha masks in CSS. Masks allow you to overlay the content of a box with a pattern that can be used to knock out portions of that box in the final display. In other words, you can clip to complex shapes based off the alpha of an image.
Mike Cohen
Removr has been approved
I got an email from Apple informing me that Removr is now Ready For Sale. I originally set the availability date to Aug. 3 so I could prepare press releases, but I’ve pushed up the availability date to tomorrow (Thursday July 29). You will be able to download it here.
Removr is now In Review
After a week waiting for review, Removr changed to ‘In Review’.
A big change
As of Aug. 6, I will no longer be working for Absolute Software. I’m now looking for iPhone & iPad related contract work.
links for 2010-07-26
-
Anyone remember Color cycling from the 90s? This was a technology often used in 8-bit video games of the era, to achieve interesting visual effects by cycling (shifting) the color palette. Back then video cards could only render 256 colors at a time, so a palette of selected colors was used. But the programmer could change this palette at will, and all the onscreen colors would instantly change to match. It was fast, and took virtually no memory. Thus began the era of color cycling.
This demo is an implementation of a full 8-bit color cycling engine, rendered into an HTML5 Canvas in real-time. I am using 35 of Mark's original 640×480 pixel masterpieces which you can explore, and I added some ambient environmental soundtracks to match. Please enjoy, and the source code is free for you to use in your own projects (download links at the bottom of the article).
-
Useful utility to create htaccess redirect rules interactively.
PicSlide Free submitted
I just submitted PicSlide Free with iAds, which requires iOS 4 and takes advantage of the retina display. I will still maintain PicSlide Universal at 99¢ which will remain ad-free.
Trying to sneak one past Apple hurts everyone.
Yesterday Apple approved an innocent-looking flashlight app which contained a hidden tethering feature. Needless to say, as soon as Apple found out about it, they pulled the app.
I’ll admit, it was a brilliant feature and I bought the app while it was still available. If you weren’t lucky enough to get Handy Light, iProxy is available at github, which will do exactly the same thing without masquerading as a flashlight app.
As a result of this deception, Apple seems to be a lot more cautious and taking more time to review apps, as reported by several developers on Twitter and the iPhone SDK mailing list. I only submitted Removr yesterday, but it’s still “waiting for review” 24 hours later. Most of the time it was less than an hour waiting for review before it changed to “In Review”.
During beta testing, I had a feature in Removr which checked my server for updated level maps. I was doing very careful version & timestamp checking and could either run SQL code to insert or modify levels or replace the entire level database. I removed that feature for the release version because I was afraid Apple would reject it if they discovered it.
PicSlide Update
Now that I’ve submitted Removr, I’m working on a Retina Display update for PicSlide.
Since PicSlide hasn’t sold as well as I had hoped, I’m trying a free version with iAds that will be iPhone only. I will still support the $0.99 ad-free universal version.
Removr has been submitted
I submitted Removr to the app store this morning, with a projected release date of Aug. 3, assuming Apple approves it by then. Coincidentally that’s also the same day Arcade Fire is releasing their long-awaited new album in the US. Two things to look forward to in one day!
Removrapp.com has a fresh new look, and I’m working on a new site for sharing your level map creations.