Posted by Adam on March 31st, 2008 — Posted in General
Here is a simple example of drawing pixels (rather than paths) to a canvas element with JavaScript. The algorithm goes left to right and draws across the canvas, and for each pixel column draws two blue pixels, one for the top half of the circle and one for the bottom half. Then, because this results in sparse drawing for the far left and right edges of the circle, it does another pass from top to bottom, doing the same thing with red pixels. The result is a circle with gradient colors, showing which pass drew more of the circle.
It’s been tested in Firefox 2 and 3, and I think it should work in recent versions of Safari and Opera.
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Posted by Adam on March 25th, 2008 — Posted in General
I wrote a few weeks ago about how Rotten Tomatoes did a redesign of their site that broke my primary use case. Since then, they have done an update that makes things a lot better for me, though it’s still not as convenient as the original design. Right now, if you hover over any of the tabs for different groups of ratings, you get a popup that tells you that group’s percentage of positive reviews. In my case, I’m interested in the Top Critics group:
While this does allow you to compare the percentages much more easily, it’s not quite perfect. On the plus side, it displays both percentages at the same time and it’s quite easy to discover. Anyone who is interested in the Top Critics information will move to click on the tab header, and when they move the pointer over it, they’ll see the popup.
On the downside, it does require fairly precise mousing (and holding the mouse still) for the whole time you want to read the number. This makes it much less accessible to those who have trouble acquiring small targets and keeping the pointer still, such as the elderly or disabled using a mouse. Additionally, you have to use the pointer to see it, which makes it inaccessible to those navigating with just the keyboard.
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Posted by Adam on March 24th, 2008 — Posted in General
Ticketmaster has long charged too much in service fees, but this is the first time I’ve seen them almost double the price of a ticket. This is what I saw this morning:
Ticketmaster made the price go from $15.00 to $27.30, and that’s if I print off the ticket on my printer. If I wanted to have a ticket mailed to me, it would cost even more. That’s just out of control. When I saw that, I closed my browser window and decided to buy a ticket at the door and risk it selling out.
In contrast, I had a very good experience at etix, where they charged a $2.50 service fee per ticket. I think that’s reasonable and I wish more venues and artists would use etix and force Ticketmaster to respond to some competition.
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