At Last
posted by max on February 17, 2010 at 06:25:25 PM
Greetings fair users.
It's been quite a while since I've updated you all and I thought I'd pop in with an update that I hope will usher in a new era of YTMND.
A lot of you know that for some time now I've been working on the Flash template for YTMND which I released the source for more than a year ago. This was meant to be a solution which would allow YTMNDs to look and synchronize the same across all browsers as well as play sound without gaps. The solution wasn't ideal; it required tens of thousands of lines of Actionscript, PHP and C. It required that all non-Flash-compatible file formats (GIF, WAV) be converted to SWF, which was a painful process at best.
Over the last few weeks I've been trying to create a more elegant solution. Today I'd like to unveil the new YTMND template.
So check it out. You can look at new YTMNDs or even old classics that haven't worked in years. Please leave bug reports/thoughts/etc in the comments. I'm eager to hear what you guys think.
Now I'd like to take a minute (just sit right there) to talk about YTMND 2.0. Last week I merged all the development code into the main trunk, which is a major step towards launching 2.0. Originally I planned to launch on April 1st, which would be YTMND's sixth birthday, but due to my current full-time freelance gig, I've been forced to only develop on nights and weekends. That being said, I think we're still on for an April launch. YTMND 2.0 is more-or-less feature-locked. Most of what's left is just templating and porting over some of the new features. I'm working on a formal changelog, which I'm hoping to release before the new site to prepare everyone for the massive number of changes. So stay tuned.
Since we're moving to an entirely Flash solution, I think it's a good time to reflect on the last few years of being forced to rely on Quicktime to play our sound files in most browsers. Somehow over the years it's gotten exponentially worse at playing sound files with standards created decades ago. So as a big fuck you to Apple and Quicktime, I'm launching a new contest today with a Quicktime/WAV theme. Feel free to use giant, gapless WAV files.
It's been quite a while since I've updated you all and I thought I'd pop in with an update that I hope will usher in a new era of YTMND.
A lot of you know that for some time now I've been working on the Flash template for YTMND which I released the source for more than a year ago. This was meant to be a solution which would allow YTMNDs to look and synchronize the same across all browsers as well as play sound without gaps. The solution wasn't ideal; it required tens of thousands of lines of Actionscript, PHP and C. It required that all non-Flash-compatible file formats (GIF, WAV) be converted to SWF, which was a painful process at best.
Over the last few weeks I've been trying to create a more elegant solution. Today I'd like to unveil the new YTMND template.
New Features
- All sound is now played through Flash. WAV files included.
- Properly formed WAV files (and even some MP3s) now loop gaplessly.
- Loading is now done asynchronously. (images and sound files will load at the same time, reducing load times.)
- All Javascript ported to jQuery so the template should function the same across all browsers.
- Secret button on the bottom left of YTMNDs to allow resynchronization of the YTMND without reload.
- Advertisements shown while loading (to people coming to YTMNDs with a non-ytmnd.com referrer)
- Support for new features which are being launched in 2.0 (like choosing both a foreground and background image, exact placement of images, new zooming text styles, OGG support, and many others)
So check it out. You can look at new YTMNDs or even old classics that haven't worked in years. Please leave bug reports/thoughts/etc in the comments. I'm eager to hear what you guys think.
Now I'd like to take a minute (just sit right there) to talk about YTMND 2.0. Last week I merged all the development code into the main trunk, which is a major step towards launching 2.0. Originally I planned to launch on April 1st, which would be YTMND's sixth birthday, but due to my current full-time freelance gig, I've been forced to only develop on nights and weekends. That being said, I think we're still on for an April launch. YTMND 2.0 is more-or-less feature-locked. Most of what's left is just templating and porting over some of the new features. I'm working on a formal changelog, which I'm hoping to release before the new site to prepare everyone for the massive number of changes. So stay tuned.
Since we're moving to an entirely Flash solution, I think it's a good time to reflect on the last few years of being forced to rely on Quicktime to play our sound files in most browsers. Somehow over the years it's gotten exponentially worse at playing sound files with standards created decades ago. So as a big fuck you to Apple and Quicktime, I'm launching a new contest today with a Quicktime/WAV theme. Feel free to use giant, gapless WAV files.
Add a comment
Voting is fixed. Last night I wrote some code which should fix the majority of broken WAVs, there are still a few that aren't playing properly but I have some more actionscript to write this weekend which should increase performance and hopefully get rid of the stuttering/speed problems users with slower computers are experiencing.
The majority of YTMND's traffic is people looking at one page and then leaving. Right now we don't monetize the subdomains at all. We make 100% of our revenue through showing ads to users who come to the www site and that's the minority of our traffic. This is done by putting up to 3 ads per page and generally throwing too many ads at the loyal users and none at the users who just look at something without participating and leave.
I've been designing 2.0 to try and never have more than 2 ads on any given www page and a large number only have 1 ad. I'd like to shift away from trying to force ads down users' throats and move towards monetizing the traffic of the faceless masses that come here from other sites. So again, unless you use something to block referrers, any link to a ytmnd you click from ytmnd.com should be ad free. I don't want users to see more ads, I want non-users to see more ads.
hi its vince with shamwow you'll be saying wow every time you use this towel. This is for the cops, the mall, and the yard. A regular towel doesn't work right, this work wet or dry. Look at this, doesn't it make a mess? Ring it out. Now the cops, look at this, they use it as a towel, completely dry. Cut it half, use as a bathmat, put a sweater, roll it up like that, dry like that. Here's some coffee, cola, without doing any damage, look at this, without putting any pressure, the color comes right up
Still a bit unstable, as certain sites like lol, internet doesn't work, although at least this is a big step forward rather than being forced to download the codecs whenever I browse here on another PC.
And I bet it'll be of some benefit for mobile users, too; the previous system doesn't loop on a Nokia 5800, so I guess the Flash applet would work better on a mobile device that's capable of Flash.
MAX, fyi - I get this wrror now every time I logout...
Warning: session_destroy() [function.session-destroy]: Trying to destroy uninitialized session in /www/htdocs/ytmnd.com/includes/common.php on line 614
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /www/htdocs/ytmnd.com/includes/common.php:614) in /www/htdocs/ytmnd.com/www/users/login.html on line 452
According to Google Cache, there was a site called "DeNiro turns into a dummy, explodes" made by airbornebryan. It was alive as of March 9, 2010, but appears to have been deleted. http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:BVMuPEOSWYIJ:ytmnd.com/search%3Fq%3Ddummy+airbornebryan+DeNiro+turns+into+a+dummy,+explodes&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us