A transmission from the deep south.
For every new feature we add, we take an old one out. A lot of big sites don’t do that, and it’s a problem. Twitter started as a beautifully simple product, but it’s now going the same route as Facebook. The drive to innovate can overencumber and destroy a product.
— Good advice from Tumblr co-founder David Karp, in a frank and wide-ranging interview with Inc.’s Liz Welch.
Here’s a new Tumblr I’ve launched today: An Illustrated Guide. It’s a review site for picture books that I’ve created with my wife Catherine, covering illustrated books that have caught our eye. We’ll be publishing new reviews regularly, with a selection of titles that will appeal to both parents and collectors of beautiful things. Take a look, follow along. (There’s some extra interactive goodness for those viewing in Safari.)
The good news is I fixed the tag pages. The bad news is I deleted the whole shebang in a fit of impressive Tumblarity. The remaining posts will be restored in the next hour or two are now back.
In August I revised my jQuery code for restoring customisation to Flash-based Vimeo embeds on Tumblr, with a version that supports Vimeo’s new universal syntax. The new script found every instance of Flash-based embed code and replaced it with universal <iframe> code (including customisations for colour and metadata visibility), making it useful for legacy content.
Over the past week Tumblr has changed its approach, and now converts all legacy Vimeo code to universal, preserving customisations where they were previously set. This renders the previous version of the script largely redundant, so I’ve extended it to override the default customisations, for users who were previously relying on my script to perform these en masse.
The script now has a new permanent home via Tumblr’s static page support. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.
The self-awareness that leads someone to say that “technical management needs have evolved to require types of experience that I don’t have” is massive, and it should be admired. This is the essence of what it is to be a professional.
Yes, there’s that too. Marco’s just a special guy. Tremendous talent combined with the refusal to be anything but honest, opinionated, and straight-forward with himself and others. Whether we’re talking about tech, coffee, politics, or proper ordering techniques at our local Chicken Deli.
And he’s also just a great guy who I’ve been lucky to work closely with these past few years. Can’t wait to see what the bright future holds for our pal Marco.
(Source: marco)
It has been an invaluable experience to develop a product from just two users to one of the top 50 sites in the U.S., and I’m looking forward to staying close to this incredible team.
— Woah, Tumblr’s lead developer Marco Arment is leaving a full-time role at the company to pursue his independent career (he’s also the creator of the Instapaper empire). He’ll continue to fulfill an “active consulting” role as the engineering team grows. I’m more than excited for what he’ll create next, but can’t help feeling a bit fearful for this platform given what he’s been instrumental in building at Tumblr. Best wishes!
(Source: marco)
Today Vimeo released its long-awaited “universal” embed code which utilises an <iframe> in place of the previous <object> tag. This new approach enables Vimeo to detect the type of device requesting playback, and to serve the appropriate format and resolution for the device, rather than failing if the Flash player was missing (as the old code did).
Along with the new default embed code, Vimeo provides an “Embedinator” script that, when included on any site, replaces occurrences of the old embed code with the new format. I’ve rewritten this script as a jQuery function with the added benefit that it reduces clutter by hiding the avatar, title and user of the clip from displaying in the playback frame. As with my previous script, you can also set a custom colour for selected parts of the interface.
Here’s a version bundled with jQuery that you can copy directly into the <head> of your theme template. The function is included below and should replace any previous version you’re using:
$(function() {
var color = "55cc55";
$("object[data^='http://vimeo.com']").each(function() {
var $obj = $(this);
var data = $obj.attr("data");
var temp = data.split("clip_id=")[1];
var id = temp.split("&")[0];
var server = temp.split("&")[1];
var w = $obj.attr("width");
var h = $obj.attr("height");
$obj.replaceWith(
"<iframe src='http://player.vimeo.com/video/"+id+
"?"+server+"&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color="+color+"' "+
"width='"+w+"' height='"+h+"' frameborder='0'></iframe>"
);
});
});
I’ll roll this into my premium themes in the next week or two.
Update: At present Tumblr replaces Flash video embed code (with the exception of YouTube) with a “requires Flash” placeholder div when serving pages to the iPhone, in both standard and optimised views. The above solution works perfectly to provide universal Vimeo support on the iPad, but won’t work for iPhone until this policy changes.
Reminder for the locals: there’s a meetup at Neighbourhood Bar (498 New North Rd, Kingsland) this Thursday from 7pm.
Now that Tumblr provides a custom tag for generating notes fragments on the same domain name as your blog, I’ve updated my AJAX Notes script to remove the proxy server it was formerly using. The script has a new permanent home here.
Teresa Yang is organising an Auckland Tumblr meetup at El Camino in Kingsland on Thursday, 5th August. If/when that gets too crowded the venue will shift to Neighbourhood Bar along the way. From 7pm, see you there. Update: RSVPs are up.
For users of my Solaris theme, there is now a version history page that details recent improvements. The 1.0.6 update has been submitted to Tumblr and, once approved, will automatically roll out to all blogs that have not switched to the Custom HTML mode in the Customize area (if you have, you’ll need to manually install the theme again, and port your changes to the new version).
The 1.0.6 update includes support for the new AJAX notes handler which loads notes in batches of 100 from Tumblr’s server. (David was kind enough to add callback support so that I could continue to post-process notes after they’re loaded into the page.)
One other recent feature that you may not have seen is support for three custom tags on audio posts that enable you to override the metadata Tumblr extracts from MP3 files for cover art, track name and artist name. These tags also work for externally hosted audio files. I’m investigating an IE7 issue with the script, but it appears to work fine otherwise. Please email if you have issues with this or any other aspect of the theme.
Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email
