Posts tagged with tumblr RSS

Tried out Tumblr’s new Photoset app with some pictures from a recent trip to Fiji. Works beautifully. It’s so good, I kinda wish I could have a profile page on photoset.com to collect all my sets together…

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.

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.

Tumblr Vimeo Embeds

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.

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)

Better HTML5 Vimeo embeds on Tumblr

The latest version of this script has a new permanent home.

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.

Heroes

Humming

  • The Suburbs by Arcade Fire
  • The King Is Dead by The Decemberists
  • Passive Me, Agressive You by The Naked and Famous
  • Buffalo by The Phoenix Foundation

Past: 2009, 2008, 2007

Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email me.