This is a 2010-to-2013 archive of toki-woki.net. Here's how it looks now.

Unipasta, a Unicode browser

When writing in French I’m always looking for characters that can’t be easily typed with a keyboard (like œ, for example). I used to go to copypastecharacter.com for its simplicity: just go to that page, click on a character and boom, it’s in your clipboard, ready to be pasted!

But I wanted something more powerful/thorough that would remember my frequently used characters. So I wrote Unipasta!

Unipasta

Here’s what you should know about it:

  1. Every input under the selected character (char, code and hex) can be edited and will update each other. Easily jump to any character!
  2. The font metrics (baseline, x-height and cap-height) are auto-calculated and will help you know where the char lives;
  3. Click on the “More Info” link to jump to fileformat.info and access a lot of details about the selected character;
  4. Every character your click will be automatically copied to your clipboard, handy!
  5. Use the “Recent characters” list to quickly access your favorite ones (latest used will always be listed first).

If you think some missing Unicode blocks are important to you or if you’d like to add a new character listing, just ask for it!

Evnt — Custom AS3 Event File Generator

I recently started working with Robotlegs on a daily basis and I’ve never had to write that much custom event classes, so I felt like it was starting to be a little bit boring… That’s why I wrote a pretty basic/simple app that does hard part for you!

Simply enter you custom event’s class name and package, drop in some constants and properties: you’re all set!

Pro-tips:

  1. Reorder the constants and properties by dragging and dropping them
  2. Use custom types for the properties, imports will be taken care of for you
  3. Hit “Copy to Clipboard” or “Save As…” for a quick export!

Project is brand new so it might require some fixes or improvements… If you have ideas, please share!

And before you ask: no, it wasn’t written with Robotlegs… But it’s OpenSource so if you want to take a spin and write the RL version of it, you’ll be able to do so!

Hope this helps!

Fotolia Desktop

Hey! Another free AIR app! This time that ain’t no side project I made on my free time for some obscure users, but rather a big thingy for a big company. Namely Fotolia.

I did all of the coding part (ActionScript 3, Flex 4) and Steaw is responsible for the UI and all graphics. The app is basically a solution for power-users, providing most of the functionnalities of the website and adding some more (such as direct download and local library). Allowing you to search, browse preview and buy all types of medias, including video and vectors. You can also log into your account and store your favorites in a lightbox or create and fill galleries.

This is my first multi-lingual app: to this day it provides 13 translations including Japanese, Chinese and other funny looking languages!

Flex 4

This is also my first big real-life project with Flex 4 and I have to say it’s way better/easier than Flex 3. Really. What changed my life is the way it handles states and component customization via skins… Oh boy, this is easy!

AIR 2.0

Yep, using the brand new AIR 2.0.2, buddy. What for? Mainly for global error handling and the almighty openWithDefaultApplication (for both folder and medias). I’ve also heard this version of the runtime is faster and lighter, and we all like that.

OpenSource

As for every project I work on, I try to have some OpenSource bits so that anyone can benefit from the work and time I spent on it. I asked Fotolia if the AS3 API I was going to write could be OpenSource’d and guess what, they accepted. So here it is, based on the as3-rpclib and on the as3 Signals logic: fotolia-as3-api. I implemented most of (if not all) features of their official API so building an AS3 app off of that should be pretty easy, do so!

Go get it!

Yeah, go get it.

Buck 65/20th

I’m still having a hard time believing what I’m about to write, but hopefully you will.

That was my intro, buddy.

A little bit of context

I listen to music, I try as hard as I can to be eclectic but let me confess that: I’ve always loved Hip-Hop. Of course my Hip-Hop heroes have changed through the years, but there’s one that never left my inner podium… He’s Canadian, he’s weird (proof: he’s worn a platypus shirt, once), he’s probably the most subtle writer I know (OK, with Yoni Wolf) and he’s evolving.

He’s Buck 65.

An ounce of Twitter

As in every web tale, it all starts with a Twitter status. Mine started with this one:

I kinda need a logo-thing made of the numbers 65 and 20. Anyone wanna take a crack? Who knows what might happen?!

I read this and thought “Well yes, but I’m kind of busy you know. And what the hell could I do with those damn numbers? Plus, lots of fans will answer that”.

Some friendly advice

A few days later as I was chatting with a good friend of mine (and discreetly sent him the link to that tweet) he reacted something like: “You bitch-ass cunt, you could try something and see! Stupid-ass jerk”. “Hum, well yeah, you know. Just sayin’…” I kind of replied.

So I fired Illustrator and tried a few things out. A “65”, a “20”, and 15 minutes later I had something.

Not quite ready for prime-time, but the concept was there. A few iterations later I was kind of happy with this:

So I tweeted back.

Who knows what might happen

And got an answer, a private one. Saying he was liking it… Oh boy.

A few days later I received another private message asking me if I could add a “th” to the logo, letting me know the mysterious logo was in fact for his “20 years as a rap weirdo”. Which I (of course) did.

We then e-mailed back and forth and “sorted out the details”, he “blew [the logo] up with dynamite and shot it with a gun a few times” and that was it.

Oh boy

I made Buck 65’s 20th “year in the game” logo, which is up on his new website.

Call me a happy fan. Yup.

The Scroll Effect

Facts

So the other day I had an hour to waste, I decided to learn how to use MooTools classes and, as the best way to learn something is to play with it, I played with it.

About 30 minutes after, I had something  running. Dirty and buggy but still, looking cool. It took me an extra 30 minutes to clean that up, make sure it was working on most browsers, add the Google Analytics tracker, push it online and add it to the projects page…

You probably guessed it already, I’m talking about the Scroll Clock. Well this hour might be the least wasted one of my life. Think I’m radical? Read on!

Results

After tweeting about it twice (once to someone who’s interested in netart, and once to the MooTools team) things went big. I don’t know exactly how this happened but it (the Scroll Clock page) got love from Gizmodo, swissmiss, QBN, Ajaxian, Neatorama and many more. Wow.

A few days after the tsunami, here’s what my Analytics page looks like. My daily average of 600 page views has seriously been put to shame, with a climax on the 19th of November: 313,000+.

Pageviews

Side effects

This is probably the funniest part, not only did I worry for the server the site is hosted on, but a few things happened…

I got 3 job offers ; many friend requests on Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo and so on ; received a donation ; was contacted by a Google guy to add the project to chromeexperiments.com, which I did ; and of course had to bother my friends and colleagues about my new web-fame…

Conclusion

The short one: don’t spit on Twitter, it might make you a star. Just joking, keep spitting on it.

The long one: the simplest and shortest project of mine is the one which received the most visitors and love, ironic right? What does that mean? Should I stop working on full-fledged AIR apps?

Prove me wrong!

Paper

Introducing my latest project: TW Paper, a simple iPhone/iPod touch wallpaper gallery+collection.

paper-blog-post

A little bit of JavaScript and some Photoshop/CSS trickery to present a growing collection of images designed for your favorite piece of technology!

The page also works on iPhone/iPod touch but looks a little different for better usability. Just tap+hold on the image to save it.

Paper on iPhone

Expect the gallery to evolve, with new images and quotes!

Scroll Clock

I played with MooTools a bit and did that. Useless, opensource, nerdy.

Scroll Clock

I also set up a gallery, so if you’ve got nice scrollbars that aren’t here yet, send’ em right away!

Boks–A Visual Grid Editor

Introducing Boks, my latest and most ambitious AIR app to this day!

Do you design web pages? Do you write HTML and CSS? Ever heard about the Grid System and Blueprint CSS? Thought it was a pain to implement? Think again, fool!

Boks is some kind of WYSIWYG to help you setup a grid and baseline rhythm, build and fill your layout and export all this to HTML and CSS in no time.

Got your own CSS style already? No problemo, Boks can use them and eventually merge and compress them within a single “screen.css”. Your styles use images? Simply point to your asset directory and it will be included too! Afraid of breaking the baseline rhythm with you randomly sized images? Just select the “Add JS to fix baselines” option and you’re good to go!

Enough. Just go grab it (or just have a look at the lovely screenshots) and send feedback!

Apr 01, 2009: Update! I’ve done some wacky video screencasts that can help you understand everything about Boks, go and have a look! Yes, the sound is not perfect.

FFFFOUND AS3 API

I recently released FFFFOUND Desktop, this AIR app uses a home-made API that I’m open sourcing today. The code is hosted on Google Code and is available via SVN, I also uploaded a zip archive if you prefer.

You’ll find the (asdocs) docs in the repository and in the archive.

By the way, I love feedback. If you use it: please share!

Also, if you need examples on how to use it, ask. I think the sources are self-explanatory but I might be wrong.

A few important things (also posted on the project’s page):

  • For now, this API will only work in AIR projects because ffffound.com’s crossdomain.xml is too restrictive. I’ve contacted them but at this time they don’t want to change it.
  • The API relies on FFFFOUND’s RSS feeds but also on the site’s pages’ HTML, so some functionalities might break at any time without warning. Use with caution.

Watch the comments for any update or news!