Werx Limited

We make IT work.

Archive for category graphics design

Bible Flashcards for Android 2.0

Jun 28

Posted by wes in android, general, graphics design, java | 1 Comment

It’s been a while since I released Bible Flashcards version 1.0. Long enough in fact that I started getting emails asking whether I intended on updating past the 1.1.4 release.

Well I am proud to announce version 2.0 which includes a lot of requested features and a lot of bug-fixes and improvements. For this release I decided to take my time and re-factor the way various screens interacted, making them more modular and self-contained which should translate into fewer force closes. I also unleased the monkey on my app which helped me improve my code even more.

So without further ado here are the major features included in this release:

  • Ability to mark cards learned/unlearned
  • Ability to choose a random card
  • Cards now cycle so that if you are on card 1 and you attempt to go backwards, you are taken to the last card. Likewise if you are on the last card and you attempt to go forwards you are taken to the first card.
  • Menus also cycle so that if you hit the back button you will go from the active card view to the lesson chooser to the lesson set chooser and back to the card view.
  • Preferences to control settings such as card text size, whether to display learned cards, and a button to remove all learned cards from the internal database.

Some interface items had to be chopped to make room for these improvements. So if you are wondering where the next/back buttons are, they have been removed in favor of the more intuitive gesture controls. Swipe right for next card and left for previous card. Tapping the card flips it over.

I also want to give a special thanks to everyone who contacted me with words of encouragement and everyone who brought to my attention things that were broken and things that could be improved upon.

This release also includes a new lesson set, RossWords, which is being put together by  Samuel Rogers as he takes Hebrew this year. If anyone else is feeling generous  and would like to help out, feel free to contact me about a lesson set that you could help me improve upon or create as Samuel is doing.

Here are some screen shots from the new version:

And as usual, you can find Bible Flashcards in the Android Marketplace by searching for “Bible Flashcards” or by scanning the barcode below:

Tags: , , ,

A Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Beginner’s Tutorial

Jun 15

Posted by wes in general, graphics design, hosting, software development | No Comments

Learning CSS can be a bit daunting if you’ve never encountered it before. Likewise, if you’ve only had limited exposure to CSS, the various ways browsers implement various aspects of the CSS standard (or make up their own) can leave you with the impression that it is all a giant hairy mess. So to help out, I’ve compiled a list of resources to make the learning curve not quite as steep for beginners and to hopefully help tame the CSS wilderness for novices.

First, here is a pretty good and in-depth video on HTML and CSS basics:

Next we have several handy beginner’s tutorial sites:

Finally, here are a few CSS frameworks designed to help make CSS a lot easier by providing a standard system that takes care of much of the common ugly quirks found in CSS:

As a bonus, here are a few inspirational sites to help give you an idea of what CSS can do if applied properly:

Tags: , , ,

Writing a “punch the monkey” Flash application

Jun 20

Posted by wes in graphics design, software development | No Comments

Recently I was asked to develop a simple “punch the monkey” type game for an Augusta-based radio personality Austin Rhodes who apparently garners as many enemies as fans1. Both, it seems, wouldn’t mind taking a swing at him, though, even if its only a virtual one.

Not wanting to spend a whole lot of time on this project and remembering the plethora of “punch the monkey” Flash applets that used to plague us2 in the early days of the internet. I figured it would be pretty easy to simply modify one of them to fit our needs.

So here’s a simple 3 step process you can use to create your own “punch the monkey” game for that special someone in your life.

Step 1, rogue a base game from Sucker Punch Saloon. You’ll need to download the compiled  Flash binary, the .swf. I liked the look of the one with President George Bush because it seemed clean and easy enough to modify.

Step 2, decompile the compiled Flash binary (.swf) using something like Sothink’s SWF Decompiler or one of the countless others. Sothink’s decompiler is my favorite, though, since it has managed to consistently handle the latest versions of Flash.

Step 3, take the decompiled .fla and open it in Flash and replace the images you need with the ones you create. For the game I chose to modify, this meant swapping out 3 images in all along with the advertising at the bottom.  I also threw in some free sound effects from findsounds.com just to make the game more interesting. Additionally, this tutorial came in handy when it came to adding blood to the image (well, something that remotely resembles blood anyway).

Well there you have it. Quick, simple, and painless. Here’s the finished product, knock yourself (or Austin, rather) out.

  1. sort of like a local Rush Limbaugh [↩]
  2. before ad blockers largely toned them down that is [↩]

Tags: , , , ,