First, a quick intro: My name is Josh Buhler. I’m the resident Flash Ninja here at Footnote. My responsibilities cover pretty much anything to do with Flash on the Footnote site, including the document Viewer, which is used to view and annotate the documents on our site.
Working on the Viewer is a lot of fun. It has been one of the highlights of my Flash development career. Hearing all the good things folks are able to do with it, just makes my day more rewarding. We’ve got some big plans for the Viewer but have also heard your many suggestions.
This latest update addresses a few bugs as well as adds some new features that I’d like to highlight:
Annotations
You can now edit your annotations! To edit simply find your annotation on the document and click “Edit”…
make your changes…
and Save.
Annotations are also a little easier to use now. Previously, if you wanted to annotate something at the very top of a document, the annotation window would become hidden. That’s fixed.
Filmstrip
The Filmstrip – at the bottom portion of the Viewer – displays other documents from the same Title as the one being viewed.
When scrolling through lots of images, the Filmstrip would begin to slow down depending on how many images were available.
Now, the Filmstrip can easily support several hundred images.
The speed and smoothness of the Filmstrip will depend on the speed of your computer, but, on my MacBook Pro, I was easily scrolling through over 1000 images in the Filmstrip.
There’s another big update I’m excited about:
Next time you’re in the Viewer, click on a couple of images in the Filmstrip and watch the URL of the site up in the address bar of your browser.
You’ll notice the URL automatically changes to reflect the image that you’re viewing. What this means is that you can now easily bookmark documents and send links to your friends.
Get Help
We’ve added some help content to the viewer. Just click the Help button (marked as “?”) in the toolbar for some guidance.
Find the Easter Egg
Lastly, I’ve added a little treat for you to find.
The Viewer now has an easter egg lurking somewhere inside it, and it’s up to you to find it.
For those not familar with the term, easter eggs in software (and now our site), are hidden surprises that require a bit of sleuthing to find.
Let us know if you find it, but don’t give away how you did it.
That’ll ruin the fun of finding it for the others.
Good luck, and happy hunting!
(Now, if you would like a hint, I’d suggest starting in Project Blue Book – you’ll find that there’s some great stuff in there – you just have to search for it.)
I would appreciate it if someone would just tell me how to get the filmstrip to appear again after turning it off. Thanks!
Nancy,
When the filmstrip is closed, you should see an up arrow (triangle) and “Open Filmstrip” at the bottom right of the viewing area. If you click on that, it will open the filmstrip.
If you aren’t seeing the “Open Filmstrip” there’s something funny going on and we’d love to know about it.
I am having a problem with viewing the MACR 2661 and wonder if I have the most current viewer or something is wrong with the way this one is set up. I can look at the pages but when I want to view them it comes of with another document and not the one I want to view. Any help would be greatl appreciated.
Don