Martin Kool: Archive

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jQuery Support for Cross Domain XHR in IE - Native...

Today I stumbled upon what seems to be a cross-dmain issue in IE when trying to obtain data from server at domain A to client at domain B through an XmlHttpRequest (XHR) using jQuery.ajax for coding convenience. Servers disallow such requests by default and setting the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header will whitelist other domains (or all domains by setting its value to “*”). I was...

Feb 24th

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Game Developer Gives 7-Year-Old Best Birthday...

UPDATE Feb 24: CultOfMac covers this story and informs us Zias’ level will be added to iOS as well! Being a gaming father I try to raise my kids with a healthy balance of analog and digital fun. To the surprise of me and Mrs Kool they don’t seem to care about digital games that much, and prefer paper, glue and scissors and playing outside over anything else. But recently my son...

Feb 14th

142 notes

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Inside Flipboard The App

Just for fun, I am working on an html5 version of Flipboard. Not that I am recreating the entire app, but it’s a great way of geeking around with CSS and javascript to mimic its page flip using webkit transforms. When it’s done I’ll post a full writeup here, but for now enjoy a sneak preview which doesn’t yet run on tablets (I think the final result will run on the iPad,...

Jan 23rd

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Textbooks in iBooks 2 can access online audio and...

One of the caveats of Apple’s attempt to disrupt the textbook industry is that the entry-level iPad not only costs $500 but it comes with a mere 16 Gb of storage. Have a few interactive books with video on the shelf like the new media-rich Life On Earth and you’ll run out of disk space in no time. But here’s an interesting new setting in iBooks 2 that might help in...

Jan 20th

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Het Fronteers certificaat: AJAX of WC Eend?

Ik heb het persoonlijk niet zo op Fronteers. Dat komt mede door mijn allergische reactie op de elitaire wijze van oprichting destijds door de op “international guru level” functionerende Peter-Paul Koch en het chauvinisme wat weer boven komt drijven bij de discussie of de “vakvereniging” niet toch een eigen front-end certificaat in het leven moet roepen. Even terugspoelen...

Jan 12th

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How to change the CSS hover state with webkit...

Chuck Norris can hover over an element and inspect it with Webkit Inspector at the same time. For us mere mortals, Webkit Inspector has a few tickboxes to toggle an element’s state. Expand the Styles section and press the little arrow icon on the right. It opens a panel with the following states: :active :focus :hover :visited

Jan 2nd

3 notes

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Flipbird

The Flipboard logo will never be the same. Wikipedia: Finger (gesture) The gesture has also been referred to flipping […] the bird. PS. Sorry Mike ;)

Dec 20th

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6 UX suggestions for Grand Theft Auto III on iOS

GTA 3 is one of my all time favorites. If Rockstar would’ve created an app with the radio channels alone it would’ve been a justified purchase and perhaps a massive hit too, so bringing the full game to iOS is a treat. For that I thank Rockstar. A treat that sadly has its caveats. So many even that the game is unplayable on my iPad (1). Literally. It crashes in between missions so...

Dec 19th

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Reason 42 why I hate Eclipse

I won’t beat around the bush. I love to rant and I hate Eclipse. I really utterly hate everything about it. To the bone. The GUI (the horror), the buttons glyphs (ONOES), the keyboard shortcuts (my god, the keyboard shortcuts), the dialogs (they haunt me), the annoying helper icons (MAKE IT STOP), AAAAAAaaaah!!!!!! To pick just one of all the horrifying aspects I “dislike” about...

Dec 9th

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Watch

My talk about game emulators in javascript at OnGameStart - The first HTML5 Game Conference.

Dec 2nd

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How to use Firebug on your iPad and iPhone

Web developers targetting HTML5 on iDevices would really benefit from having Web Developer Tools or Firebug on Mobile Safari. Enter Firebug Lite! However, iPads, iPhones and bookmarklets don’t go well together, so I put together this little howto. All credits to Joe Hewitt for creating Firebug. Surf to this page on your iPad or iPhone and bookmark it Rename the bookmark...

Dec 2nd

90 notes

It's on iPad like Donkey Kong

http://q42games.com/donkeykong2 One of my all time favorite games is Nintendo’s Game & Watch device “Donkey Kong II”. You can now play it on your iPad in HTML5. It is without sound on your precious tablet, but that’s due to Apple’s lack of proper audio support in Mobile Safari. To play with sound effects, point your desktop browser there. On the iPad it plays...

Sep 13th

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Sep 9th

Leisure Suit Martin Goes Looking For Intellectual...

It’s been a few weeks since the closure and reopening of Sarien.net. Codemasters is giving me the silent treatment and Activision has been very kind and helpful since, though they have been busy with other licenses such as Guitar Hero, so I understand that Space Quest is not top priority. It seems that in the meantime Telltale Games has obtained a license to work on new King’s Quest...

Mar 29th

Sarien.net - The Full Story

What started out as a retro chat environment became a full scale iPad game catalog without the AppStore that recieved an official Cease and Desist by Activision and finally become an authorized game portal with a bright future. Sarien.net is an adventure on its own, so it’s about time I put things in perspective. Ten years ago In 2001 I joined Q42, and we created a fun chat application...

Jan 27th

So long and thanks for all the fish

No more partying like it’s 1986 as sarien.net received a Cease and Desist.

Jan 24th

Sarien.net on iPad gets command line text input

Several sites that praised Sarien.net’s arrival on iPad also called these games “Point & Click” adventuregames. That is in fact incorrect, as these games were from an era before that. Interaction was done solely by the keyboard, though an optional joystick was supported. There was no mouse support for the likes of Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest or the...

Jan 16th

All Sierra AGI games now available on the iPad

My little pet project sarien.net has been in the news again (TouchArcade, Engadget,Joystiq, TUAW), yet I haven’t posted anything about it myself. So here goes: If you go to sarien.net with your iPad or iPhone you can now play the entire AGI adventuregame catalog of Sierra On-Line on your favorite iOS device.

Jan 15th

Added my favorite js library to Handcraft: Scatter...

For years we’ve been using an elegant approach at Q42 to dyamically refresh some parts of a webpage, without doing a full reload. You might call it AJAX, we call it scattering. And it saves you from coding any javascript other than a call to initially scan the page. Interested? Read the post on Handcraft.

Nov 29th

Space Quest Lands on the iPad

And it’s there. Check out the full coverage at TouchArcade.

Nov 14th

Oct 14th

Quplo

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. I did do a lot of blogposting however, albeit on another site. A site that I have been working on for the past 8 months: Quplo - A new way to create interactive prototypes I’ve been working at Q42 for about 10 years now, and it’s been a blast. I’ve been blessed to work with a team of professionals that are equally...

Oct 13th

Sarien.net is live

After months of hard work, you can now play Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and Police Quest in your browser, multiplayer. No need to write more about it here, just go there and find out: www.sarien.net Or read more about it over at ajaxian here.

Apr 8th

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Donkey Kong II Game & Watch for Nintendo DS

Donkey Kong II, my all time favorite Game & Watch, is here for the Nintendo DS.It’s not finished, you can’t die, and it is probably loaded with bugs. But I loved this game so much that I just had to have it for my DS. One thing that scares me is the phrase ‘if you build it, they will come’. Hopefully Nintendo understands that this is my tribute to an all time classic...

Aug 19th

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Complex - My Pocket PC "best puzzlegame of 2004"...

Back when I was 13 or so, I wrote a sokoban inspired puzzlegame called Complex. I even wrote two sequels and it got some attention on BBS-es (for those not in the know, that was pre-internet when we still had the wooden guilder). In 2004 I redesigned the game, wrote 60 new levels and polished up a new version with my brother in law. We released in for Pocket PC and it was received quite well. It...

Dec 9th