Archive for April, 2008

…then it’s not a frogans

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Whatever the frogans you make or browse, it’s always going to be a frogans. You can be sure of that because Frogans technology development has always been guided by a set of fundamental principals, self-imposed by STG Interactive. The aim of these principals is to help assure a high level of user-friendliness and usability in a frogans, whatever the frogans that frogans may be.

In a sense, Frogans technology is open on one end, and closed on the other. It’s open with respect to the use of FSDL. Under the FSDL perpetual license it will always be free to use for creating frogans, and even for creating frogans authoring tools. If a software company decides to create the equivalent of Dreamweaver for frogans, that’s fine. There’s no obligation to STG Interactive.

On the other hand, if someone wants to make an alternative to the Frogans Player – say one that accepts larger images, or can detect the date and time on your system – forget it. Why? Because frogans don’t do that.

I can’t say it enough: Frogans are not widgets. I should add: Widgets are not frogans. Oh no. They should be so lucky.

Here’s a short list of annoying things that will tell you that something is not a frogans:

  • If it doesn’t have a frogans address, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it opens up without you intending it to, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If you can’t rescale it immediately to the size you like, or hide it, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it slows down the performance of your computer, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it doesn’t function and display identically regardless of your operating system, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it animates without your input, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it passes behind another application, or application window, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it downloads to your hard disk, then it’s not a frogans.

And here’s a list of things that will annoy your computer that a frogans won’t do:

  • If it opens up an application unexpectedly, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it contains HTML, JavaScript or Flash, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it interferes with the functioning of other applications, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it depends on the functioning of software other than the Frogans Player, then it’s not a frogans.
  • If it puts a wiggle in your walk, then it could be frogans, or it could be what you had with your cereal this morning.

Frogans Favorites, Sessions and the Question of Cookies

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008

Frogans do not use cookies per se. For storing a frogans’ session information after a frogans has been closed it may be written to an end-user’s system drive as a “session identifier”.

You can think of a session identifier as kind of a smart cookie. By default, a frogans’ session identifier disappears when that frogans is closed. However, if the end-user adds a frogans to their “frogans favorites”, sort of like a list of frogans bookmarks, its session identifier may remain persistent, available on disk for that frogans to consult the next time it is opened. (When you add a frogans to your frogans favorites, a dialog box appears informing you that in doing so, you enable session identifiers to be written to your local drive).

For example, the frogans that you’re browsing contains a chess game which you’re playing against a server app. Each time you make a move the slide refreshes, sending to the server a session identifier describing the state of the game so that the server can compose the chessboard accordingly on the refreshed slide.

It’s 3am and you have to shut down the computer before the game ends. A good night’s sleep will help you rethink your strategy anyway. If this frogans is not designated as a “favorite” the state of your game will vaporize the moment you close it.

Fortunately, you had already added it to your frogans favorites. At 5am, when you open it up again, it has the same size and placement on your screen as it did at 3am, plus it displays the last slide you were visiting before you closed it.

And what’s more, it will remember the state of your chess game, thanks to its session identifier.

“Frogans favorites” is more than just a list of bookmarked frogans addresses. By default a frogans always opens to its homeslide, at full-size, in the middle of the screen. Adding a frogans to your frogans favorites 1) puts that frogans in your frogans favorites submenu for easy access, 2) sets your Frogans Player to remember the slide, the placement on your screen and the size of that frogans from when it was last viewed and 3) allows the last session identifier to remain on your disk, like a persistent cookie.

The Frogans Player’s default manner for opening frogans helps assure that frogans be accessible without being imposing. Keep in mind that, when opened, frogans are loaded into active memory only. So there is no need to cache frogans resource files on the end-user’s local drive. This helps keep your system insulated from potentially malicious documents, and besides, why clutter up your hard drive with unnecessary files?

With the end-user choosing to list a frogans in their frogans favorites, it puts power to decide if session data is written back into their own hands.