Hey folks...

I'm gearing up to go live with my new company very soon and am just in the middle of a mad rush pushing static content to my server. Most of you know I quit my job at ATI late last year and some of you know I decided to start a small software company. We're working on a couple of longer-term projects but we put them on hold for a little bit to create and release a small program to work with Apple's new machines and Remote.

The whole mess is supposed to run on a Content Management System (Joomla) but the person helping me with integration is currently not available. This means I'm also missing nice things like a shopping cart and will probably just use a static Buy Now button directly to a PayPal payment processing page.

http://twistedmelon.com/test2

I hope I haven't broken any links while creating all the pages manually. Some sections currently have no content as I'm still in the process of creating it. I still have to proof-read everything as well. Some of the man navigation areas also lack some of their sub-sections (these will be added as I develop additional content, like a Knowledge Base and introduce additional products). It's all been designed to be fairly modular and allow for growth/change (my design docs already account for quite a bit more that isn't currently seen).

The pages definitely look the best with Gecko (Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, etc..) and KHTML/Webkit-based (Safari, etc..) rendering, but I've taken steps to make it work in IE6 as well. I haven't tested Opera or other browsers in a while though.

This isn't ready to advertise yet and I may have to push it live without the download and buy options active if the software isn't ready to go next week.

Thanks for checking it out.

Bruno

What, no screenshots?

(nothing under "Screenshots" tab, and the thumbnails aren't clickable).

Cheers

More proof reading..

The Overview claims "over 15 profiles .. already built-in". The News release claims "20". The right side-bar lists 19.

How many is it, anyway?

Cheers

Love the look of it, especially the tabs.

Looks nice, but I've already fallen in love with Sailing Clicker, being able to control my mac with Bluetooth or Wifi from my cellphone just plain rocks. I also don't have the mac with a remote

Well, 20 is definitely "over 15" - and I said "over 15 popular" - not all of the 20 are popular.

I'm missing one entry on the side bar for a small app called Photobooth. Good eye though! And I'm working on the screenshots and media images right now. The two thumbnail images on the front page will be replaced with final ones (the one on the bottom isn't even showing the correct image at all) and they'll be linked to the screen shots page showing much bigger images.

I also just fixed a bunch of messed up links that would have caused major issues for anyone unlucky enough to be using IE6.

Bruno

The first upate after release should include support for older Macs using an external (USB) IR Receiver. The Apple Remote has a range of at least 30 feet. I think my Bluetooth phone goes 5 if it's lucky.

This idea spawned from our requirement for remote input for one of the main projects being worked on. And the fact I designed similar software for ATI didn't hurt either.

Bruno

No, I won't be supporting RW with this. mira is strictly for the Apple Remote. I may at a later date release a sort of "Studio" version that isn't a pref pane and has many more options and would work with any IR remote and possibly a few other easy to implement ones like RW.

Anyone have access to IE7 in Windows Vista? I haven't tested the page template with that yet to know if anything breaks.

Bruno

Looks fabulous! I like the design a lot, its trendy to the max.

In the image here I think you may have the position of the IR receiver on the iMac in the wrong place - I thought it was actually next to the iSight on that one. It is such a geeky thing to notice!

I know the lowercase 'mira' is part of the brand, but it really does catch me when it is used to start a sentance, as I'm expecting a capital letter. I think if you used some very subtle emphasis, say making every instance of the word mira a notch darker than the rest of the text you would be able to get away with it.

At the end of the day, it all depends on how fussy you really want to be with that. It really does look great right now!

Very impressive, Bruno. I really like the design. I'm sorry I don't own any Mac equipment!

Best of luck to you.

Oh, by the way it looks like a great little application! Can I please add a request for it to control MythFrontend, that would be so totally sweet, and a much needed addon.

I know it would be difficult to test without a working MythTV setup, but basically you need to remap the +, -, >> and << keys on the remote to the arrow keys, and the play/pause button to the enter key. If tapping MENU could make the volume buttons work and turn play/pause into ESC for the next 5 seconds, that would be an excellent bonus.

If you need any testing or any more info on MythFrontend on OS X, I'll help you as much as I can.

Good luck with the company and hope everything goes smoothly.

Actually, the IR receiver on the iMac *is* behind the Apple logo, believe it or not. But thanks for noticing all the small things - it's one of the reasons all this stuff takes me so long.

I try not to start sentences with "mira" but it's a bit unavoidable. I also thought about making it start with a capital in those instances, but just haven't done anything about it. Maybe I'll make a small style for it and do a search and replace.

With regards to Myth... As soon as I have a fully working copy of the program available you're welcome to create a profile for Myth. I can then add it into the default set for the next update - I'll talk to you offline about that when the program is available as there's some additional information I can also throw in there and some special features that are also possible.

Thanks for the compliments guys. I was really stuck on the design front for a long time. And then afew ideas here and there evolved into this. I still don't have a very robust style for the content area so I'm just letting that evolve as well. Lastly I'm a bit blocked on how to handle the contents on the right side for a lot of the pages. I just don't have much of anything to put in there since there are no news entries nor blog posts, etc...

Bruno

Wow, great web site design. Did you do that part?

Good name too. *whistles* Holy cops!

Peter

Yup, did 100% of it, design, graphics, text, everything. I guess that's what 100% means (it still means that right?) I'm a bit overworked as my girlfriend will sadly confirm. But hopefully not going looney yet.

The design, illustration and layout were all done in Adobe Illustrator too. No Photoshop. All the XHTML and CSS were done by hand in GoLive's source editor (I used GoLive pretty much only because it manages all your files as a "Site" - I didn't use any of its tools). If you look at the source you'll probably wonder what I've been smoking. I don't profess to be very good at XHTML nor CSS - I still had to rely on a few tables to hold everything together.

Peter, isn't it "Call the cops!" ? I'd actually love to get a sample of the very start of the song and throw it onto the page somewhere so when you click a secret area it will play back. "You're twistin my melon man"

The name I conceived in 1999 (because of the Happy Mondays song Peter referenced) and the domain I registered in early 2000. I've finally found something to do with it.

Oh, there are two visual "easter eggs" on every page (part of the common template bits). One of them doesn't work in IE6. They were really quick to do so I threw them in.

If you have an eye for subtlety, you'll notice all links have both a roll-over state as well as an active state (the state you see when you actually click them). Due to IE6 not supporting Alpha channels in PNG graphics, I'm only using two 32bit PNGs with Alpha - the leaves on the right and a shadow mask I apply to the tabs when clicked. I'm using a "behavior" PNG hack for IE to allow Alpha to load through DirectX for explicit image tags so the leaves on the right work in IE6. But that hack doesn't work with background images that I am using pretty much everywhere else as part of the template (including the tab shading - so I had to override that as blank for IE6)

To my amazement, the XHTML does validate (or it did when I tested it a few days ago) and the CSS mostly validates (except for an issue with some mozilla specific style I used at the very top and a bucket-load of warning for missing color tags).

Bruno

Love the web design very nice!

It seems odd that the bottom corners of the bottom darker-blue box on the right aren't rounded.

I felt I had already exhausted my rounded corner quota. Besides, the way some of the web elitists are deriding rounded corners these days, they may very well fall out of fashion sooner rather than later. Then I'll have to do a new design, perhaps using square corners. Or maybe star-burst corners.

Bitt, how about a crack edit job on the text? I'm sure I've made umpteen grammatical errors and I know I could use a bit of help with the flow in some areas. When you spend so many hours working on so many other things, writing can become such a draining task. What I need is a voice recorder for the shower, because the idea sparks usually fade by the time I get down to a keyboard. Alas...

Bruno

Now I've also got three "blog" posts up. My first ones ever in fact. Woooo. I'm still a little sad I will miss the deadline to submit the application we're releasing for Apple's design awards. Last day is this Friday and you have to be "shipping" when you submit. Next year I suppose.

B.

Well, it seemed like those were the only two corners that weren't rounded. Felt like you'd just missed them.

Quote:
how about a crack edit job on the text

Okey-doke:

Features:

• "all together" should be "altogether"
  
• "One button" should be "One-button"
  
• "contents scrolls" might should be "contents scroll" or "content scrolls", or maybe not

That's all I see worth commenting about, other than to note that you've got a lot of em-dashes and wonder if they're really all appropriate.

EDIT: fixed open list tag -robircc
Thanks. I should really preview posts more often. -wfaulk

What the fuck is up with this?



Is that a firefox thing or a stylesheet thing?

Who do I get to beat upside the head with a typographer's stick? Christ, that's awful.

Given this part:
"FeaturesFeatures[/url]:
[list]"

I would guess there's an open tag somewhere in his post.

Naw, I've seen that crappy bullet-outdenting thing in other places even without messed up tags.