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It's better with a partner

February 10, 2010

They say many things in life are better with a partner, and you know “they” can’t be wrong. When it comes to fluxiom on Mac OS X, our natural partner is Fluid, a great site-specific browser that places fluxiom in your Dock, complete with a custom icon and windows of its own.

If you haven’t yet used Fluid, it’s a great way to keep fluxiom open and available all the time, independently from your browser tabs. It’s also a way to ease your users into the crazy concept of web applications, by blurring the lines between the desktop and the cloud. And, of course, since fluxiom’s interface is so desktop-like to begin with, many may never notice the difference.

Here are the bare essentials of a Fluid setup, but be sure to season to taste:

Setting up Fluid to access your fluxiom account

For the ultimate power tool arrangement, we recommend pairing fluxiom with fluxUp!, our native uploader for Mac OS X — and Windows. Upload, store and share files right from your Desktop. There is virtually no delay between the time a file is uploaded and the time it appears in your account interface, meaning fluxiom can take part in the fastest-paced workflows.

We now automatically provide Fluid instances with a custom icon — which you can change from within the application, of course — so that your Dock always looks its best. Our designers also gave the fluxUp! icon a little facelift of its own, empowering both applications to live together in “pairfect” harmony…

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We now support Google Chrome

February 02, 2010

Since Google announced its last software coup, the introduction of an innovative, colourful and, quite literally, shiny browser, dubbed Chrome, interest from our users has been considerable.

Indeed, Google Chrome has been built specifically for Web 2.0 applications like fluxiom. It offers breakthrough memory management, enhanced security and blazing fast JavaScript performance. What’s more, it shares a rendering engine with another cross-platform favourite, Safari. What’s not to love?

Of course, since fluxiom is standards-compliant, compatibility has never been an issue for adventurous users. However, we are glad to announce we now officially support Google Chrome, meaning we have gone through the system with a fine-tooth comb, tweaking, testing and enhancing our code to ensure the smoothest ride possible.

The update has already been rolled out, and users on other browsers should not notice any changes.

As always, we are here to help in case something happens.

Happy fluxin’!

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Do more, brand more, flux' more

January 26, 2010

Today, we are delighted to introduce further speed-ups, a smarter branding system, and a small, but significant change to video previewing.

Next to many nice interface tweaks, notably around the Tabs bar, and in the sub-menus of the Account section, here are the main changes:

Faster initial load

Initial loading times have been cut roughly in half, by dramatically diminishing the number of files we download from the server, as well as the size of these few components we cannot do without. This means fluxiom can now load as fast as 1.5 seconds on a good office connection.

To achieve this, we now optimise our support files with Jammit, and embed most of our images right into our CSS declarations.

Better branding

The branding interface has also been streamlined so that setting up and altering your branding is as painless as loading the results. For example, you can now play around with gradients without uploading a logo. We hope this will titillate your inner artist.

Speaking of branding, we now handle gradient generation via CSS, and have reduced the number of images involved throughout the process, resulting in further speed gains.

Branding at work

fluxUp!

fluxUp! Our free desktop uploader for Mac & PC.

Finally, if you have been using fluxUp! to upload your assets, you may like to know we will release an update later today to integrate the application with fluxiom’s new branding structure. So stay tuned.

Updated January 26, 2010:
We’ve just released the new Mac version of fluxUp!.
Updated January 27, 2010:
The Windows version is ready as well: fluxUp!.

Streaming video

If you are in the habit of handling large and long videos, you will no doubt notice we now stream your video previews. This means you can easily jump to any point in the file, without waiting for the initial frames to load. This makes it even easier to compare movies, or zoom right into your favourite sequences.

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New year, new features

January 12, 2010

A new year, a new fluxiom! In-between the eggnog and the chocolates, our developers sneaked in a few hours of hard work, as a surprise New Year gift to our esteemed clients. Keeping in line with our obsession to make fluxiom more fluid and more reactive, we have been hard at work implementing a few big improvements to the Assets and Details views, that should make working with large quantities of files much easier.

Endless scrolling

The Assets view now loads assets on-the-fly as you scroll down, in manageable chunks, until you have seen all that is in your account pool. This means the initial view loads faster, and the system is more responsive as you scroll down the list, because it only handles the data to be displayed. While all browsers will get a speed boost from this new loading technique, those on older versions of Internet Explorer or on slower Internet connections should notice the greatest improvements.

Endless scrolling in action.

This informal speed test compares initial loading times for an Assets view holding a little over 2000 files. Of course, your mileage may vary, as they say, depending on network latency, but these figures still make for an interesting comparison:

Sans endless scrolling, roughly 13 seconds.

With endless scrolling, a hair below 3 seconds.

Smarter Details panel

The layout of the Details panel has been re-organised: commonly requested information is easier to find at a glance, and the general slew of details fluxiom extracts from your data is presented in a clearer, friendlier way. Worry not, no data has been removed from the panel!

The new layout of the re-organised Details panel.

Improved paging in the Details view

As you page from one asset to the next using the arrows at the top of the Details panel, the Assets view refreshes to highlight the asset being displayed in the Details panel itself — in essence keeping the panel and the page it is overlaid on in perfect sync.

Additionally, if you select multiple assets before opening the Details panel, the arrows at the top of the panel will restrict the cycle to those assets you have selected. This makes it easier to compare details between a few files, as the Details panel honours whatever selection you have made in the Assets view and won’t let you cycle out of it.

Export all your assets

We want you to renew your fluxiom subscription because you are happy with the service we provide, not because you can’t get your data out. While fluxiom has always featured numerous export options, and has always allowed you to export all your assets in one go, we felt we should make it clear to all account administrators.

Export all your files with the click of a button.

This is why they will now find a dedicated “Export all assets” button, in the “Account” tab of the fluxiom interface. It can’t get easier!

Improved toolbar behaviour

Traditionally, when no assets were selected in your fluxiom account, but a toolbar button was pressed — such as “Download” —, fluxiom would apply the instruction to all the assets in the account. We felt this was a quick way to enable “all-in-one” operations, especially on accounts holding a great many files.

Our users, however, have made it clear they find this behaviour confusing and expect the toolbar buttons to do nothing when no asset is selected. Therefore, we have now altered the toolbar’s behaviour to match these expectations, and you will notice buttons that were previously enabled by default, with a global effect, are now disabled.

To apply an operation to all your assets in one go, simply select them all, and click on the corresponding button. In other words, no functionality has been lost as a result of this update, you merely need to confirm you really do want an action to apply to all the assets in your account.

Improved keyboard navigation

While fluxiom has long featured some keyboard navigation essentials, this update now enables you to navigate the Assets View by using the arrow keys: a simple press of the appropriate key will move the selection rectangle by one tick in the desired direction. Of course, this works even when the Details panel is visible — which you can conveniently and coincidentally toggle by pressing the Space bar.

New keyboard navigation.

Because users managing large collections of assets tend to prefer the sober efficiency of the keyboard, we are embarking on a comprehensive review of fluxiom’s keyboard accessibility, and would like to hear your feedback. If you sometimes use your keyboard to navigate fluxiom, or would like to, send us a ping and let us know what your dream feature set would be.

And of course…

No release notes would be complete without the mention of miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements. This release is no exception, and many snags too minor to mention have been filed, buffed and varnished away.

Happy fluxin’!

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The “f” is for speed

November 24, 2009

Once again, fluxiom has been updated, and it shows! Over the past few weeks, we have silently deployed one of the largest updates in fluxiom’s history, fully unleashing the power of our brand new distributed back-end.

fluxiom may look the same at first glance, but what’s inside is entirely new. You will notice it is faster, smarter in its choices and clearer to interact with. This is also a retroactive update, meaning previously stored assets and existing accounts have been transparently re-visited to benefit from the improvements we are now announcing.

Faster previews

The thumbnail and preview generation process is now completely separate from the upload process. We have multiple ImageGeishas working in parallel to handle your data. This means previews are generated much faster, almost immediately for static files and in a matter of minutes for large video sequences. (As always, you need not wait until the preview generation completes to keep on working with your account.) Speaking of videos, any item whose source file allows for it will now sport a crisper, higher-quality preview. See the new preview generation process in action:

Uploading files, or even folders, is that easy with fluxiom and fluxUp!, its companion drag-and-drop uploader. Previews are generated and metadata is made searchable in seconds. Notice how new files appear transparently!

Preview everything

We now recognise 97% of all assets stored on our system, meaning you can preview the contents of nearly all popular video and file formats on the market today, without downloading the files. And yes, we’re working hard on cracking the remaining 3%!

Improved Video quality and video skimming

Now flip through keyframes right from the assets view.

We’ve dramatically improved the assets view, to allow video skimming right from the thumbnails, and to intelligently show information about the assets being displayed, based on the available screen real-estate. New background magic ensures your previews look their best at every zooming level, and appear on-screen faster.

Stages

We now allow you to open a stage directly from your account, with no additional login, as soon as it has been created. This renders the stage previewing functionality obsolete, and it has been removed accordingly.

Observe and Remember

We’ve taken a memory pill! fluxiom now remembers your previous zooming settings, as well as the last viewing mode you selected. We’ll work on remembering an increasing number of details over time so that you always find things as you last left them. Watch this space…

Refined Versions

Cosmetic improvements include a refined, clickable Versions badge, more reliable keyboard shortcuts and lighter generic icons for those (rare) files we can’t yet preview.

Improved metadata search

If searching for metadata information has given you trouble in the past, we invite you to try again. A pesky bug affecting a small minority of files and even fewer users has been ruthlessly squashed.

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We just started re-generating all thumbnails

October 09, 2009

fluxiom is just back online after a scheduled maintenance and is now back with big improvements (more details soon).

We now started re-generating all thumbnails, previews and video previews for all your assets.

The service is fully available during the re-generation of the thumbnails, without restriction, but you may notice that your thumbnails are replaced by generic “file type” icons. This is no cause for concern, and simply means the system hasn’t fully refreshed your account yet. We expect everything to neatly finish over the weekend.

Thank you for your continued support and your patience!

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Downtime ahead

September 29, 2009

For a few weeks now, we have been promising great improvements to fluxiom in the fall, building upon the new back-end we have been setting up for you during the first part of 2009. Well, fall it is!

After bringing on interface tweaks and new features, we are now ready to pulverise a few bottlenecks in our thumbnails and preview management system.

On October 9 at 10:00 AM Vienna time (see in your time zone), our administrators will take fluxiom into maintenance mode for two hours, during which new servers will be sprung into action. Worry not, your data will be safe and sound, but we need to disconnect the network temporarily while the processing machines are being shuffled around.

Around noon, fluxiom will be back with brand new code, and will start re-generating thumbnail previews for all your assets.

As soon as it is brought back online, the service will be fully available to you and your users, without restriction, but you may notice that all your thumbnails aren’t here yet, replaced instead by generic “file type” icons: this is no cause for concern, and simply means the system hasn’t fully refreshed your account yet. Priority will be given to paying accounts, of course, and we expect everything to neatly finish over the week-end.

Amongst the new features we will be launching are:

Bandwidth-efficient thumbnail generation — We now generate three sizes for each thumbnail, allowing us to present the best-looking and lightest possible file to the user. This speeds up the fluxiom interface dramatically, especially over slower connections, and makes for sharper, more beautiful images.

Super fast processing — Once the initial refresh is over, fluxiom will process your thumbnails up to 4 times faster, and this includes complex files.

Video skimming — You can now see key frames of your video clips by hovering over their thumbnails right from the fluxiom interface. Video previews will also look sharper and behave better.

Faster fluxUp! — Because fluxUp! is so tightly integrated with our processing system, it can now run up to 8 times faster in its default configuration.

Finally, we will grab the occasion to improve the overall fluxiom interface, focusing on the behaviour of thumbnails and previews. There will be no unsettling change but a smooth improvement over what you already know and use, based on both user feedback and our internal usability reviews.

As always, if you have any questions, please get in touch with our support specialists, who will be delighted to provide you with any additional information you may require. We appreciate your continued patronage, and are looking forwards to fluxin’ with you all on the new system.

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Keeping tabs on tags

September 07, 2009

There is more to updates than broad-sweeping interface redesigns and breakthrough features. Today, we are happy to announce a slight, but noticeable, update to the tags management view: gone are the multi-step tag updating procedures and the mute lines, replaced by inline editing and clear indications of the list’s interactive capabilities.

Those of you who manage lots of tags in your fluxiom account, or often update them to accompany project changes, should find the new interface more responsive, simpler to work with and overall more efficient.

To rename a tag, simply click on it, enter its new name and confirm. To delete tags, just hit the convenient trash can icon sitting at the left end of every line. As always, you can re-order your tag bar by dragging and dropping list items in the order you prefer.

If you are not yet using tags with your fluxiom account, you are missing out on a great way to cross-reference data: simply click on the “Manage tags” button at the top right of your fluxiom window to get started…

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