The jcFarcryFlvPlayer plugin for FarCry gives you a flash-based video player for your website.

The plugin takes advantage of the JW FLV Media Player (a flash-based audio/video player) to offer your website/web-application users playback of your video and audio content (FLV, MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF).

Examples

Listing Page (teasers)

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos

Video Player/Details Page

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos/the-birthplace

I wrote the original version of this code about a year ago for another client. As more clients needed the feature (I'm now using it on 3 different FarCry websites) the need for converting it to a reusable plugin was evident. I finished the plugin for mass consumption by January, but never got around to releasing it (due to inadequate documentation :) ).

There are two version of the plugin (v1.0.x for FarCry 4, and v1.1.x for FarCry 5). Both currently have the same functionality (they are just designed for different versions of FarCry).

Find more information and detailed documentation on the docs/wiki page.

Early this morning Daemon released a packaged beta of FarCry 5.0 (code-named Fortress). This is an early beta and has known bugs, however I've been running it and so far it is pretty stable (IMO).

FarCry 5.0 has a very large feature set. The new installer is great (see image below) and the upgrader does an amazing job (currently only updates from FarCry 4.0).

New FarCry 5.0 Installer

Of the many new features in FarCry, the one I'm really digging is the new skeleton functionality. In essence when you create a skeleton you take a snapshot of your current project (configs, plugin connections,... even data) and you can redeploy it in other installations (this is all managed from an easy user interface).

Another feature that a lot of people will be excited about is that FarCry can now run from the webroot (allowing you to deploy it on a shared hosting environment).

You can find more about FarCry 5.0 in the online wiki.

Here is a list of some of the many of the features being released in FarCry 5.0:

• New Security Model (it's type-based now)
• New Workflow Engine
• New Formtool Enhancements
  • Ability to Create Formtools without a Persistent Object (providing a construct for using formtools without the need for a content type in the background)
• FarCry now Uses Application.cfc
• ExtJs 2.0 Integration (a new tag library that concentrates on panels and accordions)
• New Webskin Security Model
• New Skeleton Functionality (for solution distributions)
• New Skeleton Explorer (allowing you to export your existing project into a skeleton)
• New Webskin Security (example: You can secure any view)
• Type-Based Webskins (the ability to run a new webskin on a collection of objects of the same type)
• New Inline Documentation Functionality in the Webtop
• Categories are Now Content Types (No need to create custom category types anymore)
• The Config has been Normalized (allowing plugins to have their own config)
• New Installer
• And Much More!...

There are so many more features. Even small ones... like date fields for example (Thanks Mat). While editing in a form (in the webtop) and modifying a data field... sure you can use the date icon and click through the dates. But you can also just type into the date box in any format (and the date will automatically be converted to your locale). Example: You can type the string "+ 2 weeks" or "+2 months" and you will instantly see the resulting date.

Daemon has put a lot of work into this release and deserve all the credit we can throw at them :). They are asking for people to beta test and report bugs in the public Bug Tracker and/or in the FarCry-Beta Mailing Lists.

The sessions and speaker lists were published tonight on the cf.Objective() conference website. The topics listed there are amazing and I'm excited to once again be a part of it.

This will be my third year speaking at the conference and I couldn't be more excited. I'll be speaking on one topic: Introduction to FarCry 4.1. The new version of FarCry, estimated to be released in early next spring (northern hemisphere :) ), promises to be an exciting release with great features. It is rumored that the final release version will be renumbered to 5.0 (instead of 4.1) due to it's major build modifications.

Okay, this really isn't as difficult as many are making it out to be. It took me 5 minutes (once I knew what to do). Essentially all you need to do is replace one file (mod_jrun22.so).

[More]

I'll be speaking at the Boston CFUG tonight about FarCry 4.0 (6:00pm ET). If interested and you're in the area stop by to see what's new in FarCry (Sorry, it will not be broadcast via Breeze/Connect).

Head on over to the Daemonite blog to get your hands on the latest release of the FarCry training course in PDF format.

Now released under the Creative Commons license for personal use, readers will have can indulge themselves in 122 pages of FarCry goodness.

After working on the FarCry CFImage plugin for ColdFusion 8 I decided to try something fun. I wanted to see if I could generate a Pacman image in less than 5 minutes.

While doing it I was reminded of the days when ASCII art was fun (for me). Thus the title "ColdFusion Art" (I couldn't combine "CF" and "Art" together without too many childish jokes coming to mind :)).

I'd love to see what others can do with CF8's new image functionality. Can you make ColdFusion Art? ...A cartoon perhaps (hopefully one better than mine :) )? Maybe a comic strip? I don't care if it's based off of your favorite video game or a childhood cartoon memory, but I think it would be a lot of fun to see what people come up with (even if it has no real value).

I don't know about you, but the new image tools in CF8 have really gotten me excited enough to try new things.

I've just released 2 new plugins for FarCry 4 that take advantage of ColdFusion 8's new cfimage features.

• FarCry CFImage Plugin
• FarCry CFImage Effects Plugin

I tried to make this as extensible as possible so that you can easily add your own effects.

The second tag requires FarCry Core v4.0.7. If you can't wait for v4.0.7 to be released, then you are welcome to grab the latest core from SVN and get branch p400 (you'll need at least 1957 or greater). You can get a zipped copy of the core from my website at the nightly builds download page. Please be aware that it is not yet labeled as stable (although I use it in production).

The FarCry Image Effects plugin was inspired by Pete Freitag's Image-Effects Component and the base code to reflect() and gradientMask() are thanks to Jon Hartmann

Download and enjoy :)

A few days ago I launched a new website for Middlesex Hospital FMRP (www.middlesexfmrp.org).

The site is not fairly large, but does take advantage of custom types, form tools, object broker, and more.

We really had to rush this site out the door to meet a tight deadline. From the imitial meetings, to content gathering and graphic design... we had only one month to design and make this site.

To make matters worse, I didn't have the final CSS+XHTML in my lap until a few days before launch. So I wrote all of the FarCry code in record time. Unfortunately I had to code about 20+ hours a day and 2 days into my holiday/vacation, but I'm happy we met the deadline and got the site up and running in time for the FMRP recruiting event.

Early this morning FarCry Core version 4.0.4 was released. This is just the core/framework (not the CMS plugin). Although many plugins (including the FarCry CMS plugin) will benefit from this update.

There were many updates in this release, but I'll highlight a few that interested me.

A Few Highlights

• TinyMCE updated to version 2.1.1
• Better Safari support
• Ajax updates/fixes
• dmCron updates
• DB updates for PostgreSQL and Oracle

Changelog/Release Notes

• Changelog/Release Notes

Download

• Zip Format
• Tarball

Subversion Tag

• Subversion tag

Special thanks again to Daemon Internet Consultants for another great release.