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WoW Insider: Now with Wowhead tooltips
The more observant among you may have noticed something neat happen to the site over the past few days: all item links that point to Wowhead now have tooltips! In case you hadn't noticed, here are a few examples: Primal Mooncloth Arcanite Steam Pistol That should save some people a click or two, and more importantly, it looks cool (in my opinion, anyway). And the most exciting part is that this is really easy to get going on your own site. All you have to do is include this one line anywhere in the page:<script src="http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script>That's it! Now all Wowhead item links have tooltips.If you want to jazz the links up a little by making them show up in the appropriate color, you can put "class=q#" in the <a> tag, where # is the number of the quality level of the item: 5 for legendary, 4 for epic, and so on down the scale. As an example, the code for the Arcanite Steam Pistol link above looks like this:<a class="q4" href="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29949">Arcanite Steam Pistol</a>But your tooltips will still work if you don't want to bother with the class attribute; the links will just all be the same color. Now you too can be powered by Wowhead!
WoWWiki reaches 45,000 articles
Kirkburn from the great WoWWiki (I like their one line description of us, and yes we do link to them all the time) writes to tell us that they have cracked 45,000 articles on their site as of last night. From Arathi Basin to Zul'jin, they now have over 45,000 articles on everything having to do with World of Warcraft. Congrats to them!I've only ever created one over there (and it was for a joke), but all of us here at WoW Insider have nothing but respect for all the diligent archivists over at the Wiki. They have a terrific resource over there, and it is as clear an authority as they come, especially on a lot of the lore and background information on the game. Great job, all, on 45,000 articles, and keep up the good work.Kirkburn also tells there are updates due over there as well-- sometime before the end of the year, they're planning an update to MediaWiki 1.11. And they're also going to incorporate more with the Wikia network, which runs all kinds of niche wikis like this one, by creating a single logon across all the sites. Sounds like things are jumping over at WoWWiki, and we're glad to hear it.
Twelve handy links for EVE Online newbies
CrazyKinux has decided to help all those struggling to get a foothold in the complex EVE Online, by providing a list of links which will get you on your way. Originally there were 10 websites linked to, but the list has grown to 12.The featured sites range from the official player guide at EVE's homepage, to help with character creation, to various information-packed wikis, and even an EVE Online humor site. It can be extremely daunting to start up in EVE Online, as it is quite far removed from the standard MMO fare and also unforgiving of mistakes, so if you are thinking of trying the game then follow the link below and get bookmarking.
iPhone 101: Special Link Types
The iPhone offers three special kinds of links that receive special treatment. Each of these links can appear in Safari or in your mail. When clicked, they tell the iPhone to launch a specific application to handle them. The first, the mailto: link, you're probably already familiar with. It's just like the Web-based mailto: link that's been in use for the last decade. When clicked, it opens your iPhone's email application, creates a new message and addresses it to the target of the link, e.g. mailto:sjobs@apple.com. The second link is tel:. As you might guess, it opens the iPhone's calling application and calls the number used as the link's target. This allows Web developers to add "call us" links in their web page that, when tapped, actually place a call. The third kind involves Google Maps. Instead of opening Google Maps links in Safari, they automatically open in the iPhone Maps widget instead. It doesn't matter whether you click them in Safari or Mail. The iPhone recognizes the link and launches the Maps widget for viewing. Thanks iDan.
iPhone Tip: Tap and hold on a link for a description popup
Safari on the iPhone might be slightly limited in some areas (for example: you can't double-tap contacts in Meebo to begin a chat), but we're discovering all sorts of useful goodies that I don't remember Jobs or the Apple videos ever highlighting. In this screenshot of my iPhone (sorry I couldn't snap a better quality pic), I've tapped and held my finger on a link in Safari, which invoked this handy popup with the name of the linked page, as well as the actual URL. This is a very useful way of translating the typical status bar UI in desktop browsers so it is still accessible on the iPhone for the times you need it, and yet it doesn't take up any valuable real estate during most of the times you don't.
Cocoa Blogs, by Scott Stevenson
I have to admit right up front that I'm not as familiar with the Mac dev community as I'd like to be. I don't know a lick about developing, and I get a bit intimidated as I know it's one of those trades that has a completely different set of constraints and connotations to manage; there's nothing like trying to swim in the big kid's pool while still wearing floaties. Though, for the record: that's just an analogy; I don't wear floaties when swimming in real life. I got rid of those months ago.That said, I'd like to pass along Cocoa Blogs, a new venture from Scott Stevenson, whose name I only know from its mention on a number of Mac developers' blogs I've stumbled across from time to time. As you might glean from the title, Scott waxes on Cocoa, one of Apple's major (and dare I say preferable?) programming environment for Mac OS X, as well as the world of development and its community. He also wrangles a number of Cocoa developer resources and notable blogs for skills both advanced and new.While much of the language in Scott's code-oriented posts and links might as well be Latin to me (and no, you don't get points for noting that up to 80% of English is Latin-based), this looks like a great new resource for Cocoa developers in all walks of life.[via Gus Mueller]
Lumines II website opens, links to PSP Fanboy
We at PSP Fanboy love Lumines... and apparantly, the people of Lumines love us right back! The official website just launched, and within the slick-looking interface, you'll see upcoming competitions, a wallpaper creator, and more. It appears the site will expand over time, to include a blog, a "music hub" and more. Most excitingly, if you check out the Links section (click the green box), you'll see that Joystiq and PSP Fanboy are listed in their Links section! A mere mortal like me feels honored.See also:Exclusive Heavenly Star fan pack
Macgamefiles offers free game hosting
Macgamefiles.com has announced free game hosting for shareware and freeware game developers (but not for things like maps, mods, etc.). The only catch is that the game's developer needs to point their download links to the game's product page hosted at Macgamefiles.com. This, I assume, is so MGF can make up their (probably astronomical) hosting costs with ad hits.Given some of the bills I've heard of for hosting large files like podcasts and software downloads, I would imagine this is a huge bonus for garage-based game developers. Three cheers for internet advertising business models!
"I Hate You, E3," declares Escapist writer
Okay, so maybe not hate completely.The eye-catching title of an essay from the latest installment of The Escapist puts the emphasis on the negative aspect of the love-hate relationship many industry vets have with E3, but there's surprisingly a lot of love for the trade show here, even if you don't subscribe to the hardened "I hate E3 because I love it" theory of convention devotion.While the Joystiq staff hasn't been to quite as many E3s as the founder of the International Game Journalists Association (IGJA), we can certainly empathize with the world-weariness that might accumulate after years of weeklong death- press-marches and working in overcrowded, sensory-overloaded spaces. We just hope our love of the game(s) will stay with us as it has for Mr. Thomas, whether we're watching from home or working the show floor in person in post-apocalyptic L.A. The parties will be sure to be awesome.See also: Joystiq at E3 2006 mega-site The Escapist's big E3 issue this week, with references within to Joystiq's Paris Hilton story and some E3 party pics orig. from Joystiq The Game of Journalism -- the IGJA's official web site
Widget Watch: CreativeBits Widget 2.0
CreativeBits, a design and OS X-centric creative community, has produced a really slick looking update to their widget that acts as a portal for their site. Users can view the latest articles, forum posts, critiques and links. Clicking on a title in the widget opens the entire article in your browser, while the widget includes its own forward and back navigation if you'd like to simply browse the latest CreativeBits goodies right from the comfort of your Dashboard.
Terminal Tips: Lynx
The UNIX and Open Source section of Apple's Mac OS X Downloads site features Lynx today. Lynx, as well as Links (another favorite of mine), is a Terminal-based, text-only web browser. Why would you want to use such a thing, you ask? Well, because since it simply ignores all non-text items in a webpage, the browsing experience is lightning fast compared to most modern browsers. When you download the disk image, you'll find that if you follow the installation instructions, Lynx won't work. In order to correctly install Lynx, drag lynx.command to your Applications folder, as the README file instructs you to do. Now, launch your Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and type open /usr/local/lib/ at the command line and hit enter. Now drag the lynx.cfg file from the Lynx disk image into the lib folder window that pops open. A dialog box will pop up warning you that you do not have permissions to write files to that folder. Click the Authenticate button and enter your Administrator password when prompted. Now, simply close the window, navigate to lynx.command in your Applications folder and double-click it. Or, if you already have the Terminal open, you can simply type /Applications/lynx.command; exit at the command line. Lynx will open in the Terminal. Now, simply type g (for Go) to get a prompt where you can type in a web address of your choosing. Tab will tab you through links on pages. Return or the right-arrow will take you to the highlighted link. The left-arrow will take you back to the previous page, and hitting q will quit the browser. Easy. Have fun!
