Feedback on ClipFlair Studio application Problems using Mac  Viewed 510600 time(s), 37 post(s), 2/17/2013 3:18:56 PM - by rovira

Hi, did you type yourself .clipflair when saving? You shouldn't type-in a file extension, just the name of the activity, else type a full extension, that is .clipflair.zip (not just .clipflair)

Chrome on MacOS-X isn't supported (at least officially) by Silverlight, only Safari and Firefox



see the "System Requirements" tab at http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx

I just tried with a MacOS-X and I have some insight now on what the problems are
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</br>1) with audio it seems to show some error the 1st time you try to record. I selected to not ask me again for the right to record at the Silverlight security dialog shown and selected to allow it to record and then I saw the error dialog when I first recorded (about null pointer exception). Then I managed to record without error the next time (I had in between opened silverlight settings [can right click on empty activity area - use two finger tap at mousepad on mac notebooks to right click]), but need to test some more to see if it started recording cause I opened the settings or cause I closed/reopened the webpage after I had selected for it to remember that I allow it to record
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</br>2) it does record eventually without showing error message and you can save the WAV and play it again say with QuickTime, but if you try to play it it doesn't (same if you load that WAV, it doesn't). The issue seems to be cause it records on the Mac at 96Khz, 24-bits, whereas other audio recorded on PC seems to be at 16-bits and much lower Khz (the bits seems to be the problem at the playback). If you try to load BigBuckBunny activity revoiced greek version from http://gallery.clipflair.net/activity/list.html it plays find on Mac the audio entries (which are 16-bit) and you can save each audio part and reload that again to other row in the caption/revoicing component and it will play fine. What I need to try is to see what it does if I save the recorded 24-bit audio from the Mac (that doesn't play on Studio but plays from QuickTime) and see what it does on PC if I try to load it on Studio
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</br>3) with the .clipflair.clipflair.zip issue, the thing is that the save dialog seems to try to play it clever and warn the user when they are trying to save with a file extension other that the default one set the dialog (which is .clipflair.zip), but they break up the filename wrongly and only get .zip to compare with. So even though the user has say test.clipflair.zip typed-in, it suggests to change it to .clipflair.zip for them or the user can choose to save as .zip at that extra prompt shown. If the user selects .clipflair.zip they get .clipflair.clipflair.zip - if they select .zip, they get the correct one (that is their filename isn't changed), so they get .clipflair.zip tht they were trying to save. So if the user makes sure that just a filename without extension is typed in at the dialog they should be OK without extra prompt,else if they have a typed-in .clipflair.zip they should select .ZIP at the warning dialog shown not .CLIPFLAIR.ZIP). I'm thinking of migrating eventually to a .clipflair file extension since I don't think many users dig-in to .clipflair.zip files anyway. Have to find a smooth way to do it, supporting both .clipflair and .clipflair.zip eventually and defaulting to .clipflair
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Hi Sara,
</br>it skipped my mind to check the open dialog too. Indeed it has a real issue with compound file extensions like .clipflair.zip and the strange thing is that Unix-world OSes like MacOS-X are supposed to support such extensions, so it much be something with the Silverlight's usage of the filedialog, not sure.
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</br>I now changed ClipFlair Studio to allow selecting either .clipflair or .clipflair.zip when saving a component's state (including when saving an activity) to a ClipFlair archive file. For now I have it by default to save to .clipflair.zip but one can select from the bottom of the dialog to save to .clipflair (in the future when I set clipflair social to allow attaching .clipflair files to posts I will change it to have .clipflair as the default save extension in studio). HOWEVER on MacOS-X the save dialog doesn't seem to allow one to select a file extension and it also saves by default to .clipflair (strange). Good thing is that you won't see anymore that silly dialog telling you about the wrong file extension and making it .clipflair.clipflair.zip when you selected .clipflair.zip there instead of .zip option it had.
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</br>Have also changed ClipFlair Studio's load dialog to allow loading either .clipflair or .clipflair.zip files so if you save a .clipflair on MacOS-X you should be able to open it both on Mac and on Windows now. If you download some .clipflair.zip file just rename to .clipflair and it should open fine.

Another very bad thing I noticed with Safari's behaviour on the Mac (we don't support Safari on Windows btw, it can't load Netscape-style plugins or ActiveX controls like other web browsers do, so no Silverlight for it), is that when you type:
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</br>http://studio.clipflair.net?activity=Rosa
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</br>it doesn't see it as a URL and goes to search
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</br>you have to use the format version of a URL, that is use / after the server name
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</br>http://studio.clipflair.net/?activity=Rosa
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</br>on Windows (I think I have tried with both IE and Mozilla, guess Chrome does the same), if you don't type-in /? but just ?, the web browser will add the / for you.
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</br>anyway Skype on Windows also has issue when / is missing, it doesn't correctly understand the URL and underlines just the first part of the URL, will before ?, but underlines it correctly when it has /? so we should keep in mind to use launch URLs of the form:
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</br>http://studio.clipflair.net/?activity=Rosa