My Banner Maker Dev Blog

Background Image Bugs, Image Quirks, Upcoming Features

Posted by: Corey on: June 13, 2009

We found out that GIFs weren’t working for a lot of people, and PNGs for a lot of others. We hacked together a fix, so now things should be working better with background images of all types.

Nothing has changed here, but we realized we were having some issues, so we’re going to disclose them here.

  • PNG images with dimensions that multiply to be greater than ~4,400 will likely result in a blank white page. This is because of a memory limit and the way our library handles PNG images. For better luck, resize them or convert them to JPEGs before uploading.
  • JPEG images with the (albeit more correct) JFIF header make the core JPEG library we use go bonkers, so they are no longer accepted. You should get a message that hints at that.
  • BMP images are not supported. They never really were, apparently. We remember them working, but according to our library they never were. Strange, but true, I think. It’s all hearsay really.

Just while we’re coming clean here…

  • Our VIP interface and sign up page are ugly. We’re working on them now. You should see an updated VIP interface within about a weeks time.
  • We are going to ditch the sliders for positioning text in favor of a drag and drop interface. It’ll require quite a bit of programming craftiness, though, so don’t expect it within an unreasonably short time frame (like 3 seconds, or 4 days).
  • Until the above goes into effect we’re going to replace all the sliders on the site with a new one that is prettier. It will make pages load up to 50x faster on slow computers, and at least about twice as fast on bad ass gaming rigs. Very nice.
  • We have plans for improving the text controls that should be launching within a week or two. Vaguely, we’re going to replace the dropdowns with input boxes. When you click in the input box you can type a number, or you can grab and drag the slider that will pop up right above it. This gives the best of both worlds between speed and precision, we think.
  • Sometime soon (2-3 weeks) we’re going to start allowing you to email a banner to yourself (or a friend) or download it directly to your computer. We might even add support for uploading it automatically to your Myspace or Photobucket for hosting (which allows YOU to delete it whenever you want!).
  • We will be adding VIP-only fonts in the future. This will be the first feature that we could give everybody but are only giving to VIP members. I don’t really like it, but the site needs income to run, and VIP accounts generate income.
  • Oh, and come the end of the month we’ll be switching over to a more powerful server. Hopefully there isn’t any downtime. :)

Enjoy!

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Updates

Posted by: Corey on: June 11, 2009

In our usual fashion…

Color Picker Updates

  • Moved the color picker buttons up to the text lines so it’s more intuitive and easier on the scrolling.
  • Changed the content of those ‘buttons’ to show the current hex code of the color, making it easier to get several to match.
  • Put a background behind the color picker so that dragging your mouse around to choose a color doesn’t; highlight the entire page as easily, making your job of picking the right color easier. It also eliminates distractions better. Very nice.
  • If you click on the new background behind the color picker it disappears the same as if you had clicked on the ‘X’ button.
  • The style of the hex code within the color picker (where you can enter the code) has been re-styled to be more user-friendly.
  • If you hit the enter/return key after typing in your hex code the color picker will automatically close too.

Other Updates

  • Changed the button to pull up the font selector to be the font sample, making it easier to see what line is using what text. Pretty snazzy.
  • Removed the useless Line number from the text option lines.
  • Changed the default font to 20pt Meta Roman, versus 14pt Arial.
  • Additional updates to the JavaScript to make performance and reliability better.

Possibly more tonight…

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Nine New Fonts

Posted by: Corey on: June 11, 2009

I just added 9 new fonts to the banner maker, including long-time designer favorites like Meta, Georgia, and LTUnivers (the movie poster credit font), 2 grunge fonts, and a few other ’special’ fonts. Check ‘em out!

Soon we’ll be adding VIP-only fonts, but all of the fonts that I just added work for everybody!

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New Font Picker

Posted by: Corey on: June 10, 2009

We’ve got a new Font Picker up and running on the site. It works the same basic way, so nothing too drastically different, but we’ve got new ‘Sample’ swatches and a better layout to make picking a font less ugly, and new code to speed things up (and improve reliability). One of the coolest parts of the new font swatches is that you can now see the names of the fonts, making it easier for you to use the same ones on other banners or with promotional materials you create elsewhere.

This also sets us up to get additional improvements done on the font front, including putting in some sort of categorization to speed up the process and make you more efficient, which in turn allows us to add more fonts without you losing your mind scrolling around.

Corey

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Lots of Updates

Posted by: Corey on: June 7, 2009

Just a quick post here to note the changes:

  • Changed the header/logo and navigation at the top of the page to something much prettier.
  • Updated the text of some of the navigation items so that they’re more clear.
  • Changed the default font from Tahoma to Helvetica Neue.
  • Changed the look of headings on the page to be slimmer and dark gray.
  • Changed the Reset Settings, Remove Ads and Branding, and Use Custom Size buttons to look better.
  • Rearranged the banner code types on the save tab to be more functional and easier to read .
  • Changed the way you select an effect under the effects tab to a dropdown instead of little options.
  • Cleaned up some JavaScript so that the site runs faster.
  • Updated the banner branding/watermark to be less obtrusive.
  • Changed the default banner colors to be less obnoxious.
  • BMP images are no longer supported (site will reflect that in the text soon).
  • Patched up a bunch of bugs and setup some better logging to catch more.

There are more updates coming very soon here. I’ve been hard at work on them and I think you’ll really enjoy ‘em!

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FAQ Update – Categories Added

Posted by: Corey on: May 13, 2009

The answers on a lot of the FAQ’s have been updated, and now the FAQ page has categories that should make it easier to find answers to the questions you’re looking for.

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Text Controls, Valid HTML, and Ads – Oh my!

Posted by: Corey on: April 30, 2009

Starting with the petty stuff, I cleaned up the code so it is now valid HTML 4.01 Strict. This won’t really make much of a difference for most people, but it should make a marginal difference in speed due to, well, geek stuff.

I moved the VIP signup ad above the banner preview so it’s not in the way of creating your banner. I’ll move it back if I start getting less people signing up, though. Hopefully we won’t have that problem.

Finally, I made a really big update to the text controls. The system that was in place used way too many sliders that were slow and imprecise. They worked great for being easy to make a rough adjustment, and they were snazzy, but they slowed down the user-experience by using to much CPU to operate, and they aren’t at all good at making precise, calculated changes. Also, separating the actual content of the line (the text) from the controls didn’t make much sense from a UI standpoint.

The new system isn’t perfect. It’s a bit of a hack together, but it is in the image of the way that things will be in a few months, and it’s an improvement. Now you can at least see the banner preview while making more of the changes, and you won’t have to scroll so much. As mentioned above, things will be faster because of the lack of sliders (we shed 8 sliders and 20 images/links). There are also way more options. You can have the text size set to anywhere between 2pt and 200pt (vs 6pt to 72pt) and the angle can be set to anything within 30° increments (was -90º, -45°, 0°, 45°, and 90°). The only place you lost control is with the opacity (1% increments is now 10% increments), but it shouldn’t make any noticeable difference in the result.

If you have any feedback for me regarding these changes, shoot me an email using the contact form on the site.

Enjoy!

Corey

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Please Read

Posted by: Corey on: April 29, 2009

I started MyBannerMaker way back in 2005, as a bit of an accident. Back then it was called Myspace Banners, since that’s what everybody was using it for. Somewhere along the lines, though, I lost sight of the fundamentals of what the website started as.

It was fueled and driven by user-input back then. Users would ask for something…I’d see if it was possible and try to implement it as best as possible. We had free accounts for everybody that stored the saved banners (no editing them, though), a bunch of background images for you to choose from, a simple color picker, and handful of fonts. You had to sign up for an account to save a banner because ImageShack hadn’t started serving up the banners and we weren’t able to provide the infrastructure to host them properly. Eventually, though, ImageShack came into the picture and we ditched accounts since they forced users to sign up to get the code, which wasn’t something we liked.

Between then and now, the site has had more updates and changes than I can even track. Banner previews started being automatically updated (you used to have to click a button to update it), only the banner updated instead of the whole page, a full-on HSV color picker was added in, we started allowing you to upload your own images, we started allowing you to crop your photos (we used to just use the middle of the image), we added in a fourth line of text, a bunch of controls to position the fonts (used to be fixed to the left, right, or center with no vertical controls), setup text rotation (albeit pretty sloppily), added over 30 fonts, added in all sorts of image processing effects, put together lots of types of code instead of just plain code that goes where you put it, put together a FAQ with a slick search, created a rotating-banner tool (VIPs only), and started offering to store banner settings in a way that they could be edited again later. The changes have been immense, far-reaching, and path-altering.

Unfortunately, things haven’t fallen into place exactly how they should have. The code that runs the site is bloated and buggy due to constant extending and adding of new features, and the design itself restricts a lot of the options for new features and usability. Being a user-interface guru, mybannermaker drives me absolutely nuts. It could be done so much better, and there is so much potential still left in it that hasn’t been harnessed. Cutting to the chase here…

I am hereby committing to make MyBannerMaker into what it deserves to be. I have already started working on redesigns, user-interface models, and digesting site statistics to figure out what MyBannerMaker can become. I need your help, though.  Our economy is in a rather lackluster state at the moment, and because of it, the revenue coming from ads that has supported the site for the past 4 years is at 1/10th what it used to be. I don’t have a magic money tree, and people don’t send me care packages so that I can eat and keep warm. In order to have the time to spend on MyBannerMaker, I need to be able to pay hosting bills, and my personal bills too.

What I’m asking from you is this:

If you like the idea of having a free banner making tool online that gives you the freedom to create banners exactly how you like them and not how someone else styled them, and you have the ability, please consider signing up for a VIP account ($25) or making a donation via PayPal. While it might not make sense at first to pay for something that you think should be free, by doing so you enable me a chance to get the website up to speed and to where it can survive the economic downturn and remain in existence. Thanks in advance for reading this far, regardless of whether or not you are able to pitch in and help.

For the record, I do have a list of features that have been requested, and I have even more that are things that I think people will really appreciate that haven’t been requested. If you have any feedback, let me know and I’d be happy to add it to the list. Hopefully I can get some sort of feature request/voting system going on so that everybody can participate in and see where we’re going with the site and we can re-focus on user-input as the driving force behind the website.

Corey

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Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

Posted by: Corey on: April 16, 2009

Our privacy policy and terms of service are now linked from most pages of the site.

Do to the current economic conditions, ads have been re-added to the homepage. Additionally, updates to the website are on hold while the sustainability of development on the website remains an unprofitable venture. Services will continue to be available for the foreseeable future in their current state.

In other words, because of the traffic level, value of online ad-space, and reduced VIP account subscriptions, I can’t continue to spend time working on the site. I’m a web developer/designer/guy that runs MBM on the side…that’s always how it has been. Unfortunately, putting work into the site at this point won’t net hardly any additional income, so I can’t afford to do it.

Sorry folks!

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“Away”

Posted by: Corey on: March 29, 2009

I’m moving out of state over the next few days, and after that I’ll be feverishly looking for another place to live. That means that support will be spotty and if anything catastrophic happens, well, I apologize in advance for the inherent delay that there will be in getting things back up and running.

PLEASE, if you read this, do NOT email me unless you REALLY NEED something and you ALREADY CHECKED THE FAQ.

Thanks.

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