VR is a new passion of mine, that I play with in my freetime, but also explore as a developer and tech enthusiast.
As video quality has evolved a lot in the past 2 years, the big topic now is full body immersion.
The following things are becoming more important:
I will use this article to collect things that are already available, diy projects, experiments and things that are in their early stages.
Hand & finger tracking is already making its way into consumer products. It is still not widely integrated, but has made big jumps the past year.
Eye tracking is not only important to make avatars more life-like, but also to track your eye focus and help to reduce processor load.
Lip tracking has made a big jump, with the new Vive Lip tracker and is important for social interactions.
Body tracking is one of the areas, that has so many projects attached to it. There are so many neat solutions out there, that almost anyone can use it by now.
Free locomotion is one of the biggest challenges in VR right now. You can increase your playarea, but that is still limiting and requires space. Their are VR treadmills, but none of them really reproduces life-like natural movement yet. And those solutions that come close, are still out of your reach. Most of the tracking above is somehow covered and will be available soon, while real locomotion is really the hardest to solve of them all.
Always crucial to have the right look for yourself in VR :)
Verein 3.0 is an e-Learning platform, that is meant to assist people in the creation of new clubs in Germany. Germany has a vivid club culture, but many people are afraid to start their own, due to new legal requirements or too little knowledge of what is actually required.
Verein 3.0 offers educational videos, download and online written content to subscribers.
Update 2021: Cookie Manager and workflow adjustments
Concept & Design by Greentonic
“Klaro [klɛro] is a simple consent management platform (CMP) and privacy tool that helps you to be transparent about the third-party applications on your website. It is designed to be extremely simple, intuitive and easy to use while allowing you to be compliant with all relevant regulations (notably GDPR and ePrivacy).”
The tool is developed by KIPROTECT and can be found on Github.
As I integrated Klaro on a couple of websites so far, I decided to make my work a bit easier and start building some basic clean themes for it.
I have a basic white and black&white theme so far. The download includes a testdrive folder, to showcase the themes. The white theme is also used on this website ;)
I really hate those standard consent management modals, that integrate badly into the website native design.
Klaro does a good job allowing to override its core theme and makes it a bit more pleasant. We do have to live with those modals from now on ;)
The themes are Sass-based and provide easy configuration options.
Enjoy!
cubicFUSION Themes for Klaro! @ Github
Klaro is still missing some things, will collect some workarounds here for you to play with.
Updates: Github Discussion
– 0.7.10 also adds custom callbacks to services (onAccept, onDecline, onInit) NICE!
Used a simple MutationObserver to do some magic for now, without diving into the core Klaro code for now. I am sure they already have an event listener or watcher setup.
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var cm_event = document.createEvent('Event'); cm_event.initEvent('consentModalOpen', true, true); document.addEventListener('consentModalOpen', function (e) { console.log("consentModalOpen") }, false); document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(e) { var cm_target = document.getElementById( "klaro" ), cm_visible = false; var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutationRecords) { if(document.querySelectorAll('#klaro .cookie-modal').length > 0 && cm_visible == false){ cm_visible = true; document.dispatchEvent(cm_event); }else{ cm_visible = false; } }); observer.observe(cm_target, { childList: true, subtree: true, characterDataOldValue: true }); }); |
Custom theme and integration for a coaching website.
Update 2020: Global cleanup / tweaks
I designed a fresh set of business cards for Willen Logistics last year, this is a small iteration with a QR-Code on the back. The business cards feature a partial varnish on the logo and QR-Code.
I updated their different logos last year, to streamline their main corporate colors.
“Seit mehr als 50 Jahren ist die Spedition Willen ein zuverlässiger Partner ihrer Kunden im In- und Ausland. Was in den 1950er Jahren als klassischer Transportbetrieb mit eigenem Fuhrpark begann, hat sich im Laufe der letzten Jahrzehnte zu einem Unternehmen mit großem Leistungsspektrum entwickelt.
Neben der Lagerung wurde die Produktion und Vermietung von Metalltrommeln ein wichtiges Standbein. Dadurch wurden dann auch kundenindividuelle Logistikkonzepte entwickelt und logistische Dienstleistungen vermehrt angeboten.” – Löningen, Niedersachsen
Willen Logistics GmbH
Willen Transport GmbH
Lernkarten.de – Offers specialized learning tools for the German certified master of trade/commerce exam (Handelsfachwirt Prüfung IHK). This includes printed learning materials and an App for Android / iOS. The website also provides updated information about changes in the curriculum and new requirements.
Admin Enhancer is the first free plugin released under the cubicFUSION brand. The plugin is still work in progress, but a tool that is already used within some of my client projects. I am using this plugin to centralise things I love & need, when sending out a finished website or project.
NEW: DASHBOARD GUTENBERG / DASHBOARD TEMPLATES
NEW: ADMIN TOOLBAR
UPDATE: SHORTCODES
This version includes a new addon “GUTENBERG DASHBOARD“, that allows you to build a White-Label Admin Dashboards using the Gutenberg Editor.
It integrates with the SHORTCODES addon and allows to drop in the dashboard widgets via its own Gutenberg Block.
The Block provides settings to overwrite CSS from the admin widgets, allowing you tweak them a bit — for better visual integration. The Dashboard template itself can be tweaked using CSS and Sass via SCSS now 😉
I am also releasing the first integration of the “ADMIN TOOLBAR” addon, which allows you to tweak some of the admin toolbar and footer options (Hide WP Logo, Hide Toolbar on Frontend, Hide Menu Items ..)
Already working on 0.3 … ENJOY!
vibronet® is a passion project of mine, as the company belongs to my family. My sister, Sylvia, runs the company together with my parents.
The core website had not been updated for the past 8 years. It was really time for a complete rewrite and redesign :)
Ii does not only feel like a quantum jump, it actually was one technology-wise ;)
The website offers complete access to the current product portfolio in 3 languages (English, French, German).
All has been done in-house, with a complete cleanup of all product details.
We have some nice additional updates planned for the future!
“vibronet® stands for innovative high quality products for food and feed made in Germany.
With its patented vibration damping system and complementary online control systems, vibronet® has been a pioneer in the field of research and advanced technologies for dramatically reduced temper times and simplified production processes since 1992.
Based in the heart Germany, the vibronet® name stands for competence and product diversity made for millers and cereal processors all around the world.”
Sylvia-C. Gräf CEO
A customer asked for a simple text based logo. I delivered 5 vector-based variations and a favicon.
While Gutenberg is becoming more stable with each release, documentation is only growing slowly. Many parts are outdated, superficial or completely undocumented.
For more complex or individual requirements you have to dive deep. Gladly the browser console allows you to easily checkout what is driving the editor.
Open your browser developer console and start exploring wp. / wp.data. / wp.api. .
What each function does, can be read in the Block Editor Handbook.
At this stage of the development, many things are still changing. So using the API direcly is mostly a matter of reading the documentation, checking the implementation within the core codebase and using trial & error.
Some mysteries have already been solved by others or they provide the right lead. Check Stack Overflow and especially the WordPress Development area for solutions.
Its still like a treasure hunt most of the time LOL Perfect for those that love to solve puzzles :)
Just my cup of tea or better coffee!
It surely is a benefit, as the whole Gutenberg Editor is build upon React. But for simple tweaks its not a must. But once you start going deeper, you will see the benefit and will learn to love React yourself.
ECMAScript 6 is also known as ES6 and ECMAScript 2015.
ES5 is on its way out and ES6 is supported on all modern browsers since end of 2016.
Older browsers can be supported using a polyfill, that augments those browsers and allows them to use the new ES6 features.
React and also Gutenberg builds on the new Javascript functionality, but ES5 examples can also be found.
You can also easily compile ES6 to ES5 using Babel in your development environment or online.
I will be using the following sections to highlight some things that puzzled me and might help others to get a grip on things. I will be extending this, as I discover or solve more Gutenberg mysteries :)
I will keep the example code in ES5 for now, as that is the easiest way to start tinkering. I will also focus on things that can be used from external code. Most of the small code snippets are connected to each other.
These little code snippets are all connected and showcase how to retrieve a selection from a block and change or remove a text format.
Make sure the editor has loaded and the DOM can be accessed.
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wp.domReady(function() { // Your code here }); |
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wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectedBlock(); // Block ID - reference var blockUID = wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectedBlock().clientId; |
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// Start of selection var selectionStart = wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectionStart(); // End of selection var selectionEnd = wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectionEnd(); |
The actual offset can be found within the OBJECT.
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wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectionEnd().offset; |
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// Get block var block = wp.data.select('core/block-editor').getSelectedBlock(); // Attributes var blockAttributes = block.attributes; // Content var blockContent = block.attributes.content; |
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var richTextContent = wp.richText.create( { blockContent }); |
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var activeTextFormats = blockContent.formats; |
This function is documented, but wont work from the outside that easily. This normally checks the isActive state of the component. Here a small workaround using Lodash.
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var formatToCheck = "core/text-color"; var formatToCheckisActive = true; if(_.find(value.formats[selectionStart], { type: formatToCheck })) { formatToCheckisActive = false; } |
Formats are saved within the Richtext object under formats and the text formats are stored within arrays that correspond to the actual index + range of the selection. So if a text-color has been applied from index 4 to 8, you will find the corresponding array for that.
Works well and does the trick for now. Here the output from the developer console, showing the arrays for an 18 character long paragraph:
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formats: Array(18) 0: Array(1) 0: {type: "core/bold"} length: 1 __proto__: Array(0) 1: Array(1) 0: {type: "core/bold"} length: 1 __proto__: Array(0) 2: [{…}] 3: [{…}] 4: [{…}] 14: [{…}] 15: [{…}] 16: [{…}] 17: [{…}] length: 18 __proto__: Array(0) |
I am using the core/text-color format with applyFormat as an example, can be anything.
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richTextContent = wp.richText.applyFormat( richTextContent, { type: 'core/text-color', attributes:{class: "some-color-class"} }, selectionStart, selectionEnd ); |
insertObject can insert content at the start of the selection, with the rest between selectionStart and selectionEnd getting removed. There is also insert, which allows you to simply add a HTML string into the Richtext value.
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richTextContent = wp.richText.insertObject( richTextContent, 'core/text-color', selectionStart, selectionEnd ); |
removeFormat allows you to remove a text format from the current selection.
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richTextContent = wp.richText.removeFormat( richTextContent, 'core/text-color', selectionStart, selectionEnd ); |
Would be nice to use toggleFormat here, but that works within native components and not by selection index as the two calls above.
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var prepNewHTML = wp.richText.toHTMLString( {richTextContent } ); |
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wp.data.dispatch( 'core/block-editor' ).updateBlock( blockUID, { attributes: { content: prepNewHTML } } ); |
I will add some more Gutenberg examples in the future.