Listen Again v3.5

Listen to the large archive of recent BBC Radio programmes directly from Dashboard.

Currently supports: Radio 1, 1xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 5 live, 5 extra, 6 Music, 7, Asian Network, Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster, Radio Wales, and all local radio. 55 stations in total.

Requires RealPlayer 10.1
Update, RealPlayer 11 doesn't play when Dashboard is hidden. Use RealPlayer 10.1

Download BBCListenAgain Widget

Shortcut Keys:
Space - Play/Pause
Up/Down - Volume
Left/Right - Skip
s - Stop
v - Voiceover feedback
p - Focus on station popup

What's new:
3.5
- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change
- Added local radio (55 stations in total)

3.4

- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change

- Fixed 'Listen Live'

3.33
- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change
- Added auto update mechanism
- Pressing the 'v' key will enable additional spoken feedback.

3.31
- Descriptions of programmes fixed (broken due to BBC slightly rearranging their iPlayer content)

3.3
- Works with new BBC iPlayer website
- Accessibility: Voiceover use is detected and certain actions are spoken if turned on.
- Better font resizing
- Busy feedback

This has been developed and tested on Mac 10.5

VoiceOver users: when selecting stations use VoiceOver keys with the arrows to select the station from the menu.

Troubleshooting:
Try and play directly from the BBC website. If it works there then it will almost certainly work in Dashboard. If not the problem has historically been issues with RealPlayer - try uninstalling and reinstalling RealPlayer using the version from the BBC website. Reboot after the reinstall to restart Dashboard.

Let me know any other problems.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

My Caltrain iPhone App

For riders of the San Francisco peninsula Caltrain: a new iPhone app to show the upcoming times of trains at your stations.

You tell it the stations you're interested in and the directions that you usually travel and the next time you start it you'll see upcoming scheduled train times customized for you with no more clicking.

Bullet and express trains are highlighted and the full time table for the whole week and weekend can be browsed without connecting to the internet.

Available from the iTunes app store.

This is version one, if you find any problems or have requests for it to do something it doesn't then email me and I'll see if I can get it in the next update.

Updated for March 2nd Schedule Change - This will appear as a free update to existing users.

Listen Again v3.4

Update: Widget currently broken due to BBC iPlayer update. Hope to get a fix soon....

Listen to the large archive of recent BBC Radio programmes directly from Dashboard.

Currently supports: Radio 1, 1xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 5 live, 5 extra, 6 Music, 7, Asian Network, Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster, Radio Wales

Requires RealPlayer 10.1
Update, RealPlayer 11 doesn't play when Dashboard is hidden. Use RealPlayer 10.1

Download BBCListenAgain Widget

Shortcut Keys:
Space - Play/Pause
Up/Down - Volume
Left/Right - Skip
s - Stop
v - Voiceover feedback
p - Focus on station popup

What's new:

3.4

- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change

- Fixed 'Listen Live'

3.33
- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change
- Added auto update mechanism
- Pressing the 'v' key will enable additional spoken feedback.

3.31
- Descriptions of programmes fixed (broken due to BBC slightly rearranging their iPlayer content)

3.3
- Works with new BBC iPlayer website
- Accessibility: Voiceover use is detected and certain actions are spoken if turned on.
- Better font resizing
- Busy feedback

This has been developed and tested on Mac 10.5

VoiceOver users: when selecting stations use VoiceOver keys with the arrows to select the station from the menu.

Troubleshooting:
Try and play directly from the BBC website. If it works there then it will almost certainly work in Dashboard. If not the problem has historically been issues with RealPlayer - try uninstalling and reinstalling RealPlayer using the version from the BBC website. Reboot after the reinstall to restart Dashboard.

Let me know any other problems.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

MouseEvents for non-rectangluar components in Swing

Warning: Swing hack ahead!

In Swing component bounds are defined as x,y,width,height, i.e. rectangular.

Also in Swing it's very hard to trap mouse events only for a particular section of a component. Sure we can test in our mouse listener if the location of the event is in a particular section, but this isn't always good enough because the mere act of receiving a mouse event means that the parents of that component never get a crack at processing the event. (See here).

This means that in Swing it is very difficult to simulate non-rectangular components.

Consider the resize grip area in this custom text area:

Although it looks triangular, the grip is actually a (rectangular) component layered in front of the text area. We want the user to be able to grab the grip and drag to resize, but also click in the non-grip area and interact directly with the text field.

This is what we have by default:


This is what we want:


Visually its easy to split into two: make the component non-opaque and paint the corner section with some grip graphics in the paintComponent method - letting the parent show through in the unpainted corner.

However event-wise there's no API to split a component into responsive and non-responsive areas. It would be nice for example if JComponent.processMouseEvent call returned a boolean indicating if the event was actually processed. It doesn't, so we have to hack in a fix.

Luckily Component.getCursor() is continually polled as the mouse cursor moves over a component. Overriding this we can detect where the mouse location is over our grip area and act accordingly.
If it's over the visible grip area we can add a mouse listener and start receiving events, if it's over the transparent area we remove the listener and the events are automatically routed to the parent.

Here's the code for the grip:

 public Cursor getCursor(){
   PointerInfo info = MouseInfo.getPointerInfo();
   Point p = info.getLocation();
   SwingUtilities.convertPointFromScreen(p, this);

   // Test if in the visible area
   if (p.x+p.y > getHeight()){
     if (!Arrays.asList(getMouseListeners()).contains(ml))
       addMouseListener(ml);

     return Cursor.getPredefinedCursor(
       Cursor.SE_RESIZE_CURSOR);
   }

   // In the transparent area, stop listening
   if (Arrays.asList(getMouseListeners()).contains(ml))
     removeMouseListener(ml);

   return super.getCursor();
 }

Of course you can make the location test as complex as you like creating components of any shape.

Word Check iPhone App

A version of the Word Checker App is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Now called "Word Check". Grab it from the iTunes App Store and never have to carry a dictionary for Scrabble, Boggle, crosswords or any other kind of word game.

24-Dec-08 - I can now give out free promo copies of the application. Just email me your email address and I'll send you a code for a free copy. Just promise to leave an honest review (hopefully nice) in the iTunes store - Keilly

08-Oct-08 - A new version of the The Word Checker App has just been released. It sports the following new features:
- Anagram/Bingo Finder
- Crossword Helper
- New everyday English dictionaries.
- Huge Speed Increase.

A whopping 99c from the iTunes App store, or free upgrades for existing users. Search for "Word Check" in the iTunes Store.

  

Listen Again v3.33

Listen to the large archive of recent BBC Radio programmes directly from Dashboard.

Currently supports: Radio 1, 1xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 5 live, 5 extra, 6 Music, 7, Asian Network, Radio Scotland, Radio Ulster, Radio Wales

Requires RealPlayer 10.1
Update, RealPlayer 11 doesn't play when Dashboard is hidden. Use RealPlayer 10.1

Download BBCListenAgain Widget

Shortcut Keys:
Space - Play/Pause
Up/Down - Volume
Left/Right - Skip
s - Stop
v - Voiceover feedback
p - Focus on station popup

What's new:
3.33
- Fixed to work with another iPlayer change
- Added auto update mechanism
- Pressing the 'v' key will enable additional spoken feedback.

3.31
- Descriptions of programmes fixed (broken due to BBC slightly rearranging their iPlayer content)

3.3
- Works with new BBC iPlayer website
- Accessibility: Voiceover use is detected and certain actions are spoken if turned on.
- Better font resizing
- Busy feedback

This has been developed and tested on Mac 10.5

VoiceOver users: when selecting stations use VoiceOver keys with the arrows to select the station from the menu.

Troubleshooting:
Try and play directly from the BBC website. If it works there then it will almost certainly work in Dashboard. If not the problem has historically been issues with RealPlayer - try uninstalling and reinstalling RealPlayer using the version from the BBC website. Reboot after the reinstall to restart Dashboard.

Let me know any other problems.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

ListenAgain 3.31

Update: It seems the BBC have changed the format of their iPlayer pages again, causing the widget to not be able to play any of the streams. Look out for version 3.32 shortly

An upgrade to BBC ListenAgain. Programmes had started to disappear from the 3.2 version as the BBC moved its ListenAgain archive to its new iPlayer. This version of the widget restores those programmes.

What's new:
3.31
- Descriptions of programmes fixed (broken due to BBC slightly rearranging their iPlayer content)

3.3
- Works with new BBC iPlayer website
- Accessibility: Voiceover use is detected and certain actions are spoken if turned on.
- Better font resizing
- Busy feedback

This has been developed and tested on Mac 10.5

VoiceOver users: when selecting stations use VoiceOver keys with the arrows to select the station from the menu.

Requires RealPlayer 10.1
Update, RealPlayer 11 doesn't play when Dashboard is hidden. Use RealPlayer 10.1

Download BBCListenAgain Widget

For blind users there's also an experimental version that gives extra speech feedback if voice over is turned on.Download VoiceOver Version

Troubleshooting:
Try and play directly from the BBC website. If it works there then it will almost certainly work in Dashboard. If not the problem has historically been issues with RealPlayer - try uninstalling and reinstalling RealPlayer using the version from the BBC website. Reboot after the reinstall to restart Dashboard.

Let me know any other problems.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.