MashMaker Blog

At last: Firefox 3 support

Rob Ennals — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:30:36 +0000

I know we’ve been a bit late with this, but it’s now here.

We just pushed out a new version (0.42) that finally has Firefox support. This still isn’t as well tested under Firefox 3 as under Firefox 2, but it seems to work pretty well.

Let us know what you think…

Interview Video from Mashup Camp

Rob Ennals — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:16:39 +0000

When I was at Mashup Camp a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Fritz Nelson of Information Week. The video is now available on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp2ZptXDdOU

Explore Mashups with the Mashup Showcase

Rob Ennals — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:55:40 +0000

This is another feature that comes with the new 0.4 release.

The Mash Maker web site now has a Mashup Showcase, listing mashups that we like:

http://mashmaker.intel.com/docweb/browsemash.php

If you click on one of these mashups from within Mash Maker it will take you directly to the example page that mashup was created for and apply that mashup.

The new 0.4 release of Mash Maker saves a screenshot with each mashup you create. If we like your mashup then this screenshot will be shown in the Mashup Showcase.

The Extractor Editor no longer Sucks

Rob Ennals — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:36:20 +0000

This post is about another of the new features that have just appeared in the new 0.4 release that we have just pushed out.

The Mash Maker extractor editor has now seen a major overhaul and is now much closer to being ready for widespread use. The old “structure” first model has now been replaced by a “pick first” model where you pick things you like from the page, and then build structure from what you have picked.

If you found the old extractor editor difficult to use then give it another go. The new version really is much much better.

New Layout Engine - Now put widgets anywhere

Rob Ennals — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:33:33 +0000

This post is about another of the new features that just came out in the new 0.4 release.

We have now finally switched Mash Maker to the new layout engine. This is one that has been coming for some time, and I’m pleased that we now finally have it out. Gone are the days of widgets appearing in the wrong places and having to be the full width of the window. Mash Maker now has a proper layout engine that allows one to put widgets wherever one wants on the page and resize them arbitrarily.

This one feature makes a huge difference to the quality of the mashups that you can create in Mash Maker.

Google Gadgets are Here

Rob Ennals — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:29:18 +0000

We just pushed out a new version of Mash Maker that has lots of new features. I’ll be addressing each of these in a separate blog post.

One of the first things you will probably notice when you install the new version is that the number of available widgets has significantly increased. This is because Mash Maker now has support for Google Gadgets. You can now add any Google Gadget to a web page, just as if it was a Mash Maker widget.

Obviously, there are a lot of things that Google Gadgets can’t do that full-blown Mash Maker widgets can - add icons to the page, understand the data on the page, send data to other widgets, etc. However there are a lot of Google Gadgets that are very useful and so we think that this is a great feature.

There will be some docs going up soon giving more info on using Google Gadgets with Mash Maker.