FlipSide5 games smash Apple charts!

Just barely cooled off from the initial site launch a little over 24 hours ago, I am greeted this morning by the news from Michael Sanford of FlipSide5, Inc. that Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch, two games I designed all of the artwork for, have just hit the top of the charts over at Apple.

These two games not only take the #1 and #2 spots in the web apps games category (*update), but Tic-Tac-Touch is the one and only featured game! In addition, Tic-Tac-Touch again is #1 across all web app categories. But the insanity doesn't stop there; this is the only time I have ever seen an app (Tic-Tac-Touch in this case) ever sit in the featured position in "Most Recent", "Most Popular", "Alphabetical", and "Staff Picks"!

Batten down the hatches maties! Thar be a rogue wave coming!

*UPDATE:

As of May 29th, Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch have taken the #1 and #2 spots as Top Web Apps (tab on right hand side). For a screen shot of this, go to my flickr page.

FlipSide5, Inc. to Deliver World-Class iPhone Games

Popular games, Tic-Tac-Touch, 4InARow touch, to go from web apps to iPhone apps.

I am so stoked to finally be telling you about a site, client and product that I have poured my heart and soul into for the last little while; FlipSide5!

FlipSide5, Inc., makers of the popular web editions of Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch are now launching versions to download and install, allowing players to own these games on their iPhone and iPod Touch. Both these products, Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch, are designed to be amazingly "simple, fun and wow", refreshing these ageless classics for today's generation.

Back in November 2007, Michael Sanford, President of the newly formed FlipSide5, Inc. created the now popular iPhone web apps, Tic-Tac-Touch Web Edition and 4InARow touch Web Edition. There have been over 1,500,000 games played so far and FlipSide5 has received thousands of emails from their users requesting native versions of these games, available to download and install on the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Why not take something ordinary and make it into something extraordinary,” says Sanford. “Everyone plays these classic games already, so popularity is guaranteed.”

“Great for iPhone. One player or two." said one 4InARow toualmost every weekend. This is a great way to pass the time.”

FlipSide5, Inc. was founded with one thing in mind; world-class quality. That mission carries through to their work with Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch for the iPhone and iPod Touch, using compelling technologies like multi-touch, accelerometer support and sound. Play against opponents online via EDGE, WiFi or 3G, taunting or encouraging their efforts with instant messages. Also, using the built-in iPhone location technology, see the country where your online opponent is located. Instant messages are translated automatically to your opponent's native language (supported languages only). Many more features are listed on FlipSide5's website.

About FlipSide5, Inc.

In 1997, Michael Sanford co-founded a Java development tools company, InLine Software. After selling his share in 2001, Michael was on the lookout for projects he could pour his heart and soul into. Six years later in November 2007, Sanford founded FlipSide5, Inc. in Reston, Virginia. The goal is to bring "simple, fun and wow" software to iPhone/iPod touch users.

“My 6 year old son would say ʻDad, Iʼm boredʼ, so I developed Tic-Tac-Touch for him. Millions of web hits later, FlipSide5 was born,” says Sanford, FlipSide5, Inc. Founder and President. “We are very excited about our first two offerings, Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch, through the iTunes App Store. We are even more excited about what we have in our pipeline”.

Pricing and Availability

Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch will be available when the iTunes App Store is available; summer 2008. Tic-Tac-Touch is priced at a very low price of $0.99 USD. 4InARow touch is priced at only $4.99 USD. Free Web Editions are available immediately for both Tic-Tac-Touch and 4InARow touch from the website:

Tic-Tac-Touch FREE Web Edition and Screenshots
www.flipside5.com/products/tictactouch

4InARow touch FREE Web Edition and Screenshots
www.flipside5.com/products/fourinarowtouch

Welcome to seyDoggy 2008

Well I have great news and almost great news. As you can see, seyDoggy 2008 is alive and kicking (that's the great news)! It's been totally rebuilt from the ground up, as you can see, and has been streamlined somewhat, to reflect the usage patters that I saw come across the site over the last few years. I've cut away a lot of the cruft and trimmed it down to the stuff you seem to care about most; the blog and the portfolio.

Here's the almost great news; I was hoping to tell you about a great new site we made for a great new client of ours who makes great products for the iPhone, but... erm... that nasty old NDA got in the way. This time it was Apple vs. my client and not me (phew!) but just the same the site launch has been put on hold until the legal bit and bobs can be sorted out with Apple. It is great news none the less because I am just so please with it's out come that I just can't wait for you to see it. Hopefully the coming week will shine some new hope on a release date.

So let me know what you think of the new seyDoggy.com!

I'm gonna pull some Dog-FU on yo a$$!

seyDoggy is about to undergo a metamorphosis, a coming of age if you will. I am tired of making great websites for everybody, and not having a great one of my own.

In the next day or so you will witness the new seyDoggy.com in all it's glory, accompanied by the news of a great new site that that we made for a client who is very involved in iPhone applications. It will be pretty big news and you won't want to miss it.

Whoa back! Change of plans.

Yeah, yeah, you've been waiting patiently for seyDesign 2008 to be launched and I have told you a few times that real clients keep getting in the way (surely I jest). Well a rather important client has been consuming all my time for the last month or so and in lieu of the results of this clients website we've decided that seyDoggy.com was LONG overdue for a slight tweaking.

So please hang tight for a bit while we get ready to unveil the all new seyDoggy.com. And have no fear, seyDesign 2008 will surely follow... soon... I hope.

Sneak peek #5

So what the FRIG is the hold up? I am a cow to the paying gigs, that's what! It's sad to say but I rarely get time to continue with this side project. It's good to be busy I guess. It means I am doing my job right.

So this sneak peek is a dead giveaway to what the project actually is (not that there was much wonder anyhow). I have six more pages to get through, more or less, and I am done! Let's cross our fingers for a summer roll out?

Center... float... IE... they don't mix!

I am about to drop a metric butt-load of geekiness on you right now. I have had a LONG standing issue with certain types of navigation menus that float list items (still block elements) in order to apply graphics and dimension to anchors that are made block level (which is inline by default)... the problem lies in positioning the list itself. Because the list items have been floated the entire list itself wants to float that way and no amount of dickering with the code can convince it otherwise.

What I would really like to do is center that list and for years this has baffled me. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of styles of navigation that can be centered, but this very specific one, one which allows for all sorts of graphical hover states, active states, etc... I have spent hours trying to solve this puzzle.

Out of nothing more than absolute desperation I thought to try applying inline-block to the <ul>. inline-block, however is so poorly supported that it has made it a nearly useless function of CSS 2.1, so applying it here would have done little more than satisfy my curiosity. And what would you know... it worked... In Safari!

Well I am that much closer but there are two more issues now; Firefox has nothing more than wet dreams about supporting inline-block and IE only supports inline-block on inline elements (which a list is not). The fix for Firefox is not all that tough since they have a proprietary display state, display: -moz-inline-box; that works... sometimes. IE, on the other hand, had me stumped. That's when I found this website who credits the genius of this guy for coming up with a brilliant solution.

I won't get into the full course meal here (you can read that for yourself) but what it came down to for me was this;

• overcome IE's has-layout bug which can be done with either height: 1%; or the proprietary zoom: 1; (I had to use the latter since the former defeated the layout I needed in this instance)
• Next I needed to tell IE that the block element that I turned into inline-block was actually inline... confusing? Anyhow, not wanting anyone else to see this I have to precede it with a star, like this *display:inline;
• so the end result was this:
  

  ul#myList {
   display: -moz-inline-box; /* for Mozilla*/
   display: inline-block; /* for real browsers */
   zoom:1; /* fix for IE has-layout bug */
   *display:inline; /* IE thinks a block is inline */
  }

So what does this mean for me? Well I have a few themes out there that will get an update soon to take advantage of my new centering ability and a few that I have been holding off making because of the former limitation. And one theme that is about to be released... :)