open source

A convenience utility library to take over the mouse cursor ("pointer lock") in the browser with JavaScript

Sun, Aug 23, 2015 - 10:03pm -- Isaac Sukin

Two years ago when I was writing my book about building 3D browser games, I was spending a lot of time writing first person games in JavaScript. First person games in particular involve a lot of fast, precise motion, which makes "pointer lock" essential. "Pointer lock" is when a program takes over the mouse cursor, tracking mouse movement on its own and displaying its own cursor if needed (usually locked to the middle of the screen, hence the name).

Blogging at Acquia

Sat, Sep 10, 2011 - 3:31pm -- Isaac Sukin

While I was at Acquia this summer I wrote a number of blog posts for Acquia. Check them out below.

Drupal Commons: Then and Now
A comparison of Acquia Commons at the beginning of the summer when I joined Acquia to the end of last summer when Commons was released and I wrote an analysis of it for Mediacurrent.
Status Streams in Commons
A sneak peak and overview of the status updates / activity stream features I developed that have become the centerpiece of Commons 2.0.
BrowserID: from announcement to Drupal module in under 24 hours
A discussion of how I wrote the BrowserID module for Drupal in under 24 hours since Mozilla announced the BrowserID initiative. This kind of effort can only happen in a large open-source community like Drupal's.
Commons 2.0 and Contributing to the Drupal Community
Throughout my time at Acquia, I made sure that I could contribute nearly everything I developed back to the Drupal community. As a result, any Drupal website in the world can now use status update and activity stream technology similar to the features that made Facebook so popular.

My Google Summer of Code Experience

Thu, Aug 26, 2010 - 10:13pm -- Isaac Sukin

This blog post was originally posted to my blog at Mediacurrent. It appeared on Drupal Planet.

This summer I was a mentor for the Google Summer of Code program for Drupal. I maintain the Facebook-style Statuses module, which allows users to have a stream of “status updates” on their user profiles and to write messages on other users’ profiles, like Facebook. So when I had the chance to mentor the Facebook-style Micropublisher proposal, which built on Facebook-style Statuses to allow attaching images, links, and video to status updates, I jumped on it.

The result was a resounding success, and I learned a lot during the process. Nitin Gupta, the student driving the project (and better known to some as publicmind) was an extraordinary developer in the true Drupal spirit. He gracefully put up with my pickiness about coding style, thoroughly researched the best code architecture for our purposes, and even identified places where Facebook-style Statuses itself could become more flexible. I truly believe that Nitin will remain committed to the module he created, and that both of us are better Drupal developers as a result of this process.

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