The Roofpig era has begun

My old faithful Java animation applet has now finally retired after 18 years! It became very hard to use due to Java security problems, and even when it works it's ancient and impractical for 2014.

To replace it I wrote a brand new replacement using CoffeeScript and WebGL canvas. It should work in most browsers, and I hope it's useful!

I call it Roofpig, and when I've made it presentable and stable enough I'll open source it on Github. Should only take a couple of weeks.

Like me!

I added a Facebook Like button.

New Java Applet

It took a while, but now the new applet is used everywhere on the site. The visible differences are a much smoother look and animation.

There was a problem on MacOS 10.5 browsers that took a long time to figure out.

Now that it's all on the same applet, I can get to some other improvements.

Step 6: Better "target" explanation. New Java applet version.

As you may have noticed the "target" concept in Step 6 has been suffering from my far too wordy and abstract explanation. I wonder how many actually managed to learn from it...

Anyway, I think the new explanation is much better since it is visual. See for yourself.

To show the X marks I'm using a new version of the applet I'm working on. Once it's stable I'll put the source code on the Downloads page, but it'll take a few months.

Better bad edge explanation and written algorithms

This time I've tried to fix 2 of the biggest problems with the site.

1. The "bad edge" explanation. The good/bad edge concept, which is really the simplest part of the entire method, has been one of the hardest to understand, since my explanation was so complex and abstract. So I simplified the text and added some much needed pictures. I also fixed the existing picture, which for 10 years have shown an impossible position with 3 bad edges! Only 4 people have pointed that out aver all these years, the first was Gilles Roux.

2. The lack of written algorithms. I've never liked cube notation. To me cubing is something you do with your hands, not something you read. Also, it's really tough for a beginner to have to learn a new language at the same time as learning the cube. But many expert cubers use notation a lot, so I have put it in on the "expert" pages. That is, the index pages and the step 4b page. I should add it to the http://lar5.com/cube/270/ pages too, but that's a lot of work, so it'll have to wait...

Big site redesign

It's not easy to tell, but I just did the biggest redesign of the site ever! Mostly I replaced old and sad HTML with modern CSS based stuff. Hundreds of TABLE, FONT and CENTER tags were put to sleep!

The visible changes are mostly marginal:

• The navigation at the top and ads at the bottom are now fixed to the browser frame. 
• The index navigation is the most different look.
• And I made this change blog...

Over all, the site should look better now, unless you use a real old browser, but let me know if some things look weird. My testing in Internet Explorer has been especially slim.

I hope to make more changes fairly soon, but I'm not making promises...

More colorful colors!

The first entry is about an update I made on Dec 5 2009.

The change is purely presentational. Wherever sticker colors are referred in the text, they now show up in that color. 

Before: Pair corner with blue-orange edge.

After: Pair corner with blue-orange edge.

This may seem like a gimmick, but it makes the text less abstract and makes it easier at least for me to follow the descriptions. I hope I'm not too unique in that regard.