October 17, 2006
Veqa ImageFly version 1.0.2 is an important update that has been released today. On our first plan to release this we had second thoughts and decided not to go for release. However, we had second thoughts yet again and decided to go ahead for release, which should now prove evident. There has been complications in the developement of Veqa ImageFly and it's related products according to our plans, but we hope that this release will still be something worth for the moment until we get back on track with bigger things.
The top feature added in this release is the ability to switch to GD or ImageMagick MagickWand for PHP through the "use=" URL parameter, which enables you to switch to either of them on the fly if both supported. In previous versions you could only do this in the configuration file. In relation to the on-the-fly switching, we have also added version information on PHP and GD/MagickWand in the interface.
However, the use feature may not be as useful than the previous added feature of modes in the last update. But we do have more in this update than the previous even still. This update is for the most part mainly focused on fixes and recommended changes, but nothing really entirely unique. We plan to leave some more useful elements in future versions of the product.
Another feature in this release, but somewhat minor, is the ability to resize by width or height only. Originally, you could only resize by width and height, but now these two can be seperated in functionality. If, for example, you assign only a width, then the height will return as the image's original height size.
One thing to also note about resizing is the change of the "x" seperator. We have changed this to a comma (,) in the size parameter value. For example, "size=123,123" is how you would resize an image now. This was done due to future resizing plans of our product that left the "x" seperator problematic in a way.
The marking has itself an added feature. You can now be able to force watermarks, which can be set in the configuration. This may make for more security if you only wish to mark your images and not have images shown without a mark. For example, when having the force watermark set, this would automatically assign your watermark settings to any on-the-fly instance, such as just using "image=". In other words, you won't have to use the "watermark=1" parameter, since the force watermark will already have this set for you.
Also in the marking, the percentage has been changed in the mark URL parameter. Percentages are now defined as "pct" instead of "pc". For example, positions with percentages will now be done as "100pct,50pct". This was changed due to "pct" being more favored as an abbreviation of percentage.
The process in getting images have also been changed. Originally, we had a redirection with a zero wait in retrieving the on-the-fly URL. This has now been changed to a 2 second wait while also displaying a redirect page. This can be changed back however, if preferred. There's a time setting for redirection in the configuration for this.
PNG for GD can now be transparent in resizing, marking and some effects. If you experience any problems with it however, it can be optionally turned off. Some of the effects that were done for it are the PHP 5 versions of brightness, colorize, grayscale, and invert. The rest of the effects however do not become transparent still.
There's been a bit of fixes for better compatibility with PHP 4.3. One of them being a fix for GIF in GD. Although, this fix does not actually add in GIF support, just only makes sure that the GIF functions are not being called, so that images will not result in error due to it. Also, the effects have a similar fix with the special functions for them being checked if they exist or not. This fix has been done to replace the PHP version checking, since checking if the function exists is a bit more compatible.
Also JPG image quality can now be set. This is done in the configuration by 1-100, which 1 being worst and 100 being best quality. Zero or false would revert to the default quality. However the default may depend, since this can be done for either GD or MagickWand. And since MagickWand does happen to have better quality than GD, the results of the changed image quality may look different, since they operate not too much alike.
There are still more things in this update release. You can be able to get more details on other fixes and changes in the version changes page found on the product's Web site. And just like the previous update, you can get this update for free also. That is, if you have previously purchased Veqa ImageFly. If you wish to recieve this new version, please contact us through our support contact giving us the details of your reciept you were given after your order of the product.
