Taggloo hasn’t had much visible changes lately, but eagle-eyed users will have noticed that the build date has been changing. As promised, moving Taggloo to the Microsoft Azure platform enables much more rapid and regular changes, not all of which are obvious.
Microsoft Edge support
Keener users will no doubt have started experimenting with Microsoft’s new Windows 10 operating system. Windows 10 represents a key strategy change for Microsoft, not least of which is their unceremonious dumping of Internet Explorer in favour of Edge for the consumer. Edge is a “new” browser in that it is almost a rewritten browser, well, it represents the latest of the code in Internet Explorer and dumps a lot of baggage in the process.
Taggloo remains compatible with the latest browsers, including Microsoft Edge. This will carry across to other platforms using Microsoft Edge such as XBox One and Windows 10 Mobile. Of course, WebKit (Chrome) and Firefox remain supported across screen sizes. Hopefully you’ve seen the responsive design work well across desktop, tablet and ‘phone.
Increased playable media items
Taggloo has over 10,000 indexed media items, allowing users to hear the pronunciation of thousands of words within the dictionary.
For those users still on Internet Explorer, which has limited support for the HTML AUDIO element that is used for these media items, you would probably be left with:
As part of a lot more of somewhat invisible work, the likelihood of this being shown is much lower. Using the new Taggloo API, existing media items have been indexed, transcoded and re-indexed to maximise availability across devices and browsers.
… About that API
An API (Application Programming Interface) provides developers with the opportunity to leverage the functionality and data within a web site for their own purposes. Taggloo’s new API enables developers to access the indexed Manx Gaelic resources to build and extend their own products and experiments. This represents an exciting opportunity for Taggloo, which can now be integrated into other web sites, “apps”, Internet of Things (IoT), wearables and much more.
The API is currently in BETA, which means that you’re welcome to go and play and see what you (or your developer friends) can build. We’re currently tweaking the performance of the API and adding more functionality every week, hence the BETA stage. You can have a look if you’re so inclined at http://taggloo.im/developers. The API currently covers about 75% of the entire functionality of Taggloo and will emerge from BETA before the end of 2015.
