Fluffy Spider Technologies (FST) has added embedded Linux and Qtopia support to its lightweight special effects software for user interfaces (UIs). FST FancyPants supports skinning, overlays, and fancy effects, and targets media-centric consumer and mobile devices, such as POS (point-of-sales/service) systems, set-top boxes, and mobile phones.

According to FST, FancyPants requires less that 3MB of disk space, yet can apply sophisticated special effects over on-screen elements, including images and playing videos. Effects include soft shadows, screen and image transitions, fades and wipes, 32-bit alpha blending, animations, glitter, color manipulation, scaling, rotation, 3D folds, and more.

A set-top box interface showing interleaving of multiple running videos

Supported codecs include:

• Ecapsulation — AVI, MPG, MP4 and MOV
• Video — Mpeg1 video, Mpeg2 video, Mpeg4 (DIVX, XVID)
• Audio — WAV, MP2 audio, MP3 audio

Additionally, FancyPants offers skinning and theming capabilities that allow interfaces to be branded by OEMs, service providers, or as part of marketing campaigns. FST says it worked with an unspecified POS terminal manufacturer to implement the new capabilities.

FST's managing director, Robi Karp, said, “Imagine a video playing in the background with buttons semi-transparent on top. Or a video browser, with multiple videos playing and transparency between them.”

Availability

FST FancyPants is available now, for Embedded Linux (including Qtopia support), Windows CE, and Symbian.

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