Will Jessup created an interesting rotate script using jQuery. To put the script to good use, he made a solar system model. The script is very responsive to the movement of your mouse and you can look at the planets orbiting the sun from any angle. Here is a link directly to the source code and to see the model in action, click the read link below.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
[36272]When I started SZOJ I promised myself I wouldn't abruptly shut down the blog if I lost interest; I'd just go radio silent until my interest was piqued again. That said, it's been a long while. So here are two things:
Rory Parle wrote in to point out you can use Math.ceil to determine the number of rows you'd need to safely render a calendar:
Math.ceil((monthLength + startingDay) / 7);
Michiel van der Blonk suggested a way to determine the number of days in a month:
var d = new Date(nYear, nMonth + 1, 0); // nMonth is 0 thru 11 return(d.getDate());
The mechanism here is the Date constructor will attempt to convert year, month and day values to the nearest valid date. So in the above code, nMonth is incremented to find the following month, and then a Date object is created with zero days. Since this is an invalid date, the Date object defaults to the last valid day of the previous month — which is the month we're interested in to begin with. Then getDate() returns the day (1-31) of that date — voilá, we have the number of days.
Bonus: it also seems to automatically correct for leap year. It feels like a hack but it seems to work consistently.
Thanks to Rory and Michiel for their contributions.
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Link Thumbnail is a nifty script that will display a thumbnail of a link they're hovering over. The code is freely available for anyone to use thanks to a creative commons license and an example page can be found here.[14249]
Think Vitamin has an article up about keeping your Javascript clean and maintainable. The value of following these 8 steps is invaluable in creating code that is easy to read and logical for whoever has to read it. Sure, some of the tips here are fairly obvious to the hardcore JS coder, but it is good to review. Read through the article and test it against your current practices.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments[14248]
Who says AJAX applications can't look and feel like their desktop counterparts? This javascript color selector is smooth, fluid, and looks like it came straight out of a desktop graphics app. You can drag your mouse around the big color selector box, drag the slider up and down, and your results update instantly. Other attempts like ColourMod have been clunky. I've tested this in both Firefox and IE and it works perfectly.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments[14247]
Google has been into office products lately with Google Spreadsheet recently launched and Writely soon to be too. But Google forgot the coolest office app of all -- MS Paint. Now, thanks to a clever Javascripter, a parody is released for our consumption. Mind you this is not an official Google product, but it sure should be. The classic MS Paint interface and functionality have been captured beautifully. Most tools don't work and pop up a confirm box stating "unimplemented. But the tools that do work are a perfect emulation. If only the spray paint can was working...Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments[14246]
Everybody wants to be like OSX, including Michael Whalen of Whalesalad.com. With a little creativity, Michael has created a semi-transparent dock that fades down when you mouse over the header of his website. Inside the dock he has links with darker semi-transparent rollovers. The code is fairly simple and relies on Script.aculo.us (prototype.js and effects.js) for the animations. The hardest part of this project according to Michael was getting the dock to fade away when you mouse out of the header area. To get around this, he used timers and some extra divs. Apparently this only works properly in Firefox, so everyone else beware. It's a good technique but hopefully he can expand it such as adding graphics that zoom-in like Google OSX. Full zip of all needed files included at the bottom of Michael's page.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments[14245][6696][6695]