25. May 2016

Responsive Emails with MJML

MJML is a markup language designed to reduce the pain of coding a responsive email. Its semantic syntax makes it easy and straightforward and its rich standard components library speeds up your development time and lightens your email codebase. MJML’s open-source engine generates high quality responsive HTML compliant with best practices.

<mjml>
  <mj-body>
    <mj-container>
      <mj-section>
        <mj-column>

          <mj-image width="100" src="/assets/img/logo-small.png"></mj-image>

          <mj-divider border-color="#F45E43"></mj-divider>

          <mj-text font-size="20px" color="#F45E43" font-family="helvetica">Hello World</mj-text>

        </mj-column>
      </mj-section>
    </mj-container>
  </mj-body>
</mjml>

<mjml>

<mj-body>

<mj-container>

<mj-section>

<mj-column>

<mj-image width="100" src="/assets/img/logo-small.png"></mj-image>

<mj-divider border-color="#F45E43"></mj-divider>

<mj-text font-size="20px" color="#F45E43" font-family="helvetica">Hello World</mj-text>

</mj-column>

</mj-section>

</mj-container>

</mj-body>

</mjml>

mjml

14. May 2016

Fine UI inspiration at Code My UI

Code My UI provides handpicked code snippets, you can use in your own web projects. You can find website design inspiration, plus some code samples.

Code My UI

14. May 2016

Tweene the animation proxy

It is an animation proxy: used as a wrapper of your chosen library, it may allow you to do more and better and it makes easy to switch from one library to another any time you want. Currently it can work together with GSAP, Velocity.js, Transit (CSS transitions) or jQuery.

One to rule them all
Timeline support for all
Support for play(), pause(), resume(), reverse() and restart()
To, From and FromTo tweens, loops and infinite loops, yoyo effect, delay and loops delay, callbacks and directional callbacks, full set of events

As a big velocity fan, Tweene provides some nice unique additional options and the timeline feature pushes things to new levels ;)

Tweene

4. May 2016

Thumbnail, snapshot or PDF generation from an url or html page with Snappy

“Snappy is a PHP5 library allowing thumbnail, snapshot or PDF generation from a url or a html page. It uses the excellent webkit-based wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage available on OSX, Linux, Windows.”

GitHub

4. May 2016

Timber reaches One-Point-Oh – Congratulation

TWIG is always part of my development process, allowing me to easily update handling and apply changes for my customers.

Nice to see Timber (TWIG integration for WordPress) reach version 1.0.

GitHub

4. May 2016

Empower your website with Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha‘s computational knowledge engine or answer engine developed by Wolfram Research, which can be consumed as a service as well. Users submit queries and computation requests. Wolfram Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data that come from other sites and books. 2000 non-commercial API calls per month are free.

They provide a nice set of API Language Libraries to get you started.

<?php  
  $appID = 'PLACE_YOUR_APP_ID_HERE';

  if (!$queryIsSet) die();

  $qArgs = array();
  if (isset($_REQUEST['assumption']))
    $qArgs['assumption'] = $_REQUEST['assumption'];

  // instantiate an engine object with your app id
  $engine = new WolframAlphaEngine( $appID );

  // we will construct a basic query to the api with the input 'pi'
  // only the bare minimum will be used
  $response = $engine->getResults( $_REQUEST['q'], $qArgs);

  // getResults will send back a WAResponse object
  // this object has a parsed version of the wolfram alpha response
  // as well as the raw xml ($response->rawXML) 
  
  // we can check if there was an error from the response object
  if ( $response->isError() ) {
?>
  <h1>There was an error in the request</h1>
  </body>
  </html>
<?php
    die();
  }
?>

<?php

$appID = 'PLACE_YOUR_APP_ID_HERE';

if (!$queryIsSet) die();

$qArgs = array();

if (isset($_REQUEST['assumption']))

$qArgs['assumption'] = $_REQUEST['assumption'];

// instantiate an engine object with your app id

$engine = new WolframAlphaEngine( $appID );

// we will construct a basic query to the api with the input 'pi'

// only the bare minimum will be used

$response = $engine->getResults( $_REQUEST['q'], $qArgs);

// getResults will send back a WAResponse object

// this object has a parsed version of the wolfram alpha response

// as well as the raw xml ($response->rawXML)

// we can check if there was an error from the response object

if ( $response->isError() ) {

<h1>There was an error in the request</h1>

</body>

</html>

<?php

die();

}

Developer Portal

4. May 2016

Splitter / Split Pane / Docker options

SPLIT PANES / DOCKER allow you to display multiple areas, either side by side or one on top of each other. Nested layouts are often part of it. By dragging a divider that appears between the areas, the user can specify how much of the total width / height goes to each area.

I have been building a backend interface in the past weeks, that forced me to look into ways to organize the workspace more efficiently . I could code my own splitter, but is not a priority right now and makes no sense to always reinvent the wheel :)

Here some of the options out there…

Pure jQuery UI

This uses the jQuery UI draggable component and provides limited options :)

 $('.splitter').draggable({
    axis: 'x',
    containment: '#content',
    distance: 0,
    drag: function(event, ui) {
      var width = $('#content').width();
      $('#content .leftpane').css({ width: ui.position.left + 'px' });
      $('#content .rightpane').css({
        left: ui.position.left + 1 + 'px',
        width: (width - ui.position.left + 1) + 'px'
      });
    },
    refreshPositions: true,
    scroll: false
  });

$('.splitter').draggable({

axis: 'x',

containment: '#content',

distance: 0,

drag: function(event, ui) {

var width = $('#content').width();

$('#content .leftpane').css({ width: ui.position.left + 'px' });

$('#content .rightpane').css({

left: ui.position.left + 1 + 'px',

width: (width - ui.position.left + 1) + 'px'

});

refreshPositions: true,

scroll: false

});

jQuery UI

Layout, has not been updated for a long time, but still provides a huge amount of options and methods to handle almost anything. Version 2.0 was announced, but never showed up. Google Groups / GitHub / Documentation
ProPanelLayout (Commercial)

jQuery Plugins

Pure Jasvascript

Split.js (Split Pane)
Golden Layout (Docker)
Dock Spawn (Docker)

CSS only

CSS3 Splitview

Enjoy coding …

3. May 2016

Self-hosted web IRC client … Shout / The Lounge

Node.js
Always connected
Responsive interface
Cross Platform
Multiple user accounts

Shout / The Lounge

30. April 2016

Flexible JavaScript charting with Canvas using Chart.js

Visualize your data in 8 different ways; each of them animated and customizable.
Great rendering performance across all modern browsers (IE9+)
Redraws charts on window resize for perfect scale granularity.

<canvas id="myChart" width="400" height="400"></canvas>

1	<canvas id="myChart" width="400" height="400"></canvas>

// Any of the following formats may be used
var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart");
var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart").getContext("2d");
var ctx = $("#myChart");

// Any of the following formats may be used

var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart");

var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart").getContext("2d");

var ctx = $("#myChart");

<canvas id="myChart" width="400" height="400"></canvas>
<script>
var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart");
var myChart = new Chart(ctx, {
    type: 'bar',
    data: {
        labels: ["Red", "Blue", "Yellow", "Green", "Purple", "Orange"],
        datasets: [{
            label: '# of Votes',
            data: [12, 19, 3, 5, 2, 3]
        }]
    },
    options: {
        scales: {
            yAxes: [{
                ticks: {
                    beginAtZero:true
                }
            }]
        }
    }
});
</script>

var ctx = document.getElementById("myChart");

var myChart = new Chart(ctx, {

type: 'bar',

data: {

labels: ["Red", "Blue", "Yellow", "Green", "Purple", "Orange"],

datasets: [{

label: '# of Votes',

data: [12, 19, 3, 5, 2, 3]

}]

options: {

scales: {

yAxes: [{

ticks: {

beginAtZero:true

}

}]

}

});

</script>

GitHub

18. April 2016

Be amazed by the Responsive Filemanager with Adobe Aviary integration

“Responsive FileManager is a free open-source file manager and image manager made with jQuery, CSS3, PHP and HTML5 that offers a nice and elegant way to upload and insert files, images and videos.
You can use it as external plugin for TinyMCE, CKEditor and CLEditor or as a stand-alone file manager to manage and select files.”

USAGE WITH TINYMCE

tinymce.init({
    selector: "textarea",theme: "modern",width: 680,height: 300,
    plugins: [
         "advlist autolink link image lists charmap print preview hr anchor pagebreak",
         "searchreplace wordcount visualblocks visualchars insertdatetime media nonbreaking",
         "table contextmenu directionality emoticons paste textcolor responsivefilemanager code"
   ],
   toolbar1: "undo redo | bold italic underline | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist outdent indent | styleselect",
   toolbar2: "| responsivefilemanager | link unlink anchor | image media | forecolor backcolor  | print preview code ",
   image_advtab: true ,
   
   external_filemanager_path:"/filemanager/",
   filemanager_title:"Responsive Filemanager" ,
   external_plugins: { "filemanager" : "/filemanager/plugin.min.js"}
 });

tinymce.init({

selector: "textarea",theme: "modern",width: 680,height: 300,

plugins: [

"advlist autolink link image lists charmap print preview hr anchor pagebreak",

"searchreplace wordcount visualblocks visualchars insertdatetime media nonbreaking",

"table contextmenu directionality emoticons paste textcolor responsivefilemanager code"

toolbar1: "undo redo | bold italic underline | alignleft aligncenter alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist outdent indent | styleselect",

image_advtab: true ,

external_filemanager_path:"/filemanager/",

filemanager_title:"Responsive Filemanager" ,

external_plugins: { "filemanager" : "/filemanager/plugin.min.js"}

});

Responsive filemanager / GitHub