14. May 2016

URL mutation … sounds serious … library

“URI.js is a javascript library for working with URLs. It offers a “jQuery-style” API (Fluent Interface, Method Chaining) to read and write all regular components and a number of convenience methods like .directory() and .authority().

URI.js offers simple, yet powerful ways of working with query string, has a number of URI-normalization functions and converts relative/absolute paths.”

// mutating URLs
URI("http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world")
    .username("rodneyrehm") 
        // -> http://rodneyrehm@example.org/foo.html?hello=world
    .username("") 
        // -> http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world
    .directory("bar")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.html?hello=world
    .suffix("xml")    
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world
    .hash("hackernews")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world#hackernews
    .fragment("")
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world
    .search("") // alias of .query()
        // -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml
    .tld("com")
        // -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml
    .search({ foo: "bar", hello: ["world", "mars"] });
        // -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml?foo=bar&hello=world&hello=mars

// mutating URLs

URI("http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world")

.username("rodneyrehm")

// -> http://rodneyrehm@example.org/foo.html?hello=world

.username("")

// -> http://example.org/foo.html?hello=world

.directory("bar")

// -> http://example.org/bar/foo.html?hello=world

.suffix("xml")

// -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world

.hash("hackernews")

// -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world#hackernews

.fragment("")

// -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml?hello=world

.search("") // alias of .query()

// -> http://example.org/bar/foo.xml

.tld("com")

// -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml

.search({ foo: "bar", hello: ["world", "mars"] });

// -> http://example.com/bar/foo.xml?foo=bar&hello=world&hello=mars

URI("?hello=world")
    .addSearch("hello", "mars")
        // -> ?hello=world&hello=mars
    .addSearch({ foo: ["bar", "baz"] })
        // -> ?hello=world&hello=mars&foo=bar&foo=baz
    .removeSearch("hello", "mars")
        // -> ?hello=world&foo=bar&foo=baz
    .removeSearch("foo")
        // -> ?hello=world

URI("?hello=world")

.addSearch("hello", "mars")

// -> ?hello=world&hello=mars

.addSearch({ foo: ["bar", "baz"] })

// -> ?hello=world&hello=mars&foo=bar&foo=baz

.removeSearch("hello", "mars")

// -> ?hello=world&foo=bar&foo=baz

.removeSearch("foo")

// -> ?hello=world

GitHub

14. May 2016

Searching for a Navigation Solution … check NavNav

NavNav provides a ton of CSS, jQuery, and JavaScript responsive navigation examples, demos, and tutorials from all over the web.

NavNav

14. May 2016

metisMenu … a jQuery menu plugin

metisMenu offers a lot of options to tweak layout and usage. The plugin provides options for

Vertical menus
Folder Views
Hover Menus

GitHub / WordPress Version

14. May 2016

Options to detect when a @font-face has been loaded

OPTION 1

Use the CSS font loading API. Not supported in all browsers yet (MDN, W3C). You can call document.fonts to get a FontFaceSet object.

check(fontSpec) – returns whether all fonts in the given font list have been loaded and are available. The fontSpec uses the CSS shorthand syntax for fonts.
Example: document.fonts.check('bold 16px Roboto'); // true or false
document.fonts.ready – returns a Promise indicating that font loading and layout operations are done.

alert('Roboto loaded? ' + document.fonts.check('1em Roboto'));  // false

document.fonts.ready.then(function () {
  alert('All fonts in use by visible text have loaded.');
   alert('Roboto loaded? ' + document.fonts.check('1em Roboto'));  // true
});

document.fonts.onloadingdone = function (fontFaceSetEvent) {
   alert('onloadingdone we have ' + fontFaceSetEvent.fontfaces.length + ' font faces loaded');
};

alert('Roboto loaded? ' + document.fonts.check('1em Roboto')); // false

document.fonts.ready.then(function () {

alert('All fonts in use by visible text have loaded.');

alert('Roboto loaded? ' + document.fonts.check('1em Roboto')); // true

});

document.fonts.onloadingdone = function (fontFaceSetEvent) {

alert('onloadingdone we have ' + fontFaceSetEvent.fontfaces.length + ' font faces loaded');

};

OPTION 2

Use Font Face Observer – its a small @font-face loader and monitor compatible with any web font service. It will monitor when a web font is applied to the page and notify you. It does not limit you in any way in where, when, or how you load your web fonts. Unlike the Web Font Loader Font Face Observer uses scroll events to detect font loads efficiently and with minimum overhead.

var font = new FontFaceObserver('My Family', {
  weight: 400
});

font.load().then(function () {
  console.log('Font is available');
}, function () {
  console.log('Font is not available');
});

var font = new FontFaceObserver('My Family', {

weight: 400

});

font.load().then(function () {

console.log('Font is available');

}, function () {

console.log('Font is not available');

});

GitHub

OPTION 3

Use jQuery-FontSpy.js, works by checking the change in width of a string.

fontSpy('My Icons', {
  glyphs: '\ue81a\ue82d\ue823',
  success: function() {
    //alert("My Icons loaded successfully");
  },
  failure: function() {
    //alert("My Icons failed to load");
  }
});

fontSpy('My Icons', {

glyphs: '\ue81a\ue82d\ue823',

success: function() {

//alert("My Icons loaded successfully");

failure: function() {

//alert("My Icons failed to load");

}

});

GitHub

OPTION 4

Use Webfont Loader, if loading fonts from Typekit , Fonts.com, Google, Fontdeck or custom location.

This introduces the following events:

loading – This event is triggered when all fonts have been requested.
active – This event is triggered when the fonts have rendered.
inactive – This event is triggered when the browser does not support linked fonts or if none of the fonts could be loaded.
fontloading – This event is triggered once for each font that’s loaded.
fontactive – This event is triggered once for each font that renders.
fontinactive – This event is triggered if the font can’t be loaded.

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.16/webfont.js"></script>
<script>
  WebFont.load({
    google: {
      families: ['Droid Sans', 'Droid Serif']
    }
  });
</script>

WebFont.load({

google: {

families: ['Droid Sans', 'Droid Serif']

}

});

</script>

GitHub

Enjoy coding …

6. May 2016

Cropper – A simple image cropping plugin

touch (mobile)
zooming
rotating
scaling (flipping)
multiple croppers
crop on a canvas
crop image in the browser by canvas
translate Exif Orientation information
Cross-browser support

Cropper.js / jQuery Version

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 …

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

10. April 2016

Take a screenshot of a DOM container and use it as a background image

I am currently developing a drag and drop interface for a course builder. Courses are split into lessons and lessons into slides. While switching between slides, I wanted to have a small thumbnail representing the current slide content.

One option would have been to use something like PhantomJS / CasperJS. A headless browser , to take a screenshot of the slide. I have done that in the past and it works perfectly.

This time, I decided to go with another solution, that allows me to convert html to a canvas element.

The project is called html2canvas (GitHub).

“This script allows you to take screenshots of webpages or parts of it, directly on the users browser. The screenshot is based on the DOM and as such may not be 100% accurate to the real representation as it does not make an actual screenshot, but builds the screenshot based on the information available on the page.”

EXAMPLE

html2canvas(document.body, {
  onrendered: function(canvas) {
    document.body.appendChild(canvas);
  }
});

html2canvas(document.body, {

onrendered: function(canvas) {

document.body.appendChild(canvas);

}

});

CANVAS TO BACKGROUND IMAGE

I have a slide container (#slideContainer), that holds the active slide for editing and a thumb navigation to switch between slides (.slide.thumb).

var current = $(".slide.thumb.active");

html2canvas($("#slideContainer").get(0), {
  onrendered: function(canvas) {
	  
   var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL();
   current.css({"background" :"url("+dataURL+")", 
                "background-size":"contain", 
                "background-position": "center",
                "background-repeat":"no-repeat"});
  }
});

var current = $(".slide.thumb.active");

html2canvas($("#slideContainer").get(0), {

onrendered: function(canvas) {

var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL();

current.css({"background" :"url("+dataURL+")",

"background-size":"contain",

"background-position": "center",

"background-repeat":"no-repeat"});

}

});

When switching between slides, I am doing a snapshot of the current slideContainer and add it as a new background image to the thumb navigation item for that slide. This is done with canvas.toDataURL() and by embedding the resulting image using a data: url.

Works perfectly. html2canvas has no full css support, so the output will not always match 100%, but its close enough to get a glimpse of what is stored per slide ;)

html2canvas
PhantomJS
CasperJS

Enjoy coding …

7. April 2016

Scroll to the top of the page

$("a[href='#top']").click(function() {
  $("html, body").animate({ scrollTop: 0 }, "slow");
  return false;
});

$("a[href='#top']").click(function() {

$("html, body").animate({ scrollTop: 0 }, "slow");

return false;

});

Enjoy coding…

7. April 2016

Crossbrowser jQuery plugin for blurring images

Background Blur plugin is a cross browser jQuery plugin for blurring images.

$('#some-element').backgroundBlur({
    imageURL : 'http://URL-of-the-image',
    blurAmount : 50,
    imageClass : 'bg-blur'
    duration: 1000, // If the image needs to be faded in, how long that should take
    endOpacity : 1 // Specify the final opacity that the image will have
});

$('#some-element').backgroundBlur({

imageURL : 'http://URL-of-the-image',

blurAmount : 50,

imageClass : 'bg-blur'

duration: 1000, // If the image needs to be faded in, how long that should take

endOpacity : 1 // Specify the final opacity that the image will have

});

Demo + GitHub