14. May 2017

Lets fix the short comings of current CSS integrations – EQCSS / Element queries

“Element queries are a new way of thinking about responsive web design where the responsive conditions apply to elements on the page instead of the width or height of the browser.
Unlike CSS @media queries, @element Queries are aware of more than just the width and height of the browser, you can write responsive conditions for a number of different situations like how many characters of text or child elements an element contains.
Another concept that element queries brings to CSS is the idea of ‘scoping’ your styles to one element in the same way that JavaScript functions define a new scope for the variables they contain.”

Element Query Conditions

14. May 2017

Client-side JavaScript PDF generation with jsPDF

A library to generate PDFs in client-side JavaScript.

// Default export is a4 paper, portrait, using milimeters for units
var doc = new jsPDF()

doc.text('Hello world!', 10, 10)
doc.save('a4.pdf')

// Landscape export, 2×4 inches
var doc = new jsPDF({
  orientation: 'landscape',
  unit: 'in',
  format: [4, 2]
})

doc.text('Hello world!', 1, 1)
doc.save('two-by-four.pdf')

// Default export is a4 paper, portrait, using milimeters for units

var doc = new jsPDF()

doc.text('Hello world!', 10, 10)

doc.save('a4.pdf')

// Landscape export, 2×4 inches

var doc = new jsPDF({

orientation: 'landscape',

unit: 'in',

format: [4, 2]

})

doc.text('Hello world!', 1, 1)

doc.save('two-by-four.pdf')

GitHub

14. May 2017

A simple javascript database – TaffyDB

Small file size, extremely fast queries
Powerful JavaScript centric data selection engine
Database inspired features such as count, update, and insert
Robust cross browser support
Easily extended with your own functions
Compatible with any DOM library (jQuery, YUI, Dojo, etc)
Compatible with Server Side JS

// Create DB and fill it with records
var friends = TAFFY([
	{"id":1,"gender":"M","first":"John","last":"Smith","city":"Seattle, WA","status":"Active"},
	{"id":2,"gender":"F","first":"Kelly","last":"Ruth","city":"Dallas, TX","status":"Active"},
	{"id":3,"gender":"M","first":"Jeff","last":"Stevenson","city":"Washington, D.C.","status":"Active"},
	{"id":4,"gender":"F","first":"Jennifer","last":"Gill","city":"Seattle, WA","status":"Active"}	
]);

// Create DB and fill it with records

var friends = TAFFY([

{"id":1,"gender":"M","first":"John","last":"Smith","city":"Seattle, WA","status":"Active"},

{"id":2,"gender":"F","first":"Kelly","last":"Ruth","city":"Dallas, TX","status":"Active"},

{"id":3,"gender":"M","first":"Jeff","last":"Stevenson","city":"Washington, D.C.","status":"Active"},

{"id":4,"gender":"F","first":"Jennifer","last":"Gill","city":"Seattle, WA","status":"Active"}

]);

// Kelly's record
var kelly = friends({id:2}).first();

// Kelly's last name
var kellyslastname = kelly.last;

// Get an array of record ids
var cities = friends().select("id");

// Get an array of distinct cities
var cities = friends().distinct("city");

// Apply a function to all the male friends
friends({gender:"M"}).each(function (r) {
   alert(r.name + "!");
});

// Kelly's record

var kelly = friends({id:2}).first();

// Kelly's last name

var kellyslastname = kelly.last;

// Get an array of record ids

var cities = friends().select("id");

// Get an array of distinct cities

var cities = friends().distinct("city");

// Apply a function to all the male friends

friends({gender:"M"}).each(function (r) {

alert(r.name + "!");

});

TaffyDB / GitHub

5. April 2017

Browse tree-like data in columns, similar to OS X’s file manager – FinderJS

Data source: Array or Function (useful for asynchronous operations, e.g. calling an API).
Styling: Use any CSS/framework of choice (Flexbox). You can also define how items are rendered and change default classnames.
Keyboard navigation: use arrows keys to navigate.
Events: several events are emitted to allow for custom behavior.
Module formats: Provided as an npm module (CommonJS), a jQuery plugin, and exported as the global finder.

FinderJS

31. March 2017

Javascript Life Saver of the Week – uniqueID

Simple way to make sure you are assigning unique IDs to a series of elements.

var seedNum = 1;
function uniqueID(myKey, seedNum){
     var key = myKey + seedNum;
     if (document.getElementById(key) != null){
         return uniqueID(myKey, ++seedNum);
     }
     else{
         return key;
     }
 }

var seedNum = 1;

function uniqueID(myKey, seedNum){

var key = myKey + seedNum;

if (document.getElementById(key) != null){

return uniqueID(myKey, ++seedNum);

}

else{

return key;

}

USAGE

uniqueID('state-',seedNum);

1	uniqueID('state-',seedNum);

If you want to do IETF RFC-4122 compliant Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID), checkout Pure UUID.

Seems to be all about unique IDs this week ;)

Enjoy coding…

31. March 2017

PHP Life Saver of the Week – preg_replace_callback

I am currently building a custom slides / template builder for a project, with a lot of moving parts and dynamic logic.

As there are repeating patterns within the slides, each pattern and its logic needs to be neatly separated. As the slides can be reordered and dropzones can be changed, I need to make sure logic doesn’t break and IDs get updated.

Before reassembling all templates, I am making sure that IDs match the slide and dropzone using a preg_replace_callback

One of the patterns is a simple tab setup, each has its unique ID defined like vl-tab_U1_S1_D1.

The function below passes the found matches through to the anonymous callback function in preg_replace_callback and offers outside data to the function using use($foo). The $dropzone object holds the current unit, slide and dropzone of the pattern, which can be used to replace the current ID with the correct one.

$dropzone->region_content = preg_replace_callback('/vl-tab_[^"]++/',function($hit) use($dropzone){
	$oldID = explode("_",$hit[0]);
	$newID = array(
		"vl-tab", 
		"U".$oldID[1], 
		"S".$dropzone->slide,
		"D".$dropzone->dropzone
	);	
	return implode("_", $newID);
							
},$dropzone->region_content);

$dropzone->region_content = preg_replace_callback('/vl-tab_[^"]++/',function($hit) use($dropzone){

$oldID = explode("_",$hit[0]);

$newID = array(

"vl-tab",

"U".$oldID[1],

"S".$dropzone->slide,

"D".$dropzone->dropzone

);

return implode("_", $newID);

},$dropzone->region_content);

Really nice combo to make magic happen ;)

BTW here a nice website to testdrive and tweak your Regex : https://regex101.com/

Enjoy coding …

15. March 2017

DOM-to-Image … turn a DOM node into an image

dom-to-image is a library which can turn an arbitrary DOM node into a vector (SVG) or raster (PNG or JPEG) image, written in JavaScript.

var node = document.getElementById('my-node');

domtoimage.toPng(node)
    .then(function (dataUrl) {
        var img = new Image();
        img.src = dataUrl;
        document.body.appendChild(img);
    })
    .catch(function (error) {
        console.error('oops, something went wrong!', error);
    });

var node = document.getElementById('my-node');

domtoimage.toPng(node)

.then(function (dataUrl) {

var img = new Image();

img.src = dataUrl;

document.body.appendChild(img);

})

.catch(function (error) {

console.error('oops, something went wrong!', error);

});

GitHub

More uptodate and faster than html2canvas, which I used before in a couple of projects.

15. March 2017

We all love fireflies – jQuery Firefly

Firefly jQuery Floating Pixels .

GitHub

15. March 2017

Joyride 2 – create website tour in style

Joyride is an easy to configure site tour wizard.

Joyride

9. February 2017

Chrome 56 .. whats new?

With Chrome 56, web apps can now communicate with nearby Bluetooth Low Energy devices using the Web Bluetooth API, position sticky is back – making it easy to create elements that scroll normally until sticking to the top of the viewport. And HTML5 by Default is enabled for all users.

Chrome 56 on iOS also adds the ability to scan QR codes directly within Chrome. So many thought QR-Codes were dead, well not so much !

Google

Element Query Conditions

Width-based Conditions

Height-based Conditions

Count-based Conditions

Scroll-based Conditions

Aspect-based Conditions

Meta-Selectors

USAGE

Enjoy coding…

Enjoy coding …