- All Topics:
- apps
- css
- dashboard
- games
- javascript
- php
- tehcl
- textmate
- tools
- video
Topic: css
- updated:
- 2009.12.31
- published:
- 2009.12.21
- topics:
- css
- javascript
My latest project is a little "Web Two-Point-Snow" fun I put together as my personal holiday gift to the internet, or should I say winternet… winternet? Ok, I'll stop. Anyway, the Winternetizer adds festive, fancy, 100% Flash-free flakes of falling snow to any website.
You'll have a much better experience using a browser that Santa has on his Nice List such as Safari, Firefox 3.5+, or Chrome. In fact, in those browsers, I'd go so far as to say the snow looks so real you will find yourself flopping on the ground to make snow angels. Give it a try now before you read about the super cool technical details behind it:
(Incidentally, you can also add the JavaScript directly to your own site to delight your visitors. The Winternetizer project page has details.)
The Secrets to Better Snow
Yes, it is true that falling snow scripts go back probably over a decade. We've all seen it done using falling snowflake GIFs, or falling periods, or the trusty asterisk (which to be fair, is a great six-sided stand-in for an actual flake).
However, if you have a modern browser, you will have noticed that my falling snow script has depth-of-field blurring and parallax, flakes that rotate as they fall, and you lucky Mac users no doubt noticed the pretty actual snowflake graphics. The total effect is accomplished with text, CSS, and JavaScript — no Flash, no PNGs, no GIFs, no Canvas.
- published:
- 2009.12.21
- topics:
- css
- javascript
Add festive and 100% Flash-free falling flakes of snow to any web site. Friend of the winternet using Firefox 3.5+, Safari, or Chrome will enjoy fancy depth-of-field and rotation effects accomplished entirely with CSS and a little JavaScript!
- published:
- 2009.12.02
- topics:
- css
- javascript
- video
FlipBox is another LightBox clone (a JavaScript photo gallery tool) where the new twist is a fun "3D" tile flipping animation effect. It is much easier to demonstrate than to explain, so I decided to do my first screencast with audio (be gentle!) so I could show you what FlipBox is all about. Incidentally, Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard has a great free screen capture tool built into QuickTime. Sorry in advance if the volume is a little low. Real action starts at 0:45:
More About FlipBox
FlipBox is jQuery-based and makes use of my rotate3Di plugin to create a 3D-like isometric tile flipping effect using the CSS3 transform property currently only supported by Safari, Chrome, and Firefox 3.5+. (That's another reason why I wanted to record a video demo.) If you happen to have an awesome web browser, you can check out a live demo of FlipBox.
In it's current state, with only a little preparation by the user, FlipBox is already a simple to use LightBox-like tool. There's a few other demos with this concept I hope to put together, and I would also like to write proper documentation and do a release.
- published:
- 2009.08.07
- topics:
- css
- javascript
I have created a monkey patch for jQuery 1.3.1+ which enables you to independently set and/or animate both the scale and rotation of any HTML content with jQuery. This code uses the scale() and rotate() CSS transformations that are only supported by Webkit, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox 3.5 at this time.
As an example I have some spinning HTML content below. You can click the content to increase its scale while it continues to spin. Try it out:
After applying my patch, the following jQuery code is used to create this example:
setInterval(
function () {
$('#at_ex1').animate({rotate: '+=10deg'}, 0);
},
200
);
$('#at_ex1').click(
function () {
$(this).animate({scale: '+=0.33'}, {queue: false, duration: 1000});
}
);
Features of this Patch:
- Get and set rotate and scale CSS transforms independently with the added custom jQuery methods
rotate() and scale(). These work like setting any other CSS property, i.e. you are rotating to an angle not rotating by an angle. Example syntax:
$('#example').rotate('30deg'); // rotates to 30deg
$('#example').scale(1.5); // scales to 150%
$('#example').rotate('45deg'); // rotates to 45deg
$('#example').rotate(); // will return '45deg'
$('#example').scale(); // will return '1.5'
- Animate rotate and scale CSS transforms independently using jQuery's
animate() method. This works like any other jQuery CSS animation, i.e. you can rotate to a specific angle, or you can increase or decrease the angle of rotation by any number of degrees. Here are examples of both syntaxes:
// Rotate to 30deg and scale to 125%
$('#example').animate({rotate: '30deg', scale: '1.25'}, 1000);
// Rotate by 30deg from current position and scale down by 10%
$('#example').animate({rotate: '+=30deg', scale: '-=0.1'}, 1000);
Download and Usage
Download a zip file of the patch now or visit the project on GitHub.
This patch requires another one of my jQuery patches that adds CSS transform support to jQuery. The file jquery-css-transform.js should be included in your download.
To use this patch, load jquery-animate-css-rotate-scale.js after loading jQuery and
jquery-css-transform.js. For example:
<script src="jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jquery-css-transform.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jquery-animate-css-rotate-scale.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
- published:
- 2009.06.22
- topics:
- css
- javascript
After my last post about the CSS text-shadow property it occurred to me that it could be used to create some fun pseudo-realtime lighting effects.
In the example below I am using a PNG to create a spotlight, and I am using JavaScript to update the text-shadow style on the text in order to simulate realtime shadows from a single light source. Move your mouse over the box to cast a shadow with the spotlight.
Should work in Firefox 3.5, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. Apparently still no support in IE8? Big shocker there.</sarcasm>
View the example in a new window.