Anyway, I wanted to see what I can do with transitions and animations in webkit, and I made this :

Css only (well almost) analog clock

Click the Image to see the live demo

Support :

Firefox + Webkit browsers
In firefox I use javascript to move the properties
In Webkit, all the animation and the calculation is in CSS!!
I did cheat however : I used js to determine the current time. Now way to do that in css. I didn’t want to include jquery here, as u can see all the code is pure js, but I had to because it’s dufficult to do browser detection properly with js.

Lessons learned :

• CSS3 is awesome!! Especially the way webkit does it (transitions, animations)
  But it still has a LONG way to go untill we see compability cross browsers
• In Safari and Mobile safari, the arrows were jagged untill I gave the css-shadow, So it seems that giving this property turns on antialiasing somehow. Cool

I’ve decided to learn more about html5, since Google and Apple and a lot of these BIG companies say it’s the future.

I went to http://canvasdemos.com and was amazed that all this can be achieved with canvas tag.

I specifically liked the blowing up video into pieces , check it out, it’s AWESOME.

Sean from craftymind.com has done and amazing proof of concept, you should really check it out. I played with it and then realized, that clicking is the only interactivity there is and it seems that there’s more there. much more.

Here’s what I came up with :

Click on Randomize Pieces to explode the video to pieces and Begin assembling.

demo2 has video courtecy of bigcbuckbunny movie and lots more pieces (use chome)

I’ve decided to try and make something using the drawImage() method for the canvas, and inserting the video feed.

Goals :

• Learn a bit more about <canvas> ,html5 ,  video encoding
• Use tools I know to interact with the new stuff (jquery, css)
• Create something awesome!
• Make it fun

The idea:

The idea was simple, take Sean’s example, and add interactivity, first I was leaning towards making a “pyatnashki” ор fifteenpuzzle puzzle game, only using video, but then I decided it’s cool to leave it as a regular puzzle without constraints.

The actual work:

First I had to use some movie, it had to loop good enough, since as it turned out later, video puzzle isn’t really easy. I’ve used video shot by my uncle I offcourse had to format it properly, well it turns out, right now there are weird ways to input <video> in html, since webkit browsers support h.264 and webM and firefox supports theora codec.

I’ve re-encoded the video to 2 files ( .ogv and .mp4) using this tutorial : http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html

I then had to choose what will I do the actual interactivity with, the canvas itself, or DOM elements. I’ve chosen DOM elements, that maybe slower, but it’s a diferent approach then I’ve seen, plus I already know how to manipulate DOM, and can use that to my advantage.

I’ve created a factory function, that picks up on original video width and height, and takes the number of pieces that I want, and creates the necessary amount of canvas elements.

I then use drawImage each frame of the video, and copy pixels to each canvas according to their location on the matrix.

SEE DEMO HERE

Step one : xHtml markup

I decided to use the most basic structure. 2 wrappers next to each other, one containing the actual tabs, the other the relative content to each tab. Both elements(tabs and content) receive the ‘active’ class when their are in fact active.

<ul id="tabz">
<li class="tab active">Tab1</li>
<li class="tab ">Tab2</li>
<li class="tab ">Tab3</li>
</ul>
<div id="tabz_cont">
<div class="cont active">Content 1</div>
<div class="cont">Content 2</div>
<div class="cont">
<h1>some other content</h1>
Content 1

</div>
</div>

Step two : Css

I used a grid system (http://960.gs) to position and give widths to all the elements, beside that, I used some css3 techniques to beatify my tabs (rounded corners and shadow).
The actual css you use, isn’t important to the work of the tabz.

Step three : JAVASCRIPT

This is the reason why you are reading this, right? here you go:

//Tabz code - apply event to the tabs elements and your done
$('#tabz li').live('click',function(){
_index = $(this).parent().children().index($(this));
$(this).addClass('active').siblings().removeClass('active');
$('.cont').removeClass('active').eq(_index).addClass('active');
});

I select the tabs and assign them a click event listener, with the live() function.

Then I create an _index variable, that will tel me the index of the tab inside it’s parent.

By this _index I can now show the relevant content in the content div(the tabs and their content have to be the same index in their respective containers)

That’s it. Hope you can use this. If you do, don’t forget to comment here and show me your work.

Internet Explorer 6 was included (and I beleive still is) with Windows XP.

In turn, XP was released in October 2001! That’s 8 years ago.

Think about it. 8 YEARS.

Die ie6! DIE!

And yeah yeah I know…there are issues of accessibility involved, and many people simply cannot install new software (officces and GP policy ) and they are STUCK with IE6.

But personally, I don’t care.

As a webmaster, I do twise the work, trying to make up for IE6′s standart non-compliance.

• I need to create another stylesheet (conditional comments to the resque)
• I have to figure out what exactly is wrong with IE6 and how to fix it (google helps me here alot)
• I have to use different graphics or extend the website with javascript to achieve transparency.
• I have to clean up all the hair on the floor, hair I previously tore from my head in anger with IE6.

The thing is, in Israel, as little as 10% – 15% of all websites are standart compliant. That’s because nobody here really cares about web-standarts (very few do : KCS is one of them) , and it becomes something of a needed skill to know how to write mark-up for both standart-compliant browsers and otherwise(ie6 + ie7).

Ok, so I agree, when most of your clients still use ie6 , you have to build their website’s accordingly.

But personally, NO!

That’s why this blog and other personal websites I will build from now on, will not even be tested with IE6 or IE7. Well maybe IE7, but that’s about it.

IE8 is almoust here, and it’s good. Nice and standart compliant. No need for hacks of any sort.

Ok so i’m working on this site at work, and our creative designers decided it should have a news ticker in Javascipt. A fade-in/out kind of thing.

I used Mootools (of course) to write a simple script for this. And then I noticed something very strange. While in transition, both in Firefox and IE (6 and 7) the text got Garbled and rendered strangely.

Problem :

I then noticed this deal on another websites :

getstisfaction.com

Preview :

I tried to recreate this , and I made it happen only in IE for some reason.

FIX :

All that needs to be done, is to add background color to the absolute positioned elements that get faded in and out…

like so :

.fade_div{
position:absolute;
background-color:#fff;
}


I opened this blog, to share my thoughts on different things I come accross in my field.

I’m a web-designer and web-developer for a year now.

I do mostly PHP and JavaScript (usually mootools), also I really love everything that has to with mark-up (xHTML and CSS)

Everyday I learn something new, and this will be the place to share my newly acquired knowledge.