Web Development – Page 3

Some useful jQuery plugins – Part 1

I often find cool and (sometimes) useful jQuery plugins, so I want to share a few that I like. I plan to share more in the future. Adipoli jQuery Image Hover Plugin Includes several different effects to highlight images as the mouse hovers over them. http://cube3x.com/demo/adipoli-jquery-image-hover-plugin/ jQuery File Upload File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bars and preview of images, audio and videoy. Supports cross-domain, chunked and resumable file uploads and client-side image resizing. https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload iCheck Customized checkboxes and radion buttons for your forms. http://damirfoy.com/iCheck/ Chosen A plugin to make dropdown-boxes (especially long ones) easier to use. I looked at using this in a project, but ultimately opted to use another plugin, for different reasons. Chosen is still a good tool. http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/ MagicSuggest This is the plugin I selected over Chosen. The content of the dropdown can be supplied using an Ajax call, returning JSON, and there are a large number of configuartion options. The plugin support filtering and type-ahead, as well as many other useful functions. http://nicolasbize.github.io/magicsuggest/ SuperScrollorama A jQuery plugin for scroll animations. http://johnpolacek.github.io/superscrollorama/ Sticky Sticky is a jQuery plugin that gives you the ability to make any element on your page always stay visible. http://stickyjs.com/

4 Comments

July 26, 2013

Frameworks / Javascript / jQuery / Notes/Domino / Programming / Web Development

jQuery – An Overview

Yesterday my boss asked me about a simple overview/tutorial explaining jQuery, Bootstrap and some other web technologies, and how they work together. I decided to also post the result on my blog, so here is the first part. You may recognize some code from a previous blog entry. jQuery is a currently very popular Javascript framework/library. There are other ones, like Dojo (used by IBM in XPages) and YUI (originally developed by Yahoo), but jQuery is right now at the top when it comes to usage. jQuery contains the plumbing behind the scene, it contains functions to let the different elements on the page talk to each other and interact, for example trigger events on click or change. It also have functions to hide and show elements (either directly or fade in or out). One of the big benefits with jQuery is that many functions are much easier to do than in traditional Javascript. It also addresses browser inconsistency, so you don't have to write different code for Firefox and Internet Explorer. jQuery is Javascript, just packaged in a nice library and simplified. There are also UI components and mobile components, found in jQuery UI and jQuery Mobile. Here are a couple of examples, comparing plain Javascript with jQuery: http://blog.jbstrickler.com/2010/06/vanilla-javascript-vs-jquery/. jQuery ties into the DOM (Document Object model) of the browser/webpage in a very easy-to-use way. The way elements are addressed is identical to how you do it in CSS, using . (dot) for classes and # for individual elements. It is not hard to start with jQuery. You do not even have to host the library on your own server, several companies (including Microsoft and Google) host jQuery (as well as other libraries and frameworks) in what is called a CDN (Content Delivery Network). You simply include a line of code in the head section of your HTML, telling the browser to load jQuery from a specified location, and you are all set: <head> <title>Hello, jQuery</title> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.1/jquery.min.js"></script> </head> Notice that you don't use http: or https: at the start of the URL. This is a trick that makes it work both on a http or a https site. However, if you have the code locally in the file system on your computer (like many do before uploading the html file to a server), you must add http: at the beginning for it to load. Let take a look at our first jQuery example. Below we have a very simple piece of HTML code: <body> <button id="btnSave">Save</button> <div id="messageBox"></div> </body> What we want to do is that when the button is clicked, a message should be displayed in the div with ID messageBox. That is done with the following piece of jQuery: $("#btnSave").click( function() { $("#messageBox").html("You clicked the Save button."); }); What this do is to replace everything inside the div with the text/HTML code we specify. The second line is the code to execute when the event specified triggers/fires. You can put triggers on almost any element, and…

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July 19, 2013

Frameworks / HTML/CSS / Javascript / Web Development

Free Bootstrap tools

I started using Bootstrap a while back, and really enjoy the fact that I quickly can build a website/application using the framework. But there is always room for improvement. I found some useful tools that will help you, if you are using Bootstrap, to build your pages even quicker. The first resource is Divshot, a online tool/interface builder where you can design your pages, then get the HTML code and insert it into your page. I just started using it this weekend, but it is a brilliant tool, easy to use and very helpful. It's currently in free beta, you just need to register. Update: DivShot is now a commercial product, but you can use it for free if you just have one single project. Bootbox.js is a Javascript library that help you create programatic dialog boxes. prettyCheckable replaces the standard checkboxes with nicer looking ones. Datepicker for Bootstrap is (as the name indicates) a datepicker, made to match the Bootstrap look. jQuery Form Validation is using the Bootstrap stylesshet to make it match the rest of the framework. I haven't tried this one yet, but it looks very useful. Fuel UX is another way to extend Bootstrap with additional controls. Very nice looking! Lavish is a cool online tool that takes an image and creates a color scheme based on it for use in Bootstrap. You can find these tools and more here.

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June 3, 2013

Frameworks / IBM/Lotus / Notes/Domino / Web Development

How to set doctype on Notes forms

When redesigning my website to use Bootstrap, I ran into a problem. The navbar (meny) did not render correctly in Internet Explorer 9, despite looking perfect in Firefox and Internet Explorer 10. There are several discussions about this problem on StackOverflow and other forums, and the solution is simply to add <!DOCTYPE HTML> on the first line of the HTML code. However, IBM Domino automatically adds a different doctype string, and there is no database or form property to change/set the correct value. But there is actually a way, and it is not very complicated. Simply create a computed for display field called $$HTMLFrontMatter. Make it hidden from web browsers, and in it you enter a formula that will give you the desired doctype. I simply put "<!DOCTYPE HTML>" in there, and it worked perfectly. Also make sure "Use Javascript when generating pages" is turned off. This way to modify the HTML generated is documented in the online help. It was added in Domino 8.

2 Comments

April 11, 2013

Frameworks / IBM/Lotus / Javascript / Lotusscript / Notes/Domino / Programming / Web Development

Show and Tell – Dynamic Web Calendar

In this post in the developerWorks forum, Andy Herlihy is asking about how to create a small calendar that can be embedded into an existing intranet website. As Carl Tyler points out, Andy could simply use Dojo. However, this is a good example to show some jQuery combined with the power of IBM Lotus Domino. Lets' break it down into a few smaller steps. The first one is to create a Domino web agent that will take the current date and build a calendar for that month. There will be no links or javascript code in the HTML generated, just plain HTML code, with some id attributes to make it easy to address different cells later. The next step is to create a very simple webpage, with some Javascript to load jQuery and set up the calendar to detect clicks. The clicks will cause another call to the Domino server, this time to a view using RestrictToCategories to only get the entries for the specified date. The entries are returned as HTML and through jQuery they are displayed in a div on the webpage. We also want to add a little bit of CSS to make the calendar pretty. The CSS also lives on the HTML page. Finally we create the view, it's associated view template form and a form to create some entries that we can use for testing. Let's look at the code. First the Domino web agent. It should be pretty self explanatory: %REM Agent WebCalendar Created Nov 26, 2012 by Karl-Henry Martinsson/Deep-South Description: Returns HTML for a calendar for current month %END REM Option Public Option Declare Sub Initialize '*** Used to get URL params Dim session As New NotesSession Dim webform As NotesDocument Dim urlstring As String Dim urlarr As Variant Dim urlvaluename As Variant Dim urldata List As String Dim webservername As String '*** Agent specific Dim startDate As NotesDateTime Dim endDate As NotesDateTime Dim i As Integer Dim j As Integer Dim startweekday As Integer Dim thisMonth As Integer Dim currDate As Double Dim cellclass As String Set webform = session.DocumentContext '*** Calculate path for this database, for image/icon file references later webservername = webform.GetItemValue("Server_Name")(0) '*** Remove leading "OpenAgent" urlstring = StrRight(webform.Query_String_Decoded(0),"&") If urlstring <> "" Then '*** Get all params passed to agent urlarr = Split(urlstring,"&") For i = LBound(urlarr) To UBound(urlarr) urlvaluename = Split(urlarr(i),"=") urldata(urlvaluename(0)) = urlvaluename(1) Next If IsElement(urldata("date")) = False Then urldata("date") = Format$(Now(),"mm/dd/yyyy") End If Else urldata("date") = Format$(Now(),"mm/dd/yyyy") End If '*** Get first and last date of current month Set startDate = New NotesDateTime(Format$(urldata("date"),"mm/01/yyyy")) Set endDate = New NotesDateTime(startdate.DateOnly) Call endDate.AdjustMonth(1) Call endDate.AdjustDay(-1) currDate = CDbl(CDat(startDate.DateOnly)) startweekday = Weekday(Cdat(startDate.Dateonly)) '*** HTML header Print "Content-type: text/html" ' & CRLF Print |<table class="calendar">| '*** Create calendar header with weekdays Print |<tr><td colspan=7 class="labelMonthYear">| + Format$(CDat(startDate.DateOnly),"mmmm yyyy") + |</td></tr>| Print |<tr class="calendarHeader">| Print |<td>S</td><td>M</td><td>T</td><td>W</td><td>T</td><td>F</td><td>S</td>| Print |</tr>| '*** Build rows for the weeks For i = 1 To 6 Print || Print |<tr class="calendarRow" id="calendarRow| & i…

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November 27, 2012

Frameworks / Javascript / Notes/Domino / Web Development

Using jQuery to emulate Notes hide-when

We have all built applications in Lotus Notes where we use the value of a checkbox, radio button or dropdown box to show or hide additional fields, like you can see in this clip. But the hide-when formula will not work this way on the web. The Domino HTTP stack will simply render the page before sending it to the browser, and even if you make a selection in the browser, the hidden section will not display or vice versa. So what can you do? One easy way is to use jQuery (or Dojo, if you rather fancy that). You can then detect if a checkbox/radio button is clicked on or if a dropdown box is changed. Then you read the value of the button/box and hide/show the content you like. In this example, you can also see that that one of the dropdown boxes actually switch which dropdown box to display next to it, you can see that the available choices are different, in addition to performing the more visible hiding of the last row when recommendations is not set to "n/a". So how do you actually do this? It is fairly easy. First you add a reference to the jQuery library to the HTML Head Content section of the form. Remember that you need to prefix any quote marks with a \ when you put it in as a string. Here I am calling the Google-hosted jQuery library: <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.1/jquery.min.js"></script> Next, remove any hide-when formulas from the form you are going to expose on the web. That is important, since the Domino server will otherwise not render all the HTML you need. Then give each element you want to hide a unique id. You are probably using tables to create the layout you want, then you can use the table cell id to address the element. In this case, I give the cell containing the label the id "ReasonNALabel" and the cell containing the dropdown box the id "ReasonNA". The field 'Recommendation', which is the one where we are detecting the click and if it has the value "n/a" should display the two cells below it, has an id of "Recommendations". One more thing, we want to detect the value as soon as the page is loaded, and display/hide the section accordingly. I will break out the code that perform the check of the value and does the hide/show, so I can call one function insted of duplicating the code. $(document).ready( function () { // Check value and do initial show/hide after page is finished loading refreshRecommendations(); // Set trigger for click on radio button to call function $("input[name='Recommendations']").click( function() { refreshRecommendations(); }); }); function refreshRecommendations() { var checked = $('input[name=Recommendations]:checked').val(); if (checked == "n/a") { $("#ReasonNA").show(); $("#ReasonNALabel").show(); } else { $("#ReasonNA").hide(); $("#ReasonNALabel").hide(); } } If you want to check the value if a checkbox, use $("#checkboxID").is(":checked") and to check the value of a dropdown box, use $("#dropdownboxID").val(). For the dropdown box, use .change() instead of .click(), otherwise the code is identical. That…

1 Comment

November 6, 2012

Blogging / Programming / Web Development

Reminder – Great icon set for free!

Two years ago I wrote about the FamFamFam Silk icons, a free set of 1000 icons that I use. I still use them in all my applications, and have even modified a few of them to suit my purposes. They come as PNG files, but I have converted them to GIF format so I can use them in for example Notes action buttons. If you downloaded my generic database template, which I posted about two years ago as well , you have the GIF version of all the icons as image resources. So if you haven't taken a look at those icons, you should. Few things help your application or website to look professional as a set of consistent looking icons. And yes, it works in Xpages. You just have to add a little piece of CSS to make it look good, as Per Henrik Lausten told me when I posted about that in StackOverflow. The magic code is: .lotusBtn img { margin-right: 10px; } This will give you 10 pixels between the icon and the label. It might be enough with 5 or 6 pixels, depending on what the desired look of the page is.

7 Comments

November 4, 2012

Frameworks / Javascript / Notes/Domino / Programming / Web Development

Replace images on web page using jQuery

Last week I encountered a situation where I wanted to replace images on a Domino generated webpage. I am sure you all know what doc links look like by default when rendered by the Domino HTTP task: By adding a few lines of jQuery to the form, you can manipulate the image source, as well as the CSS class and other attributes. This allows you to modify a page served by the Domino HTTP task almost as much as you like. Below is the code I used to modify what you see above into something that I found a little bit nicer. $("img").each( function() { var t = $(this); imgicon = t.attr("src"); if (imgicon == "/icons/doclink.gif") { t.attr('src', '/applications/losscontrol.nsf/icon_picture.gif'); t.addClass('photoicon'); } if (imgicon.indexOf("Attachments") > 1 ) { t.attr('src', '/applications/losscontrol.nsf/icon_attach.gif'); t.addClass('attachmenticon'); t.attr('height','16'); t.attr('width','16'); } }); $("a").each( function() { var t = $(this); url = t.attr("href"); if (url.indexOf("$FILE")>0) { t.removeAttr("style"); t.addClass('attachmentLink'); t.outerHTML = t.outerHTML + "<br>"; } }); var plink = $('#photolinks').html(); plink = plink.replace(/<br>/i,''); plink = plink.replace(/<\/a><font\b[^>]*>/gim,'<span class="photoLink">'); plink = plink.replace(/<\/font>/gim,'</span></a>'); $("#photolinks").html(plink); var alink = $('#attachmentlinks').html(); alink = alink.replace(/<\/a>/ig,'</a><br>'); $("#attachmentlinks").html(alink); What I am doing is to loop through all img tags on the page, and identify the ones that are doc links (using the file name for the icon). I replace the src attribute of those links with a different icon I added as an image resource to the database. I then set the class name for the link, so I can manipulate the look using CSS. I also look for any src attribute containing the field name "Attachments", which is where the attachments (if present) are located. I change the icon from the one generated by Domino to another image resource in the database. The next section of the code will loop through all anchor tags and check if the link includes "$FILE", indicating it is an attachment. If that is the case, I remove the Domino generated style attribute, set a class name and append a line break to the end of each link. I then perform some string replacements to remove the font tags that Domino generate automatically when rendering rich text fields. I replace the font tags with a span (containing a class name) so I can style the look of the link later, and also move the </a> tag to after the link text. The last thing I do is to add a line break after each attachment link. Here is the result: Hope this can help anyone. And if you wonder, I am using the fieldset tag to create the box around each set of icons.

3 Comments

October 31, 2012

Frameworks / HTML/CSS / Javascript / Web Development

How to start with jQuery

Lately I have been working on several web applications, both as hobby projects and at work. I started using YUI3 a few years ago as a Javascript framework, and I liked it. But I kept hearing about jQuery, and the times I saw code snippets, I was intrigued. It looked different, but at the same time jQuery seemed very powerful and efficient. So a while back I started looking closer at jQuery, and I found that it was extremely easy to learn. One need a decent understanding of HTML and the browser DOM (Document Object Model), as well as Javascript knowledge. Add some CSS to that, if you want the page to look good as well, and you are set. So how do you start using jQuery? The easy way is to take advantage of companies like Google and Microsoft who are hosting different frameworks (including jQuery) on their servers for public use. You don't have to worry about downloading and hosting it yourself, and you can get started in just minutes. You add code to your page to utilize jQuery, then add some script. You have to allow the browser to wait for the webpage to fully load before you can start doing things, and this is done using $(document).ready(). When that event is triggered, the code you have added there will be executed. It is very easy to address elements on your webpage. If I have an element (could be a button, a span/div section, a link or even an image) with the id "messageBox", I can address it like this: $("#messageBox"). I then have different properties and methods for that element. But I have always believed in "show me the code". I created a very simple demo. The webpage contains a button and a div where we want to display a text when the button is clicked. I have some CSS to make the text look nice, and a few lines of jQuery code to do the work. <html> <head> <title>Hello, jQuery</title> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.1/jquery.min.js"></script> </head> <script> // The following function is executed after page is fully loaded $(document).ready(function () { // Setup the element with id "btnSave" to react on click $("#btnSave").click( function() { // When clicked, set the innerHTML of the element with // id "messageBox" to the specified html string. $("#messageBox").html("You clicked the <strong>Save</strong> button."); $("#messageBox").addClass("statusMessage"); }); }); </script> <style> .statusMessage { font-family: Arial; font-size: 0.9em; color: #AA0000; } </style> <body> <button id="btnSave">Save</button> <div id="messageBox"></div> </body> </html> That's it. Try it yourself, paste this code into a text file and call it jQuery.html, then open it in your browser. Now when you understand the basics, you can learn more advanced things. I am using jQuery to very easily perform Ajax calls, even calling Lotusscript web agents to return data from a Domino database to my webpage. I also use it for all kinds of dynamic updates to webpages. A while back I started on a Domino-based web chat as a hobby project. I started…

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October 26, 2012

Frameworks / Old Blog Post / Web Development

YUI3: Powerful Javascript Framework

Last week I came up with a small side project. It was basically a simple web chat, working pretty much like the comments on a blog. I decided to build this as a classic Domino application, not using Xpages. I started development Wednesday mid-afternoon, and the application needed be done Thursday evening, and I of course had my regular job to do. So I could not justify spending the time I needed to learn doing it in Xpages, and then try to write CSS to get it to look like I wanted it. So there you have the reason for why I did not use Xpages. I decided to take a look at YUI, the framework developed by Yahoo. The latest version is version 3, and it is really nice and powerful. I looked into in, and realized that I could do things very quickly, getting the same functionality as using Xpages (partial refresh or page, etc) in just a few lines of code. So what did I need for my application? I started with a blank Notes database. I created a page, which is where all the action would take place. On the page I created a header section (logo), a content section (where the messages/chat would be displayed) and a form section where I put a few fields for the users to fill out. The fields were name/handle, email, (optional) website and lastly the message to send. I also put two images there, one to use as a submit button, and one to refresh the chat content without having to submit a text. I added some javascript at the top of the page, loading YUI3 (hosted by Yahoo, I did not even have to download anything): <script src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.5.1/build/yui/yui-min.js"></script> The next step was to add some code for the actual logic on the page. YUI works by binding functions to events on elements on the page. I wanted to bind function functions to the onClick event of the two buttons, "submit" and "refresh". To avoid this blog entry to be too long, I will just show the code behind the refresh button: Y.one('#refresh').on('click', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); var contentcell = Y.one("#contentCell"); if (contentcell) { var currentTime = new Date(); Y.one('#refresh').set('src','webchat.nsf/ajax-loader-150.gif'); var args = &refresh=true&datetime=" + currentTime.getTime(); contentcell.load("webchat.nsf/SendText?OpenAgent" + args,"", function() { Y.one('#refresh').set('src','webchat.nsf/refresh.png'); } ); } }); This code gets a reference to the first element with the id "refresh" using Y.one(), then bind a function to the "click" event. The function is defined right there, and it will do a couple of things. First it get a reference to the element (in this case a DIV) with the id "contentCall". I check if it was found, and if so I get the current time (get a unique number). I then change the image of the refresh element to a spinning "loading" icon. The next line is the coolest one. In one line of code I perform an Ajax call to an agent on the Domino server, and put the returned data into the contentcell element. Finally, after the server…

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May 15, 2012

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