Position Absolute, resources for the web developer » Random news

Form Validation Engine 1.7 Online

Cedric Dugas — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:32:37 +0000

It’s been a long time since I updated the validation engine. In this release the engine get a very small code overhaul, a fix to the inline ajax validation and also, and more importantly, a new feature makes its entrance:

Validation in overflown div and lightbox with scrollable content is now supported

To get the supported mode you need to add this option when instancing your plugin:

$("#formID").validationEngine({
containerOverflow:true, // Enable Overflown mode
containerOverflowDOM:"#divOverflown" // The actual DOM element container with overflow scroll on it
})

(With overflown hidden parent)
View demo

The big change in this method is that normally the engine will append every error boxes to the body. In this case it will append every error boxes before the input validated. This add a bit of complexity, if you want the error box to behave correctly you need to wrap the input in a div being position relative, and exactly wrapping the input width and height. The easiest way to do that is by adding float:left, like in the example provided.

The default top right position is currently the only supported position. Please use this mode only in overflown div and scrollable boxes, it is slower and a bit less stable (I have been using the engine for 2 years, but only one 1 month with this method). Also, the scrolling will be applied to the overflown parent, not the document body.

Thats it! Hope you like it

You can download the validation engine on the API description page.

Crockford on JavaScript

Cedric Dugas — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:56:22 +0000

Good morning everyone, having a slow day at work? take the time to listen to these videos, or just put them in background while you work!

“During the past three months, Yahoo!’s JavaScript architect Douglas Crockford delivered a series of public lectures on the JavaScript programming language at Yahoo!. YUI Theater recorded and transcribed each of the five lectures.”

Volume 1: The Early Years

Chapter 2: And Then There Was JavaScript

Act III: Function the Ultimate

Episode IV: The Metamorphosis of Ajax

Part 5: The End of All Things

Cool web projects that will energize you

Cedric Dugas — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:37:03 +0000

Sometimes there are projects that are just way cooler than yours. In this spirit, I wanted to highlights some projects that just flabbergast me. I tried to put more down to earth projects than just “experimental stuff”.

Vanthia

Vanthia is just a browser MMO based on Mootools and Python. The creator worked on it for years and it shows. The UI is great, the game itself looks great, it use canvas and various HTML5 apis. If you are trying to do an MMO javascript based games, I suggest you have a good look at it.

The video is a bit old, it changed quite a bit.

Aves game engine

Aves is a javascript game engine that got an isometric level editor. oh yes, it also got real time features.

Mozilla Hacks HTML5 image editor

This one is more of a technical demo, but anyway, can you ask more than drag and dropping files directly to your browser, saving them offline and synchronize them later? It really show what kind of user interaction we will be able to do with HTML5.

Jilion HTML5 video player

This HTML5 video player has nothing to envy to any flash video player.
http://jilion.com/sublime/video

Quake 2 engine to HTML5

When 3 googlers decide to port Quake 2 to your browser you can get surprising results. Oh and did I told you it got multiplayer using HTML5 web sockets? it also use localstorage, and html5 audio.

Back to blog 101!

Cedric Dugas — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:09:14 +0000

As you can see Position Absolute changed of skin a bit.

Unfortunately since last December, I had less time for the site and I decided to go back to a simple blog. I will be posting more in-depth article about JS, CSS and mobile (I already have 2 articles near ready to ship), but a lot less news.

I am also in the development process of a relatively big web application, and I will certainly share with you every stage of this project.

In video: John Resig on Advanced Javascript to Improve your Web App

Cedric Dugas — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:58:19 +0000

In February 2010 John Resig, the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library, spoke at the annual Future of Web Apps Miami conference. During this 25 minute talk John outlines many of the new features and ideas behind jQuery 1.4.

Source from ThinkVitamin.

CSS3 transform is coming in a browser near you (even in IE)

Cedric Dugas — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:21:17 +0000

There has been some cool developments lately on the use of CSS3 transform properties. First we have Dojo has announced that the next version of dojo.fx will support CSS3 transform. You can see the demo here.

Another nice project, cssSandpaper is a js animation framework making the use of CSS3 transform easy.

Check it out, those two are well worth the read.

The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps

Cedric Dugas — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:33:21 +0000

Do you instinctively know them before looking at this video?

Form Validation Engine 1.6.4

Cedric Dugas — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:16:12 +0000

Version 1.6.4 is now online. One major upgrade, you can now validate from any function in your script. You are no more bounded to the custom regex engine. And a minor update, you can now click on the bubble to make them disappear, in case they are in the way.

Here how it works:

In your field add:

In your language js file have something like (nname is the function name to call):

"validate2fields":{
"nname":"validate2fields",
"alertText":"* You must have a firstname and a lastname"}
}

Now the custom function that could be anywhere in your JS

function validate2fields(){
if($("#firstname").val() =="" || $("#lastname").val() == ""){
return true;
}else{
return false;
}
}

Grab it here.

In video: Optimizing your javascript!

Cedric Dugas — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:41:25 +0000

If you are in a company that build corporate websites, chances are you probably never had to optimize your javascript. Websites in general have 3 or 4 ‘widget’ that in the end do not really slow down the page load.

But when you start doing web applications, you start to feel the load you impose to your browser at every page. This is where optimizing your javascript becomes crucial.

Server change alert! position-absolute move to webfaction

Cedric Dugas — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:31:50 +0000

For now more than a year position-absolute.com has been hosted by linode. Linode offer great unmanaged VPS hosting. This has really been beneficial for my own experience to delve in the Linux world and build my web server from scratch. Buuuutt the time comes when I don’t want to play in apache and mysql config anymore.

Webfaction is a great semi-managed VPS hosting. You get half the ram you would get with an unmanaged VPS but installing an application is as easy as using wordpress. For example, you can deploy a Django application in about 5 minutes.

Things might be unstable for a couple of days.