Everyone is talking about HTML5 games and how they are the future of mobile gaming, but where do you start? What is it you need to do to create a game? In short the answer is actually "not much", everything that I will be using in todays tutorial I've already covered in various different guises in my previous tutorials. We'll be using only pure JavaScript and CSS in this tutorial and the images I've used are from the PlanetCute image pack from Daniel Cook Apologies in advance, but this is a fairly length tutorial....
There are plenty of applications, resources or services out there that can help make your life as a web designer easier. I've used many different ones over the years, and there are some I keep coming back to. This is a personal list, and I would love to hear about any alternatives that you've found useful too! Task Management ... One of the most important things in your life (both personal and professional) is your time. There is a finite amount of it and keeping track of what you have to do and by when is vital....
The release of HTML5 introduced native Drag and Drop functionality to modern web-browsers. This means it is now possible to have movable elements on screen without the aid of frameworks like jQuery. This week we'll be taking advantage of the drag and drop functionality to create a basic shopping cart. The basic functionality we'll cover, will be adding an item to the cart and if it already exists updating the quantity and totals. Getting Started ... The first thing we'll need is a basic structure for...
The query string in the DOM has always been a bit awkward, why there isn't a standard method of parsing it is beyond me. The normal route most people follow is to convert it in to a simple array of Key/Value pairs. This allows you to then access the values of the query string using the array accessor syntax. //domain.com/index.html?key=value var value = querystring_array['key']; Still a little clumsy isn't it? Wouldn't it be great to be able to just retrieve the value from a normal JavaScript/JSON object?...
CSS3 introduced a novel concept, the ability to specify multiple, layered background images. This allows you to build up an image using smaller parts to create a more complex image. This feature allows you to have one single element instead of one for each image, it also means you don't have to worry about z-indexing as it is automatic. In this tutorial we'll be creating an animated header using layered background images. We're going to then apply an animation to position everything and add some interactive...
Hyperlinks and buttons are a functional yet in general boring aspect of a website or web application. They tend to provide very little feedback when you interact with them. This doesn't have to be the case, it's very easy to add some simple styling to let the user know that they have either interacted with or can interact with an element. Pseudo-classes And Selectors ... Pseudo-classes for links have been in CSS for many years and for the most part people just reset them all to be the same color and text-decoration....
In this weeks tutorial we'll be creating a WordPress widget to display the current weather for a specified location. To do this we'll be using the great Weather Underground API. You can sign up for a free developer account here, or sign up for a professional account to get increase request rates. Signing Up ... Once you've signed up and registered for your API key, you should see something like the following. To actually query the API we just need the API key. The Wunderground API does not use OAuth to authenticate...
Ever noticed if you resize your browser window with Gmail open (or Asana or a host of other sites) the various elements on screen resize automatically in a smooth animation? This can be done using JavaScript or jQuery, but can also be achieved using CSS3 transitions and @media selectors. Introduction to @media selectors ... If you already have a responsive design you'll probably be familiar with @media selectors. If you're not familiar, they are essentially a way of applying specific CSS classes to...