HTML5’s native audio element will be a great way to avoid having to rely on third party plug-ins like QuickTime and Flash. The latest web browsers like Chrome 10+ and Firefox 3.6+ are already there with imbedded javascript libraries which provide methods and properties for manipulating the <audio> element. In this post, we’ll examine a few of the most important methods and discover ways to use Javascript to run audio files. NOTE: Although this post focuses on the Audio object, these methods...
In the past, the W3C debated whether page transitions belong in our CSS stylesheets, under the domain of web designers, or in our code, under the domain of web developers. After much lobbying by both designers and developers, they created a working draft for transitions. Once this specification is officially adopted, CSS3 Transitions will become a standard tool in web browsers. Until that time, we had to rely on vendor prefixes for this feature. NOTE: IE9 does not support the CSS3 Transitions...
Lots of excitement surrounds HTML5's native audio element. It promises cross browser standardized support for playing audio clips embedded directly in our web pages. With this new element, gone are the days of including a third party plug-in like Flash, QuickTime, or Silverlight. Of course, we're not quite there yet. Currently, the <audio> element is supported in these browsers: iOS 4+, Android 2.3+, Opera Mobile 11+, and As web developers, we must be careful to include fallback support...
Recursion is an age old concept used in mathematics when an object is defined by other objects of the same type. A real life example would be the mirrors in a department store dressing room. If you look in the right spot, you can see both reflections repeating themselves in each other. Each iteration of your image grows smaller and smaller into infinity. In computer science recursion happens when a solution to a problem is resolved by computing smaller instances of the same problem. In JavaScript,...
Savvy web developers often use vendor prefixes to try out the latest browser styles before the styles have been approved by the W3C and turned into a standard. By specifying a browser or vendor prefix within your CSS stylesheet or style property within a JavaScript function, you can gain control of how an element will render within a specific browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc.). This gets you access to these browser’s newest and coolest styles and elements. This article will illustrate how to...
In the last post, Creating and Manipulating Modal Popups, I discussed what the JavaScript method showModalDialog is used for and how to implement it in your website. Part two of this topic will focus on using popups to manipulate data and pass information from the child page back to the parent. User Experience ... Manipulating data in the popup window can be tricky, because modal windows do not function like normal ones. In a normal window, when your page does a postback, the postback is rendered...
Occasionally, I have needed a web page to call a child page in order to display information or to be used in a way to maintain information that will then be re-displayed back on the parent page. I didn’t want the user to be able to get back to the parent page until they have performed some function on the child page. One solution for this scenario is to use Modal Popups. In this tutorial, I will show how to use JavaScript’s window.showModalDialog() to create a Popup window and display information....
Most IT professionals do not work in state of the art design shops with all the latest developer suites available to them. Many of us have to make older applications and components work with newer technologies. I found myself in this predicament last year when I was required to make a new ASP.NET (3.5) web application work with a ten year old VB6.0 COM Plus Component. When I suggested to management that I re-write the component, they said: There’s no time. I know you can make it work. By the way, we need...