JavaScript
PDFObject is a JavaScript utility I created in 2008 to embed PDFs in HTML documents. It was modeled on SWFObject. Three years have passed since PDFObject 1.0 was released, and the browser landscape has changed dramatically. I figured it’s time to dust off PDFObject and see if it
accessibility
Introducing EasyCaptions: A simple system for adding captions and an interactive transcript to online videos. EasyCaptions uses progressive enhancement to provide the best possible experience for all visitors, regardless of their browser’s JavaScript, HTML5 or Flash support. Demonstration Background I don’t produce much video these days, but as
How-to
I’ve had to create a slew of forms over the last few months, and have become fond of textareas that auto-expand when they become filled. There are a number of MooTools scripts on the interwebs that can handle this task, but none of them suited me, and I generally
CSS
Most browsers do not allow images to be cropped using CSS3’s border-radius. Tim Van Damme recently posted a workaround for this issue. It’s a nice trick, and doesn’t require JavaScript. It does, however, require an extra span to be added to the page’s markup, which is
Adobe Flash
As you’ve probably read somewhere on the interwebs, HTML5 is bringing native video support to browsers. This will enable us to embed a video file directly in our HTML, much like a SWF or image. Background You may have also heard that there’s currently a big controversy over
How-to
Note: If you want to skip to the final code (in both MooTools and framework-neutral flavors), it’s at the bottom of this post. The problem Readers of this blog know that I enjoy MooTools. Like other JavaScript frameworks, it has many excellent features, including addClass and removeClass functions, which
web design and development
I’m a big fan of the Filament Group’s UI work. They put a lot of thought into their work, and ensure everything they make is not only beautiful, but as accessible and as semantic as possible. One of my favorite pieces of work by the Filament Group is
excanvas
excanvas.js is a script that enables developers to use the canvas element in Internet Explorer; since IE doesn’t support canvas or the canvas API, the excanvas script converts (most) canvas commands to Vector Markup Language (VML), the only vector rendering language supported natively in Internet Explorer. excanvas is
canvas
As part of my ongoing experiments with <canvas>, I decided to convert an image-based progress bar to an image-free canvas-based system. I just finished whipping up a proof-of-concept; it uses MooTools to generate the canvas and CSS code. No images were harmed in the making of this progress
canvas
In my previous post Fun with canvas and MooTools: a Rectangle class, I explained that I wanted to make a modal window for a project at my workplace. I was interested in using MochaUI, but felt it was a bit heavy for my needs. I started playing with the canvas
canvas
Greg Houston’s uber-cool MochaUI has led me to experiment with the canvas element the last few days. I first saw MochaUI sometime in 2007. While I was duly impressed, I couldn’t quite find a use for it and filed it away in my bottomless “play with this later”