BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Thanks to CSS3 we no longer need Flash to produce good-looking animations. In general we do not even need JavaScript. But CSS3 falls short for some use cases. If you need to calculate or recalculate your animations, there's no getting round JavaScript. You do not have to use setTimeout and setInterval though. These do carry the disadvantage of simply repeating a function in defined intervals. Looking at animations, defined intervals are not the best way to make them work. If you have been using these two functions, you probably already experienced difficulties in finding the values for intervals in match with the required animation steps. Furthermore, setTimeout and setInterval rarely are in sync with the display refresh rate, which leads to the effect, that animations cannot be precisely presented. It doesn't have to be that way, though...

A web designer's tasks are far from getting easier. More and more different resolutions come to market and have to be addressed in professional layouts. The formerly rather simple distinction between a site for mobile and another for desktop users is not sufficient anymore. With the success of smartphones of the most different sizes the problem grows bigger by the hour. Of course we have media queries to address different resolutions properly. And even though they do work in the majority of cases you still have to test them properly.

Complex websites would not work well without JavaScript. Often there are several scripts residing in the head of your HTML document. The more you embed, the slower your website, potentially. Head.js is a JavaScript tool that calls itself the only script you need. We have put it to the test and found out that Head.js can really boost the performance on websites with several scripts. The more scripts you call in the head the higher the effect Head.js can provide.

Sometimes it’s useful to know if images are enabled in the user’s browser, so that you can adjust your CSS and/or JavaScript to make sure that important content is not hidden and that the page is still usable even if images aren’t loaded.

Steve Faulkner describes one example of such a scenario in Detecting if images are disabled in browsers – using an image to convey information that is also available in text that is positioned off-screen. In a CSS on + images off scenario, sighted users won’t get any information.

It’s often possible to write your markup and CSS in a way that avoids this problem, but it isn’t always practical. Hence knowing whether images will be displayed or not is helpful.

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Posted in Accessibility, CSS, JavaScript.

Copyright © Roger Johansson

Image- or, more general, content sliders are as popular as can be. There are plenty of them on the market. Design and functionality resemble, the choice of a slider is more or less a matter of taste. Tiny Circleslider is different though. The tool lets you place content elements in a circle. This makes for a futuristic look and feel.