javascript

Make a Rotatable 3D Product Boxshot with Three.js

14 November 2019 / 11 Comments

[This article was originally published on 12 August 2011. It was updated on 14 November 2019 to cover the latest version of Three.js and add mobile support.]

To say that JavaScript has come a long way in recent years is a bit of an understatement. At the turn of the century we were using it mainly for validating forms and opening annoying pop-up windows. These days, JavaScript can play HTML5 video and audio; generate richly-detailed graphics on the fly; query a mobile device to display its location; and even make a web server.

One area where JavaScript has improved in leaps and bounds is 3D graphics. Ten years ago, the idea of smooth, real-time, realistic 3D graphics running inside a web browser seemed out of this world. Nowadays it’s becoming commonplace, thanks to modern browsers supporting both the canvas element and WebGL, a library that adds hardware-accelerated, OpenGL-like 3D graphics capabilities to the browser.

Building on top of these layers, some enterprising folks have built JavaScript libraries that make it easy for the average coder — that is, someone without a degree in computer graphics — to create realistic, animated 3D scenes, right in the browser. This is opening up a world of possibilities for online games, interactive videos, web apps, and much more.

One such library that’s gained a lot of traction is Mr. doob’s Three.js. This library gives you all you need to create complex 3D scenes in the browser, using nothing but JavaScript.

While Three.js is relatively easy to use, it can still be daunting if you’re not familiar with the concepts involved in computer-generated imagery. In this tutorial, you’ll get a gentle introduction to Three.js’s basic features, and learn how to put them to practical use by creating a rotatable 3D boxshot scene.

Build Responsive Sites Quickly with Foundation

31 July 2012 / 3 Comments

Responsive design is a big topic these days. A website with a responsive layout adapts to different devices — from widescreen desktops down to mobile phones — by resizing and rearranging the content in the page, as well as showing or hiding content.

While a basic responsive layout isn’t too hard to create, things can get fiddly once your layout starts getting more complex. On top of that, there are cross-browser issues to deal with, as well as setting up nice defaults for typography, colours, buttons, forms, menus, and so on.

This is where frameworks like Foundation come in. Foundation takes care of a lot of the “grunt work” involved in setting up a new site, with a responsive grid, cross-browser CSS, and good-looking default settings for all sorts of page elements.

In this introduction to Foundation, you’ll get an overview of Foundation’s features, and see how you can use the framework to rapidly prototype and build your next website. Enjoy!

Easy HTML Templates with Mustache

27 April 2012 / 12 Comments

Templates are a great way to separate your website’s code from its design. There are many great web template systems available for different languages and platforms, including Smarty for PHP and the Django template language for Python.

In this tutorial you’ll explore Mustache, a relatively new and very simple template system that you can easily use to create HTML templates. You’ll look at various topics, including:

The advantages of using Mustache
How to install and use the Mustache processor
How Mustache tags, variables, and data objects work
Using sections to create conditions and loops
Including one Mustache template inside another
…and lots more!

Along the way, you’ll see plenty of code examples that show you how Mustache works. At the end of the tutorial, there’s a complete example that uses Mustache, along with jQuery, to create a simple Ajax-based product list page.

Ajax with jQuery: A Beginner’s Guide

6 March 2012 / 4 Comments

Many modern websites — and practically all web apps — use a technique called Ajax to provide a smooth, fast experience for the user. From apps like Gmail and Google Maps through to JavaScript frameworks like jQuery Mobile, Ajax is a popular way to fetch data from a server in the background and update the page dynamically.

Writing Ajax JavaScript code from the ground up can be fiddly. However, many JavaScript libraries, including jQuery, have excellent high-level support for Ajax, making it easy for you to build Ajax-driven websites and apps with minimal hassle.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the basics of making Ajax requests using jQuery. You’ll look at:

Exactly what Ajax is, how it works, and why it’s a good thing
How to make various types of Ajax requests using jQuery
Sending data to the server along with an Ajax request
Handling the Ajax response from the server, and capturing any data returned in the response
How to customize jQuery’s Ajax handling and change default settings, and
A few links to some more advanced Ajax-related info and tips.

To keep things simple, this tutorial concentrates on the JavaScript side of things, rather than delving into server-side coding. However, it’s pretty easy to write server-side scripts that work with Ajax. If you want to learn a server-side language, check out my PHP tutorials.

Ready to learn Ajax? Let’s get started!

jQuery Mobile Masterclass: Build a Simple, Attractive Twitter App for iPhone

31 October 2011 / 2 Comments

View Demo »

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(Open on your iPhone or iPad!)

jQuery Mobile is a great framework for building mobile web apps, and as the 1.0 release gets nearer it’s really starting to mature into a stable platform.

In my previous jQuery Mobile article, I gave a quick overview of jQuery Mobile’s headline features. In this tutorial you’ll delve deeper into jQuery Mobile. You’ll build a simple, nice-looking, easy-to-use iPhone Twitter app called “CloseFriends” that displays your closest Twitter friends’ latest tweets.

You’ll explore the following topics as you work through the tutorial:

How to build a web app using just HTML, CSS and JavaScript (no server-side code).
Making an app that can be installed and launched from the iPhone home screen.
Creating rich mobile interfaces using jQuery Mobile, including page transitions, list views, buttons and dialogs.
Using Scott Jehl’s excellent pagination plugin to create a sequence of draggable “latest tweet” pages, much like the native iOS Weather app.
Tweaking the pagination plugin to create a nicer swipe experience.
Working with the Twitter API using JavaScript.
How to use HTML5 local storage to store data persistently in the browser.
Creating your own jQuery Mobile swatches to theme your app.
Working with jQuery Mobile events.
Adapting to different device screen sizes and orientations.
…and lots more!

You can try out the finished app on your iOS device by tapping the View Demo button above, and download the complete code and image files by clicking the Download Code button.

To get the most from this tutorial, it helps to have some familiarity with JavaScript, jQuery and jQuery Mobile. A great way to get up to speed quickly with jQuery Mobile is to read my comprehensive eBook, Master Mobile Web Apps with jQuery Mobile.

Ready to build the CloseFriends app? Let’s go!

5 JavaScript Libraries You’ll Love

9 September 2011 / Leave a Comment

When JavaScript first appeared on the scene way back in 1995, people were using it for fairly simple tasks such as form validation. These days, JavaScript has matured into a powerful language that, when coupled with HTML5 APIs like native video playback, drag-and-drop and the canvas element, allows you to build detailed, interactive user interfaces for your websites.

However, as you start to use JavaScript to build larger and larger web apps with complex data structures and rich user interfaces, it becomes clear that the JavaScript language alone is not really up to the task. Interacting directly with the DOM starts to get messy and tedious; JavaScript doesn’t have much in the way of data manipulation functions; its object model can cause headaches; and its syntax can get overly fussy.

Fortunately, some great JavaScript libraries have sprung up in recent years to make your life as a web developer much easier. In this article I’m going to focus on five fairly recent libraries and technologies that are starting to gain traction:

Backbone, for adding structure to large JavaScript-based web apps.
Underscore, a utility-belt library that adds functional programming features to JavaScript.
Knockout, a great way to simplify your user interfaces.
Sugar, which extends the JavaScript language with a wealth of useful methods.
CoffeeScript, a language that compiles down to JavaScript and is really nice to work with.

With each library, you’ll get an overview of what it does and how it works, and I’ve also included some useful links for finding out more information.

Ready? Let’s go!

Cover Flow Remade with CSS and jQuery

6 May 2011 / 10 Comments

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(Requires Safari)

If you’ve used a Mac or iTunes at all, you’ve probably come across the Cover Flow view. This shows you a series of album covers, photos, or other documents in 3D, allowing you to flip between them by clicking them, dragging a scrollbar, or using the arrow keys.

It’s a nice effect, but it requires a fair bit of processing power to accomplish. I thought it’d be a fun challenge to recreate it as closely as possible in a browser using CSS and JavaScript. At the start I had no idea if this was even possible, but I’m pretty happy with the result!

How to Make a Slick Ajax Contact Form with jQuery and PHP

1 April 2011 / 299 Comments

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Contact forms can be useful way for visitors to contact the owner of a site. They’re easy to use, and since they don’t expose the site owner’s email address in the page, they cut down on spam too.

However, contact forms can also be cumbersome, especially as they’re usually on a separate page. The visitor has to visit the contact form page, fill in the details, view yet another response page, and then try to make their way back to the page they were originally reading.

Fortunately, Ajax gives us a way round this problem. By embedding the form in the page, and submitting the form data via Ajax, the user never has to leave the current page. It also provides a smoother experience for the user.

In this tutorial we’ll build a nice-looking, embedded Ajax contact form that the user can summon up by clicking a link in the page. Along the way, we’ll explore various topics, including:

HTML5 form fields
How to use fallback techniques to make the form function even if the browser has JavaScript turned off
Using CSS techniques to create attractive forms
Writing a secure form mailer using PHP
Animating page elements with jQuery, and, of course…
Using jQuery to make Ajax requests

Before you begin, check out the finished product by clicking the View Demo button above. This opens a new page with some dummy content, and a couple of “Send us an email” links. Click one of these links to display the form.

The demo doesn’t actually send an email anywhere, but the finished code in the download is fully functional. To get the code, click the Download Code button above.

Ready? Let’s get started!

How to Make an Elegant Sliding Image Gallery with jQuery

16 March 2011 / 66 Comments

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There are a lot of jQuery image galleries out there, some of which are quite lovely (Galleria springs to mind). However, I’ve yet to discover a really nice-looking, full-window sliding image gallery that is simple and elegant, and that also shows off the photos to good effect. So I decided to write one!

To see what it looks like, click the View Demo button above. It looks best on WebKit browsers such as Safari and Chrome, but other modern browsers should work well too.

For best results, make your browser full-screen. Google Chrome gives the most immersive experience here — view the demo, then choose View > Enter Full Screen.

The gallery is simple to use. Click the left or right edge of the window to move around the pictures (or use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard). Hover over the main image to view its caption.

I’ve also made the gallery work reasonably well on touch devices such as iPhones and iPads by adding touch and swipe events. (I haven’t yet tested these on the Android browser so your mileage may vary there. Watch this space!)

So how do you make this gallery? In this tutorial I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, from creating the markup and CSS through to writing the JavaScript code to make the gallery function. If you’d rather just grab the code and get going, click the Download Code button above.

If you like this gallery, please feel free to use the code in your own websites and projects. It’s Creative Commons licensed.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Drag-and-Drop with jQuery: Your Essential Guide

17 February 2011 / 128 Comments

Dragging and dropping can be a very intuitive way for users to interact with your site or web app. People often use drag-and-drop for things like:

Moving email messages into folders
Reordering lists of items
Moving objects in games around, such as cards and puzzle pieces

Drag-and-drop with JavaScript used to be very hard to do — in fact, getting a decent cross-browser version working was next to impossible. However, with modern browsers and a smattering of jQuery, drag-and-drop is now a piece of cake!

In this tutorial we’ll take a look at how to create drag-and-drop interfaces with jQuery, and we’ll finish with a complete drag-and-drop example: a simple number cards game for kids.

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