Jon Raasch's Blog

Jon Raasch's Blog » webdev http://jonraasch.com/blog Web development and design blog from Portland based developer Jon Raasch Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:35:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 TranslateThis – A Javascript Translation Widget for Noobs and Nerds Alike http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:16:38 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=411 TranslateThis is a new Javascript widget that provides 52 languages of translation by leveraging the Google Language API. Installing TranslateThis couldn't be easier—simply copy and paste the widget code anywhere on your website, you don't have to upload any files or change any settings. Besides being easy to use, TranslateThis also provides many attractive features for developers. First off, requests to the Language API run in Javascript, so the translation is pretty fast. Additionally, the script is lightweight, weighing in at just over 11kb with another 7kb of imagery. And since it doesn't depend on any Javascript library, TranslateThis can be implemented on any website without additional overhead. Finally, TranslateThis has been tested in all modern browsers and its user interface is designed to be straightforward and seamless. Get your own TranslateThis Widget Read the TranslateThis Documentation

What can you customize in TranslateThis?

]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/javascript-translation-widget/feed 0 10 Advanced jQuery Performance Tuning Tips from Paul Irish http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:55:12 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=382

There were a lot of good speakers at today’s jQuery Summit, but Paul Irish‘s talk on jQuery Anti-Patterns for Performance & Compression was my stand-out favorite. Covering a number of advanced jQuery performance optimization techniques, this speech put my knowledge of jQuery optimization to shame. Before Paul’s talk my understanding of jQuery performance tuning was [...]]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-advanced-jquery-performance-tuning-tips-from-paul-irish/feed 11 Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin for WordPress (YAFPP) http://jonraasch.com/blog/yet-another-featured-posts-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/yet-another-featured-posts-plugin#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:27:14 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=355

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin for WordPress (YAFPP)

Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin provides an easy-to-use interface for featuring specific posts in a WordPress blog. After installing the plugin, you can feature and unfeature posts by clicking on each post’s ‘featured star’ in the WordPress edit posts page. Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin has a variety configuration options, allowing you to control a [...]]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/yet-another-featured-posts-plugin/feed 49 10 Things Every Good Web Developer Should Know (A Checklist) http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2 http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:40:54 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=299 (more…)]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/10-things-every-web-developer-should-know-2/feed 10 QuickFlip 2: The jQuery Flipping Plugin Made Faster and Simpler http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:15:45 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=114 Download QuickFlip 2 for jQuery Read the QuickFlip documentation QuickFlip works by using an animation shortcut that is barely noticeable when flipped quickly (hence the name). This shortcut improves performance while allowing the flip effect to work smoothly with any piece of markup regardless of images, backgrounds or CSS. It provides an attractive alternative to other slower and more resource heavy Flash and jQuery flip animations. However if you want a smoother option with a depth effect try jQuery Flip!, although this only works with background colors (not images) and hides the panel content before flipping.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/quickflip-2-jquery-plugin/feed 70 Scrolling Parallax: A jQuery Plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/scrolling-parallax-jquery-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/scrolling-parallax-jquery-plugin#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:55:25 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/?p=59 parallax effect to the scrollbars and mouse wheel. This allows a background image or anything else to scroll at a different pace than the web page when a user scrolls around. The parallax effect that results is an easy way to create an illusion of depth on your website. Basic use of the Scrolling Parallax plugin is extremely easy. Simply pass the path to an image, and the plugin takes the image and stretches it to the window width and 150% of the height. The extra 50% of the height is scrolled down along with the document, smoothly reaching the end at the same time as the page. The Scrolling Parallax plugin is also very versatile. There are a wide variety of options including scrolling faster, slower, looping and reversing the animation and tiling the background to name a few. Addtionally you can attach the parallax to any piece of markup, as well as pass an image path as described above.]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/scrolling-parallax-jquery-plugin/feed 14 Contact-Pop: Contact Form Overlays with a Simple jQuery Plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/contact-pop-jquery-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/contact-pop-jquery-plugin#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 15:52:46 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/contact-pop-jquery-plugin http://jonraasch.com/blog/contact-pop-jquery-plugin/feed 49 Flipbook Movies with jQuery http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-flipbook-movies http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-flipbook-movies#comments Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:54:01 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-flipbook-movies real flipbook. The jQuery Flipbook Plugin is built around my jQuery slideshow tutorial. It's very flexible, providing great options for both new and seasoned developers alike. You can easily make anything from a short film to an image slideshow to a text viewer. ]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-flipbook-movies/feed 4 jQuery Video Game Remake: T&C Surf http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-video-game-remake-tc-surf-designs http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-video-game-remake-tc-surf-designs#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:21:12 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-video-game-remake-tc-surf-designs Javascript Mario Kart, I've been wanting to develop a classic video game with jQuery. T&C seemed like a good fit because its motion and overall simplicity are ideal for jQuery's animation library (and it's really fun). I'm fairly pleased with the performance, which is vastly improved through the use of cell-based collision detection. Instead of having to check for collision every pixel, it can be checked every 32, with huge processing savings. Additionally, the use of CSS sprites greatly reduces the number of HTTP requests and the need to use the src attribute of any objects. The main obstacle in development was cross-browser keyboard support. Thankfully jQuery's keyboard event objects, along with a little Javascript hacking makes it work in all browsers. ]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/jquery-video-game-remake-tc-surf-designs/feed 21 A Simple jQuery Slideshow http://jonraasch.com/blog/a-simple-jquery-slideshow http://jonraasch.com/blog/a-simple-jquery-slideshow#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:14:00 +0000 Jon Raasch http://jonraasch.com/blog/a-simple-jquery-slideshow <img src="img/img1.jpg" alt="" class="active" /> <img src="img/img2.jpg" alt="" /> <img src="img/img3.jpg" alt="" /> </div> Now let's use CSS to position the images on top of each other and bring the active image to the images on top of each other and bring the active image to the top level with z-index:]]> http://jonraasch.com/blog/a-simple-jquery-slideshow/feed 227