MooTools ASCII Art

By David Walsh on January 3, 2011

I didn't realize that I truly was a nerd until I could admit to myself that ASCII art was better than the pieces Picasso, Monet, or Van Gogh could create. ASCII art is unmatched in its beauty, simplicity, and ... OK, well, I'm being ridiculous; ASCII art is good for a few giggles but that seems to be it. A new MooTools class has hit the Forge: MooAsciiArt. Let's have some fun by turning images and DOM nodes into glorious, character-driven ASCII art.

View Demo

Sample HTML

To illustrate how awesome this MooTools resource is, let's set up both an H2 tag and IMG tag to convert to beautiful ASCII art:

<h2>David Walsh Blog</h2>
<img src="/wp-content/themes/2k11/images/homeLogo.png" id="logoImage" alt="David Walsh Blog" />

These basic elements will be converted to glorious ASCII art! The anticipation should be viagra to your geeky mind!

The MooTools JavaScript

There are two ways to use MooAsciiArt: images or basic DOM nodes. Using MooAsciiArt on images is simple; simply use the toAsciiArt method to convert your image to ASCII art:

document.id("logoImage").toAsciiArt(true);

You may also use MooAsciiArt's convertTags method to convert DOM nodes to ASCII art:

MooAsciiArt.fontPath = "MooAsciiArt/Demo/fonts/"
MooAsciiArt.convertTags({ h2:"Doom" });

The string that accompanies the tag name is the "flf" font file which represents the character representation for every letter. The following is a snippet of the "Doom.flf" file:

       @@
 ______@
|___  /@
  $/ / @
  / /  @
./ /___@
\_____/@
       @
       @@
 ___ @
|  _|@
| |  @
| |  @
| |  @
| |_ @
|___|@
     @@
__     @
\ \    @
 \ \   @
  \ \  @
   \ \ @
    \_\@
       @
       @@
 ___ @
|_  |@
  | |@
  | |@
  | |@
 _| |@
|___|@
     @@
 /\ @
|/\|@
  $ @
  $ @
  $ @
  $ @
    @
    @@
        @
        @
        @
        @
        @
    $   @
 ______ @
|______|@@
 _ @
( )@
 \|@
 $ @
 $ @
 $ @
   @
   @@
       @
       @
  __ _ @
 / _` |@
| (_| |@
 \__,_|@
       @
       @@
 _     @
| |    @
| |__  @
| '_ \ @
| |_) |@
|_.__/ @
       @
       @@

The FLF file allows you to create your own font formats, so creating your own fonts can be super easy.

View Demo

You could be the next great artist. The next ~~Picasa~~ Webcasso. In all seriousness, ASCII art is pretty fucking cool. It's our way to rebel against the hippie artists that don't understand that our code is art. If you like ASCII art like I do, you'll love this awesome MooTools class.

Recent Features

By David WalshMarch 11, 2013

An Interview with Eric Meyer

Your early CSS books were instrumental in pushing my love for front end technologies. What was it about CSS that you fell in love with and drove you to write about it? At first blush, it was the simplicity of it as compared to the table-and-spacer...

By David WalshApril 15, 2015

fetch API

One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for. We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better. Our effort to...

Incredible Demos

By David WalshJanuary 9, 2009

Submit Button Enabling

"Enabling" you ask? Yes. We all know how to disable the submit upon form submission and the reasons for doing so, but what about re-enabling the submit button after an allotted amount of time. After all, what if the user presses the "stop"...

By David WalshMarch 27, 2008

Using MooTools For Opacity

Although it's possible to achieve opacity using CSS, the hacks involved aren't pretty. If you're using the MooTools JavaScript library, opacity is as easy as using an element's "set" method. The following MooTools snippet takes every image with the "opacity" class and sets...