Markup Tutorials

  • Fx.Rotate: Animated Element Rotation with MooTools

    I was recently perusing the MooTools Forge and I saw a neat little plugin that allows for static element rotation: Fx.Rotate. Fx.Rotate is an extension of MooTools' native Fx class and rotates the element via CSS within each A-grade browser it supports. Let's examine how you can easily incorporate animated element rotation within your website.

  • Creating Dojo Widgets Programmatically or Declaratively

    The Dojo Toolkit has an awesome UI framework called Dijit.  Dijit is an expansive set of Dojo widget that allow you to create highly themeable, functional forms, layouts, and much more.  One of the highlights of Dijit, from a developer's perspective, is that you may create widgets in two ways:  declaratively and programmatically.  This blog posts aims to show you an example of each widget creation method and discuss the advantages of each.

  • Organized Selector Chaos with dojo.behavior

    One of the most underrated parts of writing good JavaScript code is writing *maintainable* code:  readable, modular, and clean.  Just because you use a JavaScript framework doesn't mean your code is maintainable.  Quick the contrary could be true — some frameworks make JavaScript uglier.

  • Duplicate the jQuery Homepage Tooltips

    The jQuery homepage has a pretty suave tooltip-like effect as seen below:

  • Create a Twitter AJAX Button with MooTools, jQuery, or Dojo

    There's nothing like a subtle, slick website widget that effectively uses CSS and JavaScript to enhance the user experience.  Of course widgets like that take many hours to perfect, but it doesn't take long for that effort to be rewarded with above-average user retention and buzz.  One of the widgets I love is Twitter's "Follow" button.  Let me show you how you can implement this functionality with three popular JavaScript toolkits:  MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo.

  • Create a Dynamic Flickr Image Search with the Dojo Toolkit

    The Dojo Toolkit is a treasure chest of great JavaScript classes.  You can find basic JavaScript functionality classes for AJAX, node manipulation, animations, and the like within Dojo.  You can find elegant, functional UI widgets like DropDown Menus, tabbed interfaces, and form element replacements within Dijit.  In DojoX you can find charting libraries, special data stores, vector graphic helpers, and much more.

  • Dijit’s TabContainer Layout: Easy Tabbed Content

    One of Dojo's major advantages over other JavaScript toolkits is its Dijit library.  Dijit is a UI framework comprised of JavaScript widget classes, CSS files, and HTML templates.  One very useful layout class is the TabContainer.  TabContainer allows you to quickly create a tabbed content layout with minimal effort.  Keep reading to see what you can create in just 10 minutes!

  • Create a Context Menu with Dojo and Dijit

    Context menus, used in the right type of web application, can be invaluable.  They provide shortcut methods to different functionality within the application and, with just a right click, they are readily available.  Dojo's Dijit frameworks provides an easy way to create stylish, flexible context menus in just minutes.

  • Create a Simple Dojo Accordion

    Let's be honest:  even though we all giggle about how cheap of a thrill JavaScript accordions have become on the web, they remain an effective, useful widget.  Lots of content, small amount of space.  Dojo's Dijit library provides an incredibly simply method by which you can add accordions to your website.  Let's take a look at how we can implement a Dojo accordion!

  • Build HTML Tables From MySQL Tables with PHP

    I was recently completing a project which required that I build a series of HTML tables which would represent all of the tables within a MySQL database.  I didn't have anything created but after a few minutes I had exactly what I needed. Hopefully this helps you out!