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 WalshMay 18, 2011

CSS Gradients

With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements. CSS gradients are another step in that direction. Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

By David WalshJuly 25, 2012

CSS 3D Folding Animation

Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

Incredible Demos

By David WalshApril 3, 2012

Multiple Backgrounds with CSS

Anyone that's been in the web development industry for 5+ years knows that there are certain features that we should have had several years ago. One of those features is the HTML5 placeholder; we used JavaScript shims for a decade before placeholder came...

By David WalshOctober 9, 2008

Fading Links Using jQuery: dwFadingLinks

UPDATE: The jQuery website was down today which caused some issues with my example. I've made everything local and now the example works. Earlier this week, I posted a MooTools script that faded links to and from a color during the mouseover and mouseout events.