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 Stefan JudisJune 9, 2014

Creating Scrolling Parallax Effects with CSS

Introduction For quite a long time now websites with the so called "parallax" effect have been really popular. In case you have not heard of this effect, it basically includes different layers of images that are moving in different directions or with different speed. This leads to a...

By David WalshAugust 15, 2011

Send Text Messages with PHP

Kids these days, I tell ya. All they care about is the technology. The video games. The bottled water. Oh, and the texting, always the texting. Back in my day, all we had was...OK, I had all of these things too. But I still don't get...

Incredible Demos

By David WalshMarch 9, 2015

Web Notifications API

Every UI framework has the same set of widgets which have become almost essential to modern sites: modals, tooltips, button varieties, and notifications. One problem I find is each site having their own widget colors, styles, and more -- users don't get a consistent experience. Apparently the...

By David WalshMay 11, 2010

Animated AJAX Record Deletion Using Dojo

I'm a huge fan of WordPress' method of individual article deletion. You click the delete link, the menu item animates red, and the item disappears. Here's how to achieve that functionality with Dojo JavaScript. The PHP - Content & Header The following snippet goes at the...