Develop Reference

show overlay objects only around the mouse not matter where in the screen

I'm working with svg files and some processing.js code to create a homepage.
It has some animation and static elements but the idea is to have everything the same but with different colours - Like an alternative homepage. I want this alternative to "peek" through as the mouse moves around. Only a small area around the mouse.
Does anyone have any idea how to do that?
since it isn't an image file it's a bit tricky.
I tried doing it by using the an image and the "drawing" element of processing.js thinking it could paint the alternative homepage, however it repeats the image everywhere the mouse go and what i want is for everything to remain in the same position only show the different colours in that spot.

You might consider superimposing two versions of your site, the "top" one completely covering the "bottom" one (make sure all backgrounds are opaque). Then you could try applying an SVG mask to the top page, making it transparent at a specific area and causing the bottom page to shine through. You could modify the mask as the mouse moves.
The other way round - i.e. clipping the top layer - is also thinkable.
I see the risk that this approach is slow and not consistent across browsers - you'd have to give it a try. Speed may differ depending on whether you clip/mask the top or the bottom layer.
W3C SVG Clipping, Masking and Compositing specs
MDN page on clipping and masking
MDN page on applying SVG effects to HTML content
If one version of the page can be converted to other by swapping out colors, SVG filters might be an option as well.

Fixed background position on flexible layout

In short, I want a fixed background position relative to an element on a flexible layout.
http://devwp.steveforest.com/
So the background remains well positioned to the dark gray sidebar at the left if you change the screen size. The correct position is as it is right now if you put the browser to ~1920px wide.
The only way I found so far is to use a lot of "#media screen and (min-width:Xpx)" in CSS but that's not pretty (and using a lot of lines in my CSS) and perfectly fluid.
Is there a better way to achieve that? I don't mind using javascript/jQuery.

I would personally cut the background image in two pieces. Place the right piece on your right side and position it to the left and place the left side to the left and position it to the right.

Canvas - Sticking png images together without taking into account transparent pixels

I have big horizontal strip image in photoshop which is made of lots of smaller elements. The background is transparent and the strip goes from smaller elements (left) to bigger elements (right). My goal is to make this strip interactive to mouse events.
Each element is some kind of polygonal image which is trimmed left and right and then exported as a png. It is then imported into a canvas.
The problem is that I can put them side by side but since they are not rectangles I need a way to calculate the offset made up by the transparent pixels on each side of each element to make them stick together correctly... I am using KineticJs to get a precise hitarea for each element... So maybe there is a way to do it automatically with kineticjs,or there is some kind of operation I could do using each image data?
My problem illustrated:
Any ideas?
Also I am doing this simply because I would prefer precise mouseOver bounding box on each item (rather than a simple rectangle) and would rather avoid the solution to calculate each offset manually... But maybe that's not worth it?!

Ok, so you have yourself a custom shape you want to use, here is a tutorial for that: http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/kineticjs/html5-canvas-kineticjs-shape-tutorial/ , the simplest thing you can do, and even that seems fairly long, is to calculate the bounding lines for that shape. (Two somewhat vertical lines, and two somewhat horizontal lines). Then you test if the right vertical line of shape one crosses with the left vertical line of shape two, if they do, then set the coordinates of the images to be the same coordinate.
http://www.mathopenref.com/coordintersection.html
line1 = ax + b ..... line2 = cx+d //see possible tests
if(...intersection test...){ // or just test if some coordinate is left of some other coordinate
shape2.setX(shape1.getX()+shape1.getWidth()); //account for image width, so they don't overlap
shape2.setY(shape1.getY()) // no need to account for height
}
UPDATE: This is a very rough solution to the workings of the problem. The next step would be to do more fine tuning dependent on each image.
http://jsfiddle.net/9jkr7/15/

If you want precise areas, use an image map. With some clever finagling and a blank image gif you should be able to have the background you want whenever you hover over any particular area of the image map (might require javascript).
The other option I can think of would be to use SVG itself or one of the many libraries in existance to build interactive vector graphics into your page.

You could also write a function that calculates the left most, top most, right most, and bottom most pixel by looking at all of the pixels in the image data. Here's a tutorial on that:
http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/advanced/html5-canvas-get-image-data-tutorial/

How to simulate magnifying glass on Web-page image (Javascript)?

Google has the coolest effects - once it was a Pac-man game, today is apparently the 160th anniversary of the first World Fair, and Google's logo has an image of it. They also turn the mouse into a magnifying glass that can sweep over the picture (the gold ring).
I'm wondering how they do that. It's obviously Javascript, and I looked at the page source, but it's not especially readable (no surprise).

Looking at their source code, it seems they are using rather basic techniques to achieve this.
Ignoring all the embedded nifty animated gif's, there are basically two images - large, and small of the entire scene. The larger image is repeated thrice in the document. Look at the annotated image below to get a better idea of how the zoom works.
The portion inside the magnifying circle is split up in three div's - top, mid, and bottom. The overflow for each div should be hidden. Each div is relatively positioned inside the zoom circle. On mouse move, change the absolute position of the zoom circle to the mouse coordinates. Their example also uses CSS3 for the scaling and adding some animation delays.
Here's a sorta minimal reconstructed example.
Another example where we don't hide the div overflow to reveal the entire thing as a square.

Well, firstly, for anyone who wants to use such an effect, there are loads of jQuery plugins. Here are just a few:
Power Zoomer
Featured Image
Zoomer
Cloud Zoom
Secondly, it's quite easy to achieve. Just load the full-size image, but give it a width smaller than it's actual width, so it is scaled by CSS. Then, use JavaScript+CSS to create a Div (the magnifying glass) with the same image as background, but change the background-position property to the corresponding scaled x,y coordinate that the user's mouse is currently on.
There are other ways of doing it I suppose, and Google might be doing it differently, but this is the most obvious way for me that comes to mind.

Visit http://codeblab.com/glass/ for an real life example and in depth explanation of this technique. Flash and CSS v3 have ample functionality to construct a round magnifying glass.
However, simulate-a-circle-with-overlapping-rectangles works on (many) more platforms.
(DISCLOSURE: codeblab.com is my personal hobby blog with some weak links to my work in The Netherlands.)

There is a full example of magnifying any sort of HTML, including HTML5 at http://www.aplweb.co.uk/blog/js/magnifying-glass/. Works cross-browser too - although rounded corners are a bit iffy on most browsers - so you are going to have to use a box rather than circle.
Here is how to works:
Duplicate the content you want to zoom
Place the duplicated content into another element and set the visible width/height and overflow hidden
Use JavaScript to move the duplicated content so that it moves by the zoom amount * mouse movement. Also move the visible div by the mouse movement.
That is pretty much it too it. There are lots of little things to look out for though to make it work on all browsers.

I don't know how Google does it, since the logo is no longer showing in my area; but this effect can be achieved by clipping the enlarged animated GIF over the regular image using canvas. Alternatively, it is also possible to create create a circular clipping using CSS border-radius (commonly used to implement rounded corners).
EDIT: I've hacked this up together to show the basic technique that you need if you used CSS border-radius: http://jsfiddle.net/yjBuS/

Looks like they're using two images, one for the logo and one for the zoom (the zoomed one is actually sliced, to run the animations separately...?) They probably detect if the mouse is over the normal logo, then show the yellow circle and attach it to the mouse position. Then showing the other image, shifting it opposite of the mouse. Or something similar.

Making overlay <div> that stays in position after zoom-resize using HTML-CSS only

I my working on the site that will have image gallery. Designer idea was to make buttons that switch photos be above the photos a bit.
Like this
Example http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/1253/showq.png
Currently I've made a javascript solution to this - it gets position of photo and applies absolute positioning to the button divs. There are some drawbacks - it works unstable in Opera and IE. Also I had to make some dirty haxx to make it stay in position after zooming. I wonder if there is a better way to do this, preferably without javascript.

you mean like here ? (dutch website, see photo browser in the center column at the top)
browser zooming works fine in browsers like firefox and safari because they zoom all the content and recorrect pixel-values. To make zooming work in ie(6) you'd need to style all in em's. But browser zooming is crappy for pixel data anyways…
Absolute positioning of the buttons (left 0 and right 0) is not a problem as long as the container element is positioned relative.

If I understand you correctly, you're trying to center those arrow buttons vertically in relation to the image. This is pretty easily accomplished with just CSS (no javascript required). Here's an example.
The basic idea is that you're using a couple of divs plus some absolute/relative positioning. There's an outer div that drops the top of the whole thing to the center of the parent element and then an inner div that pulls up your content so that the content is centered and not the top of the element.

A popular technique is to split the whole image into two huge (mostly transparent) links. The left half of the photo would take you to the previous image, the right to the next.
Of course you position you images of buttons appropriately and they would move around but I assume the problem you're finding is you have to keep moving your mouse to go through lots of images as the buttons move.... Well with this idea, you only need keep your mouse near the middle, and it should remain over the photo (and therefore a direction).
Example: http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/dreamhomespshop/1008251500
Mouse-over the image and you'll see it's active the complete way across. Not quite the same as your implementation, I'm sure, but the concept applies.