With Microsoft Office Word it is possible to see multiple pages at the same time and while adding new content to the first page, added content will push the content after that forward. Would you say that there exists a preferable solution for achieving similar functionality for a webpage by using HTML, CSS and JavaScript? There might be any amount of pages and not all of them could be shown at the same time.
There is a multi-column layout module in CSS3, but how about the editing part (and the browser support)?
It works with the CSS multicolumns just like you said. I did a wiki-like website that uses multicolumn layout and contenteditable to edit the text. I've noticed that Chrome sometimes has issues handling it (the tab crashes) but Firefox handles it fine. It will probably be fixed.
Another interesting solution is (still as a working-draft) CSS regions and "flow-into" rule.
Related
I'm working on a search engine. And I'm having display issues, some features, style like fonts are added to my page. When I look at the elements tab I see things that do not exist in my style tag on my file.
I have another version of this file that works perfectly without any display issues. the only difference between the two files is that each file loads data from a different database. Also the page that i'm having trouble with does not display things like the description that you can see in the second page. Here are screen shots of both:
This is the page with the problems
and this is the page that works fine
You have Modernizr in your website, which adds the classes to the HTML tag. This should however not affect your styles (if you are not specifically targeting it). If your layout actuallay does differ, you probably have different style declarations which are affected by those classes.
Modernizr is a feature detection JavaScript library. It allows to distinct between browsers, which support a feature and such that do not.
See https://modernizr.com/docs
When I was looking for a live-preview inline Markdown editor for a project - live editing within an HTML page - I came across this one. The feature that interested me the most was scrollspy: when you scroll the input <textarea>, the preview <textarea> scrolls with it. This is very convenient, as the project in question relies on comfortable writing.
The problem I'm having is that such scrollspy uses jQuery, which I'm not comfortable with. One of my main points is to make the project as quick to load and responsive as possible, and jQuery minified increases the local machine loading time by ~100 ms - which, I imagine, translates into even more loading time online. I already have ~300 ms local loading time and if I have to increase it, I'd prefer to do so only when necessary.
Still, I find the text scrollspy feature very attractive and am looking for a way to implement it without relying on jQuery. I'm looking for the simplest and quickest, performance-wise, way to achieve that, using the tools already at my disposal.
I'm using AngularJS, Commonmark parser for Markdown, angular-commonmark.js (which allows me to parse any tag's input as Commonmark) and UI Bootstrap (a Twitter Bootstrap clone built solely with Angular).
EDIT: it turned out, during experimentation, that placing Angular-Commonmark attribute onto <textarea> outputs raw HTML to the <textarea> rather than Marked-down text (i.e., <h1>Text</h1> rather than a bold and big "Text"). I was using <div> to test the output and it worked just fine. Would that disallow me to use scrollspy (since <div>s are unscrollable)?
I am working on a simple Cordova app with about 4 page types and I am trying to think through which is the better way to handle the inner HTML templates.
Hidden HTML hard coded into the HTML files that is hidden and populated/revealed by my JS.
Using a JS template system and appending and removing from the DOM.
I feel that appending all that to the DOM for a page is inefficient when I could just update the sections that change. But perhaps an append is lightweight enough where I shouldn't worry about it.
There are a number of ways you can do it. In terms of load on the browser. That is hard to say. From your question it is hard to know what is in these pages, what are you displaying, is it live data, static html etc.
When you first plot out an app, if you are from the old class of building multiple page websites, it can be a little concerning as to how well your app/page will run with all those pages crammed in to one, and all that data plus code.
The answer is, amazingly well. If done properly in modern browsers, and for example Ipads the app will run to near native performance.
The options you have are
Map all the pages into one HTML document. Hide each page content using css display:none, flip them into view using css animation, fading or just display:block.
Use a javascript routing library to map urls to blocks of code that deal with each page, this makes mapping out your app much easier, and means that buttons can just link to your pages, like a real website. see http://projects.jga.me/routie/
Building all the page templates into one page can make it hard to code, as the page becomes enormous, consider breaking the inner content of each page into separate files, you can then give each page holder a url and use a small xhr request to load the page on-the fly, once loaded you can cache it into memory or even local-storage, depending on whether you remove it when it is closed or keep it hidden.
In my experience you can put an enormous number or nodes into one page and have very little speed drop, bear in mind if you use something like jquery and do a lot of $(".page > .page1 > .items li") your going to have a slow app.
Tips
Use element ID's everywhere document.getElementById(..) is 100's of times faster in a loop that $(...)
cache elements when you find them, if you need them later store them in a memory cache.
keep for loop inner code to a minimum.
use a decent click touch libary like http://hammerjs.github.io/ and delegate all the events of the body tag or at least on each page.
If you need to touch the server, load data, think dom first, device second server later. A good app is a responsive app, that responds to the user instantly.
I know this has been posted a while ago, but for the sake of the users I am going to add my answer.
I completely agree with MartinWebb but my answer will shed some light on the results of his options. I am currently working on a similar project. Please note that this answer pertains to cordova (previously called phonegap) specifically. My app has about 5 pages with +-20 different components (input's, div's, h1's, p's, etc.). This is what i tried and the result of each:
jQuery was my first option, mainly because it is easy to use and reduces the amount of code required to accomplish a said goal. Result: First time I tried this approach I though I would spice it up with animations and transformations. The result of this was a very unresponsive app. I removed the animation and transformation, however due to the nature of my application I required multiple dynamically added components and jQuery just wasn't up for the task.
Css display:none and visible:hidden was my next option. I used javascript's dom to display certain div's. Result: This works if your not planning on switching many div shortly after one another eg. a simple menu. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't going to work. Also this does not eliminate my need for the dom. Remember document.getElementById('menu').style.display = "none"; is still part of the dom. This as a solution, for me, is poor. There is a reason that var menu= document.createElement('div'); is part of the language. Which brings me to my last option.
Building a page 90% on javascript's dom was my last option. Logically I could not see how 600 lines of code cold trump one .innerHTML or .style.display = "block"; but it did. Result: It was by far the most responsive of all the solutions.
I'm not saying that all webpages should be coded with dom appending, but as I stated previously, for a cordova app of a few pages (<6), with a few components a javascript dom appending approach would be best. It takes longer to code, but you will be rewarded with control and efficiency. I would suggest coding the backbone of your app in html and populating and controlling with javascript's dom.
Best of luck.
The first option, <div>s with display:none; would be more efficient by a small margin, but you can get the best of both worlds by compiling your JavaScript and templates together into a single file using something like browserify or require.js.
I have made a basic tabbar view app in xcode but I need it to be a webapp as I will be viewing the data from a server so do not need/ want it on the app store.
I've looked at some other questions with this kind of topic and nothing is relevant. Also I've done plenty of googling and looking into other code plus using things like cubiq.org's slide-in menu.
I really want that tabbar look. I've tried to do this in HTML with images as buttons and using frames but (I think) because I'm using the JS code to stop the UIview from moving (to look more native) it seems that the buttons open the link in a new page, or switch to Safari, rather then open them in the same frame as they would in a regular browser.
Alternatively, does anyone know of a way I can implement a taskbar in a webapp?
Regards,
Eric.
Have you seen JQuery Mobile !?
It's awesome... but still in Beta.
They have precisely the toolbar you're looking for: JQuery Mobile Navbar
Without code, it's hard to pinpoint your problem exactly, but you should not be doing:
Text of Button
Because the above code will actually load a different page. Rather, you want:
<div class="some_button_type" onclick="doSomeAction()"><!-- ... --></div>
And that "doSomeAction()" function should use DOM manipulation to transform the current page to look like whatever you want it to look like (rather than navigating to some separate page).
P.S. I'm assuming you have some CSS styling based on class type, and you might want content in the DIV (for example, for the text of the button). I've also omitted some attributes (e.g. "role") that you want.
So, I've written a little javascript widget. All a user has to do is paste a script tag into the page, and right below it I insert a div with all of the content the user has requested.
Many sites do similar things, such as Twitter, Delicious and even StackOverflow.
What I'm curious about is how to test this widget to make sure that it will work properly on everyone's webpage. I'm not using an iframe, so I really want to make sure that this code will work when inserted most places. I know it looks the same in all browsers.
Suggestions? Or should I just build one hundred web pages and insert my script tag and see if it works? I would hope there is an easier way than that.
Once you have confirmed that your javascript works cross-browser in a controlled environment, here are some things that might cause problems when used on an actual website:
CSS
You're using a CSS class that is already being used (for a different purpose) by the target website
You're using positioning that might interfere with the site's CSS
The elements you are using are being styled by the website's CSS (you might want to use some sort of "reset" CSS that applies only to your widget)
HTML
You're creating elements with the same id attribute as an element that already exists on the website
You're specifying a name attribute that is already being used (while name can be used for multiple elements, you may not be expecting that)
Javascript
What is the expected behaviour without Javascript enabled? If your script creates everything, is it acceptable for nothing to be present without JS?
At very basic you should make sure your widget works for following test-cases. I am sure then it will work on all web-pages -
http/https: There should not be any warning for HTTPS pages for unencrypted content.
<script> / <no-script>: What if JavaScript is disabled? Is your widget still visible?
What happens when third-party cookies are disabled? Does your widget still work?
Layout-box restrictions: When parent div element's size is less than your widget. Does your widget overflow the given size and destroys owners page?
By keeping all your Javascripts under a namespace (global object) with a very unique name, you should be pretty much OK. Also, you can simply use an anonymous function if you just want to print out something.
Similar question: How to avoid name clashes in JavaScript widgets