Develop Reference

Infinitely tiling the contents of a draggable DIV without duplicating

I am working on a map that is divided into 800x800 150 pixel tiles. These tiles are contained within a jQuery draggable wrapper, which moves the contents of the tiles around inside the parent to achieve a Google Maps style dragging effect. The top left corner is 0,0 and the bottom right is 799x799. I am looking to replicate Google's tiling effect where the user can drag to the left or top of the start point or the right or bottom of the end point and see the tiled (repeated) contents of the DIV in a seamless manner. Using Clone is not an option as it creates duplicates of an already very large (albeit not yet optimised) source which seriously hampered the load times of the page when dragging was performed.
I could best summarise this by saying I need the map itself to have the visual effect and user experience of looping endlessly, but actually only using one instance of the map source. The resulting effect would not be too dissimilar to the repeating background of an image on a page, except with the contents of the map DIV and not an image. When the user drags the map left of anything on the 0 X Axis, it should display X 799, X 798, etc.
I have not had any luck searching for a solution. Is such an effect possible? If so, what would I need to use to achieve it? I am content with simple answers to point me in the right direction; I do not expect somebody to produce a working example that I can cut and paste. Not afraid to research and experiment myself, my problem is I really don't know where to start. I have plenty of experience with Javascript and jQuery but I've never had to do anything quite like this.

How did they do those effects in http://artofflightmovie.com/?

I have been trying to understand how they did those effects in http://artofflightmovie.com/ with no success so far. I am not even sure what to google for for help. Could any one ellaborate on it and perhaps put links to plugins\tutorials\other websites doing the same thing?
There is already a similar question, but it didn't help me a bit ^^
Custom scroll bar behavior in Javascript?

All of the answers here so far are spot on and cover various pieces of the execution. Joseph's post about how we 'contained' and 'maneuvered' the site are dead-on, and those mentioning jQuery accurately depict our heavy reliance on it :)
With that said, the other concept of moving along a non-linear path was probably the most difficult part. We literally used an Illustrator file that was setup like a piece of graph paper and drew a bezier path that reflected the movement we wanted from the scrollbar. Then we 'downsampled' the path by converting the curved lines into a bunch of straight lines that represented the curve (similar to downsampling audio waveforms) to keep performance/speed high. We took those coordinates, gave them to our designer, and he created a gigantic design file and literally designed each content section at the designated 'stop' points. Next we mapped each coordinate along the path to a percentage value of the scroll position. We stored these values in a JavaScript array. Lastly we wrote some JS functions that we pipe the scroll position through to determine how to offset the positioning of the site 'container'. (It basically 'tweens' between each coordinate allowing us very fine/precise values at any given scroll percentage) The scroll functionality is handled by a tall div that basically sets our document height to force a scrollbar, and we just read it's position during a Scroll Event and slide the container around to where it should be using the above mentioned functions.
The parallax effect is achieved by applying a percentage of the position offset (what we use to move the container around) and applying it to the sub-containers of the various content sections. This makes the subcontainers move slower or faster than the background, but on the same motion path.
Lastly, the little snowboarders and helicopters (which have CSS3 rotations in addition to x,y movement in some browsers!) are positioned by using a simliar array of 'start' and 'end' positions and tweening between them based on the scroll percentage.
I'll leave it at that to keep this from turning into a book, but I'd be happy to elaborate on specifics if you're interested.
Full disclosure: I was lead developer on the site. I'm not posting to 'toot my own horn' or anything like that, just to be helpful and provide assistance to a fellow tinkerer. I come here a lot to dig through and get insight from others. (many, many thanks to those who have helped us!) Also, shameless plug, but the film is breath-taking... go rent it if you haven't yet, you won't be sorry. :)

That's a pretty cool website ;)
Basically using some javascript you can detect how far a person has scrolled. Considering the amount of scrolling you can move the contents of your webpage around if their position is absolute.
There are a couple of jQuery plugins that allow you to do simular stuff although I'm not sure you can "scroll through" a sequence of coordinates.
Here are a couple of jQuery plugins that helps you get simular effects:
http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js/
http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrollorama/
http://demos.flesler.com/jquery/scrollTo
http://webdev.stephband.info/parallax.html
I just picked a couple I'm familiar with but there are many plugins that are alike.
edit:
Decided to add some more simular websites for your pleasure.
http://www.activatedrinks.com
http://www.beetle.de
http://www.nikebetterworld.com

the whole page is an "overlay" - a full width and height wrapper <div>. sort of how modal windows do their "full page shadow" effect and have a small div float inside. the whole page content is in that wrapper. the scroll path is a script. the script captures the body scroll and moves the contents of the div accordingly to the positions provided by the script. with a body long enough to be scrollable (which cannot be seen since the wrapper covers the whole page), it's as if you are scrolling sideways, upwards etc.
an analogy is a modal window. the wrapper is the full-page shade. the modal window is the content. and notice how modal windows stick to the middle? that's using a script to calculate it's position to stay in the middle by moving the modal window down, relative to the page's top. but in that website's case, they move in different directions.

It doesn't seem too complicated.
Using the .scroll(function() {}) in jQuery you listen for a scroll event. When triggered you set the position style (left, top) of the content div to give the appearance of moving sideways instead of down.
I guess you'll need overflow:none property on the div to prevent users from scrolling over the area you don't want them to see.
Sounds like a lot of effort for a clunky user interface in my opinion.

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.

Repeating a section of an image in CSS

I want take a section of a picture, for example the middle of a picure, and repeat only that section in the background of a div. Is this even remotely possible? I suppose I could do this in javascript, but that would be messy.
In theory the answer to my question should be able to take a single pixel from a picture and repeat it in a line, or as a solid background.
Does anyone have any idea how I could do this in CSS?

You might be able to achieve this effect using the CSS3 border-image property.
Unfortunately, I am not aware of a way to do this sort of thing in CSS2. Also, I don't think that you can do this via CSS sprites, because sprites don't stretch parts of your image—they just allow you to show certain parts of the image.
Steve

Contrary to what some here have stated, depending on the image, you CAN do this with CSS/Sprites. But that isn't always going to be the case. It comes down to the image you want to repeat, it's height/width in relation to the sprite it exists on, the direction you want to repeat it, and the size of the container you want it to repeat in.
(source: sampsonresume.com)
This sprite could be repeated on the left 100px for use in a sidebar, while the other portions could serve as buttons and roll-over states in a navigation. with a small change, you could make the repeatable portion horizontal.

If you want a cross-browser solution, then currently you're out of luck, especially if you want a CSS-solution.
The only way to do it with JavaScript would be through the canvas element, but that's not supported by IE.

CSS cannot do this. You can however do it server-side or by using SVG graphics or Flash. Note that doing it with a plugin would not technically be a 'background-image", you'd need to position your content over the top of it.

Image Zoom using javascript?

Has anyone got to some good code to zoom into an image using javascript?
I know I could just resize it etc but was being lazy and looking for something clever to zoom to different levels, move around when zoomed etc

Check this:
jQZoom
Zoomimage - jQuery plugin
jQuery ImgZoom
FancyBox

How big are the images?
If they are huge images you do them like google map style using this http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/software/googlemapimagecutter.asp

This really depends on what quality you are after. If you need a hires hiquality image with detailed zoom levels and proper interpolation you will need to write a backend service to serve up zoomed portions of your images. If you have no care for quality or speed, you could download the entire image and fit it to display inside a div absolutely positioned, offset for the area you want to view and sized as determined by your zoom level.
I would say you are probably after the first option. There are some tools already made for this, I persoanlly havnt used any of the tools; I am sure othes will post links to others you can try; I have written my own service and client. I cant go into the exact details as its proprietary, but I can give you an overview of what I do.
I have an asp.net generic handler that takes a query string denoting which image (by an id) and the coordinates to zoom on and the target image size. I have the service load the image and crop and resize it (its more complicated than that as I have many optimizations and preparsing when the file is originally uploaded, such as multiple cross sections of the file for faster serving when zooming, but what I describing here is the basics).
That service simply returns type image/jpeg and sends the image.
On the client side I have written a marquee box control that allows the user to marquee an area on the image they want to zoom in on. they marquee the area and click zoom. This then calculates the offsets into the image of the selected coordinates based on the original image size and the viewable image size. I send hese coords to the handler previously mentioned.I load the the url with query string of the srvice into an Image object, and handle onload. If all went well i then swap that to the viewed image and updates all my client side variables for determining where on the image I am zoomed into and then it can be zoomed again or zoomed out or panned further from there.
Now i understand your lazy requirement, but i need to say that writing this is actually quite easy to do to get the basics going. the hardest part you will find is doing a select box. But then even that can be as simple as tracking two click. Top left of the zoom select marque and bottom right. Or not having a select box at all and have a zoom in and out only at predetermined intervals. I on my projects required a zoom box as its a fairly complex image analysis solution.
I hope this at least helpful and leads you to something useful.