Drop Files From Window To Javascript - javascript

I am sure it's possible to be able to drag files onto a Flash movie inside a browser, but is it possible to achieve the same functionality with Javascript?
I have seen a site (can't remember) that did this, but I never checked if it was a pure Javascript solution compared to a Flash solution.
I am leaning towards the not side, I believe that breaks the limitations of Javascript, although if there is any solution I would love to hear it. My only worry is it won't be supported that well across different browsers.

I don't think it's possible to drag a file into a page as such.
Though some browsers may allow you to drag a file into a file upload input box. If this is the cease, perhaps you could stretch such an input via CSS and make it transparent/overlay on background to provide a "pretty" drop target.

You can do this with ActiveX, though it would only work in IE.. and here is an article describing how to do a drag/drop upload in Firefox http://straxus.javadevelopersjournal.com/creating_a_mozillafirefox_drag_and_drop_file_upload_script_p.htm
There isn't a generic way of doing this that will work for all browsers with javascript - but you could use a java applet like this: http://www.zackgrossbart.com/hackito/2007/11/28/drag-and-drop-file-uploading-made-easy/

The article which shows how to support drag and drop with an applet is at:
http://www.zackgrossbart.com/hackito/dnd-file-uploading
There's another article which shows how to do this with just JavaScript. This requires HTML5, but it works well.
http://www.thecssnin]ja.com/javascript/drag-and-drop-upload

Related

Download progress in HTML5

If I have 5 javascript files and each of different size and same with CSS, is it possible to show "real time" progress bar when scripts/css get downloaded?
I know this can't be possible in HTML4 and would require Flash/Silverlight. But can I achieve this in HTML5? If yes, how would I do it?
I want to show a text like "Downloading" and as each script/css get downloaded real time, each letter of Downloading should start filling up. I am not asking for any code. Just want a high level concept of how that is possible.
Thanks.
Here's what I've been able to come up with; In HTML5 there is a <progress> element that you may be able to use. The bad news is that support for this element isn't as good as it could be. See the support chart here: http://caniuse.com/#search=progress There's no support in Safari 5 and below or IE9 and below. Partial support is in IE10 and any relevant versions of FireFox. If you need more support try a polyfil like this one: http://lea.verou.me/polyfills/progress/
If you choose to use the <progress> element here's a link about how to style it: http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2012/01/03/cross-browser-html5-progress-bars-in-depth/
Now the trick about making this work, you'll need to know the file size of the file(s) you'll be downloading and the number of bytes downloaded. As the files are being downloaded you'll have to get the header info that tells you how many bytes are transferred. You can see a sample of how to do that with jQuery here: http://markmail.org/message/kmrpk7w3h56tidxs#query:jquery%20ajax%20download%20progress+page:1+mid:kmrpk7w3h56tidxs+state:results
Note that this method will not work with IE. IE does not expose the header data of the XHR object.
At this point set the max attribute of the <progress> element to the total file size and using the setTimeout sample, update the value attribute of the <progress> element.
Knowing all this, maybe finding some kind of package solution with a built-in Flash fallback might be much easier to implement, and have better support. Anyone else have any ideas?
Good luck.

Including SVG in HTML5 for iOS

I'd like to include an SVG image in an HTML5 web page, to interact with this SVG via JavaScript, and to apply CSS styling. If possible, I'd prefer to keep the SVG in a separate file. I'm hoping to be able to use the web page offline so hopefully whatever solution is recommended will be compatible with this.
Please could someone suggest the best / most cross-browser compatible way of doing this? If there's not really a method that will work across all browsers, I'd be happy to settle for a way that works with iOS 4.3's Safari browser :-)
Thanks in advance!
Thanks to everyone and apologies for not giving an update sooner - Unfortunately, I got distracted by another project!
After some time playing with various alternative options, ( http://tavmjong.free.fr/SVG/SVG_IN_HTML/svg_in_html.html / http://www.schepers.cc/svg/blendups/embedding.html ) I've still not been able to use an external .svg file and keep the JS in the main HTML5 file - i.e. I've been unable to get these approaches to allow the SVG file to reference JS functions, or to allow the HTML file to gain access to elements from the included SVG file. Even inline SVG doesn't yet work on iOS :(
So, I'm going to try my luck with Raphael (http://raphaeljs.com). I think this may mean that I'll need to create the SVG programatically rather than being able to just link to an external .svg file. I'll just have to write a script to translate the SVG content to JS Raphael function calls and hope to avoid any other other stumbling blocks.
It depends the browsers you are targeting. Modern browsers (IE9, Chrome, Firefox4...) support inline SVG. Older browsers may require some alternatives.
Here there is an online test to check browser support by using several methods to include the SVG.
http://tavmjong.free.fr/SVG/SVG_IN_HTML/svg_in_html.html
But I think that if you are using HTML5, then you are targeting modern browsers so you should use inline svg with the <svg> tag.
Take a look at this page: http://www.schepers.cc/svg/blendups/embedding.html
It shows five different ways of embedding an external SVG file into HTML (note that these aren't the only ways, but they are the simplest). It's also a quick way to check the capabilities of a particular browser.

How can I target jQuery mobile capable phones?

I've made a web-app using the jQuery Mobile framework for which I would like to provide a fall-back, for lower-spec phones.
My question is... what is the best way to target JQM-capablephones? I saw a similar question posted on the jquery forum. One of the answers suggested http://detectmobilebrowser.com/ which provides a long list of handsets.
Is this the best way, or should I be testing for browser-capabilities rather than actually targeting handsets. If it is the latter what feaures are considered to be 'Grade-A' featues?
Cheers
Progressive enhancement is what you should aim for, jQuery allows you to have a single codebase and have it work across the range of devices.
Consider this:
All links to other pages are regular html links, links will still work without AJAX support because they'd just send you to the location of the required page
All major framework elements are built around lists, links, and a few divs. No HTML5 required for rendering content
At the bare minimum, all phones can display a good amount of styling, allowing you to display the content no matter how capable
Do you have custom interfaces which wouldn't work at all without full support for jQuery mobile?
I agree that graceful degradation is the best solution. I would add that using the noscript tags is also a good way to provide graceful degradation by adding adding functionality via HTML for phones that have no support for JS.
I think it will be difficult to find a browser-capability (or even a set) that defines whether the phone will work with JQM. In my own experience I have used WURFL, an open source device detection library, that provides capability information. However I used it to target specific devices to include device specific CSS and remove all JS for other devices that I know do not support it (to remove the overhead of the JS being downloaded).
WURFL: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
JQM advertises that it provides graceful degradation:
Graceful Degradation: jQuery Mobile uses the very best HTML 5 and CSS 3 features to provide the best possible experience in the most-capable browsers. However we don’t consider this to be an all-or-nothing proposition: Less capable browsers will still receive the best possible experience that their platform can handle. They may not have all the gradients or fancy transitions of the best platforms but they’ll still be highly usable. The most basic browsers will easily degrade back to simplified HTML and CSS.
I have also tested multiple JQM pages in a single mobile page which work great (very speedy) in JQM but suffer from the same problem mentioned (all pages show up when javascript is turned off in the browser of a smart phone). To work around this issue, only use a single page per JQM page (you give up speed and uniform page transitioning though). In regards to the NOSCRIPT tag option, that tag is NOT universally recognized in all browsers. To work around that issue, you could try something like the following:
<div id="no-js">
<!-- Place HTML without javascript here -->
</div>
<div id="js">
<script language="javascript">
// place javascript here which would be ignored by browsers not support javascript or with
// javascript turned off
document.getElementById("no-js").style.display = "none"; // be sure to hide the non javascript
// div
</script>
</div>
The above logic would work in either NOSCRIPT tag type browsers as well as those that do not recognize NOSCRIPT.
dlausch

Is there a way to embed an mp3 player in a website that isn't flash based (so that the website is iPhone OS compatible)

I did a lot of searching for what I thought would be a pretty common question, but I came up with nothing. If there is another thread with a similar topic, please let me know.
Basically, I'm looking for a way to have an .mp3 file play in a website without relying on a flash-based player. I've searched w3 schools and every forum I can think of, but every media player I've found so far has been some sort of proprietary flash player.
Doesn't HTML support some sort of native player? I've found some that rely on Windows Media Player which is close, but I want the player to work on an iPhone and something tells me WMP won't get that done...
PS, as I'm thinking more about this this idea just popped into my head: a javascipt player and inside the <noscript> tag, put a flash player? I'm running a music blog (# http://www.freshoncampus.com) so the less code per post, the better...
Yes you can, with HTML 5.
This is a pretty good explanation of how you might go about doing this.
The caveat is that HTML5 support is not universal, but iOS devices (iphone) have a good start with supporting HTML5.
Edited to add:
From the question, it's hard to discern if you're looking for a way to play multiple mp3's with a nice gui interface, or just use audio as a background.
For the former, you will need to use Javascript to handle controls, and loading of the src element (I'd search for custom built javascript or jquery plugins to handle this).
For the latter, my solution above will work.
Also, background music in a webpage is highly annoying to most users, so caveat emptor.
You could go with something like http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/
which should autodetect the best option to play the sound.
jplayer? Not sure about MP3/OGG thing though...
First, HTML5's “audio” tag.
Second, you can use “embed” tag — it will play with whatever browser plugin is installed (not just WMP).
Not sure what would work in iPhone, though.
(and I might be wrong about exact tag names)

How do I embed a flash SWF file and get around the IE security layer without using swfobject (to keep down file size)

I'm looking for a way to embed an SWF into a page and get around the Internet Explorer security issue (where it requires an extra click to "activate" the flash file).
I've got my code working with swfobject, but I'm using this in an embedded widget context (eg a clickable banner ad) so I am really trying to keep my file size down, and swfobject adds about 10k worth of minified Javascript that just feels like more than I need
I just need basic flash rendering, I'm not really that worried about Flash version detection (I'm using an old enough version of Flash for the SWF) though a fallback solution if flash is not available would be nice.
Finally, this has to be something that can work entirely from a single Javascript file included somewhere in the BODY tag of the containing page. (The reason I say this is because I had some issues even with the swfobject version when I was document.write'ing a SCRIPT tag for the swfobject.js into the BODY of the page instead of the HEAD).
I hope that makes sense, I can clarify if needed.
Thanks in advance!!
"Click to activate" is no longer an issue, see this note.

Categories

Resources