» Archive for the ‘Ajax’ Category
Extended Google Ajax News Bar
As I promised, I wrote new application based on Google Ajax News Bar. This is not exactly new application, it might be say that this is an extension to the original News bar.
Google provides two kinds of ways in displaying the results:
- Horizontal - animated bar with ability to show the description in the other wrapper (
options.horizontal=true, and options.currentResult=document.getElementsById(wrapper)).
- Vertical - all the news results and its parts (title, description, etc.) are displayed in the specified container plus you have ability to switch between search items.
My version is between these two methods but near the first one. It is the normal horizontal bar but the difference is that the title and description are displayed in the popup box near mouse pointer when you move it over the news title.
You can use all options that are available in the original New Bar (and for horizontal method) except of currentResutls and horizontal (always true) - these are used internally and values will be bypassed.
The bad or good information is that this version using prototype.js.
Google Ajax News Bar
Google provides new feature called AJAX News Bar. This application lets you add news search results to your website or blog. You can specify the orientations, the number of results (of course 4 or 8, nothing has changed), etc. The interesting thing is controlling through the links in your page which news results are displayed (works same as my green-links). If you are not good in JavaScript you can use Wizard, it will generates the code for you.
Here are the links to reference, example, and
Wizard.
So, I’m starting to write new application right now, lets see what we can do with it…
Space Invaders!
My first contact with “Space Invaders” was about 6 years ago. It was an assembler version found in programmersheaven.com. I think this game is a grand grandmother of all space shooter games, look at the first release date - 1978. WOW! (four years older than me :)).
Couple of weeks ago I decided to create my own version of “Space Invaders”. The code was written by me but the sprites (aliens, UFO, laser gun) is taken from the original version. Everything is written in JavaScript, with the little (read big) help of Yahoo User Interface (same as the last two games).
I had the problem with Firefox, because instead of Opera and IE, in the Firefox the use of the processor while the game was running, was very big (maybe because that a lot of loops were running at the same time). So, I have to rebuild the first project and optimize it for the Firefox. However, still you can see some delay while aliens and UFO are moving (maybe it is some proof that the Gecko engine is slower than IE’s engine :/, no it can not be!). (If you have some time you can check which browser is faster, just turn on window.setInterval(); function (three or four different at the same time) with some loops (not infinite, you can change top and left attributes of some div elements).
This game also wasn’t tested in the Safari browser. Works fine in the latest version of Opera, Firefox, and IE.
Enjoy…
Puzzle!
Making games (even simple games) is a challenge. The creation process is not very difficult and may be fun of course if you know what you are doing (or writing). When I have a new idea I’m asking myself if I know how to do it. This is very important thing! I have to be sure if I know how to make the key elements of the code, before writing any line I must know the algorithm which will describe these elements. So I’m making a few tests, searching for solutions on the internet, in books, or trying to figure out by myself how to create it. And the last step is writing the code (hmm, someone could say that is the first step).
Today I want to present my new project based on YUI library and Flickr API. I think the title say everything - PUZZLE. Each photo which you can find by searching Flickr, is divided in sixteen pieces and placed on the square board. All pieces are randomly set and the last piece is empty. All you have to do, is to set the pieces in their correct places by swapping empty piece with near placed pieces.
The hardest thing while creating this game was figure out how to divide images into pieces using only JavaScript. CSS give us very helpful attribute called - “background-position“. If you have image with size, for example 640×480 pixels, and you want divide it into 16 squares you have to do something like this:
640 / 4 = 160;
480 / 4 = 120;
- .square1 { background-position: 0 0; }
- .square2 { background-position: 0 160px; }
- .square3 { background-position: 0 320px; }
- .square4 { background-position: 0 480px; } - the last square on the first line
- .square5 { background-position: 120 0; }
- .square6 { background-position: 120 160px; }
- .square7 { background-position: 120 320px; }
- .square8 { background-position: 120 480px; } - the last square on the second line
- .square9 { background-position: 240 0; }
- .square10 { background-position: 240 160px; }
- .square11 { background-position: 240 320px; }
- .square12 { background-position: 240 480px; } - the last square on the third line
- .square13 { background-position: 360 0; }
- .square14 { background-position: 360 160px; }
- .square15 { background-position: 360 320px; }
- .square16 { background-position: 360 480px; } - the last square on the fourth line
This technique works well on a small images (640×480 or less), you can use it also with the largest images, however the loading time will be longer (especially in IE).
Have a nice puzzling! 
Yetris
Welcome in the new year. I spent the last three days writing another web application based on YUI (Yahoo User Interface). This time I’d like to present a very old and class game - Tetris, but because I use libraries provided by Yahoo I called it Yetris!.
I used same ideas, algorithms (maybe I should call this engine) from the code which I wrote 5 years ago. Check my post from September 22nd (2006), I showed then a simple Tetris game written by me in assembly language. The new version is written in JavaScript.
This time I look deeper in YUI documentation especially in parts that concern animation, DOM and Event, what I’ve learned you can see by playing this game (A lot or not much? :))
You can find exactly three animations:
- Intro - brick image fade in, zooming text,
- Game Over - falling lines fade out,
- Yahoo YUI logo - zooming while mouse over.
I tested this game in 4 browsers (Opera, Firefox, IE 6, and IE 7) and works fine, however some unexpected things may occur. I will be grateful for any feedback about how this game works in Safari browser.
Have fun!
Gproto.js library
To faster and easier build web application based on Google Ajax Search API I created very simple library - gproto.js.
Gproto.js gives you control on every part of the result. You can change the font size, font colors, background color, margins, etc., by simply assigning the style class name to specified result element. You can also put the results of each search into a different containers, hide any parts of the results, control how many results will be displayed, set the “preloader” and “not found” messages, and more…
You can download and use it for free however you have to obey Google Ajax Search API Terms of Use, because it is based on a code provided by Google.
Image-Search
This time I used Yahoo Ajax to build my search engine. Yahoo provide more features than Google, and give us more opportunity to create better application. I’m only talking about Ajax, however with Yahoo we can build applications using Flash, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby - see Developer Center for more information).
Google vs. Yahoo
Google
Yahoo
Maximum 8 results per search
All query results are available
Results can be loaded into specified container or we can manipulate on the array of results
Response data is in XML format
-
5,000 queries per IP address per day
Web Search, News Search, Blog Search, Video Search, Local Search
Web Search, Audio Search, Content Analysis, Image Search, Local Search, News Search, Site Explorer, Video Search
Custom Search Engine
MyWeb
Google Ajax Search API Key
Application Id
-
Web Proxy for Cross-Domain XMLHttpRequest Calls
Only .setQueryAddition(term) method (for site:, link:, etc.)
Building request with URL parameters
Yahoo providing more services and more products than Google, however it is much simpler to build application based on Google Ajax. This is because when we are using Google we don’t have to care about how results are formatted, we can use standard style and put the results into some container. Yahoo give us response in XML format, so first we have to read information from XML (Same with Google when we want to use information contained in array).
I like both solution, Google Ajax gives less but it is simpler, Yahoo Ajax gives more however we need to fight with XML (It is not that hard, but we have to do that). If you didn’t see my Custom Search Engine based on Google Ajax, look here, but today I would like to present my new project Image-Search based on Yahoo Ajax.
CSE and Google Ajax…
Finally I finished the new version of my custom search engine. Now it use Google Ajax Search API and lots of graphics effects and animated preloader. You can use it for searching information about music and movies, however this is only demonstration. I strove so that the code was easy to change and prepared for future implementation.
Quick manual:
When you type the query and click enter or press Search button, you will see the search results inside the panel(this may take a while depends of your internet connection speed).
Each result has its own bookmark button and responds with changing the color of descriptions when mouse pointer is over it.
At the left corner of the panel you can see vertical bar where you can choose how many results are displayed in the one query session.
The last feature you can find in the top right corner inside the panel (the red colored text) - more results… This link directs to Google page with my custom search engine, each link depends on query and the actual visible tab.
That’s all, If I will find some time I will add new features, maybe google add new ones… Will see. Have a nice play with CSE…
Custom Search Engine
I have been working on my Google Custom Search Engine, you can see the actual results here. The GSE documentation is not very comprehensive, for example, I can’t find anything about AdditionalData tag, but it is used in one of the featured examples (same with timestamp attribute). It is not very hard to build your own CSE because almost all what we need we have in the control panel of each search engine, and also we can use advanced options to extend our engine. But I think the best way to build more interesting application is to use Custom Search Engine and Google Ajax Search API, however doing that, we have to
find a compromise between full control and quantity of results. I will try to take as much as I need from both CSE and Google Search API, but I don’t really know how this frankenstein will be look like.
Green-links v1.0 (beta)
It is time for a new version of my Google Ajax Search API project, which I called the Green-Links!.
This is BETA version, becouse I didn’t test it very much, however it works fine since I implement it on this blog.
What’s new:
- New Code,
- Preloader,
- Icons in tabbar (Icons downloaded from Google),
- Back button instead of Close button,
- Video search,
- Query redirection to the Google main page,
- Multicolor background..
- Add to Google button - bookmarking results,
- New items in the results:
- Blog: Author, Date
- News: Location, Date, Publisher
- Video: Duration, Date, Publisher
Click on the GreenLinks in posts, to see how it works… Google
Also look at the standalone example.
enjoy…
Extended Google Ajax News Bar
As I promised, I wrote new application based on Google Ajax News Bar. This is not exactly new application, it might be say that this is an extension to the original News bar.
Google provides two kinds of ways in displaying the results:
- Horizontal - animated bar with ability to show the description in the other wrapper (
options.horizontal=true,andoptions.currentResult=document.getElementsById(wrapper)). - Vertical - all the news results and its parts (title, description, etc.) are displayed in the specified container plus you have ability to switch between search items.
My version is between these two methods but near the first one. It is the normal horizontal bar but the difference is that the title and description are displayed in the popup box near mouse pointer when you move it over the news title.
You can use all options that are available in the original New Bar (and for horizontal method) except of currentResutls and horizontal (always true) - these are used internally and values will be bypassed.
The bad or good information is that this version using prototype.js.
Google Ajax News Bar
Google provides new feature called AJAX News Bar. This application lets you add news search results to your website or blog. You can specify the orientations, the number of results (of course 4 or 8, nothing has changed), etc. The interesting thing is controlling through the links in your page which news results are displayed (works same as my green-links). If you are not good in JavaScript you can use Wizard, it will generates the code for you.
Here are the links to reference, example, and
Wizard.
So, I’m starting to write new application right now, lets see what we can do with it…
Space Invaders!
My first contact with “Space Invaders” was about 6 years ago. It was an assembler version found in programmersheaven.com. I think this game is a grand grandmother of all space shooter games, look at the first release date - 1978. WOW! (four years older than me :)).
Couple of weeks ago I decided to create my own version of “Space Invaders”. The code was written by me but the sprites (aliens, UFO, laser gun) is taken from the original version. Everything is written in JavaScript, with the little (read big) help of Yahoo User Interface (same as the last two games).
I had the problem with Firefox, because instead of Opera and IE, in the Firefox the use of the processor while the game was running, was very big (maybe because that a lot of loops were running at the same time). So, I have to rebuild the first project and optimize it for the Firefox. However, still you can see some delay while aliens and UFO are moving (maybe it is some proof that the Gecko engine is slower than IE’s engine :/, no it can not be!). (If you have some time you can check which browser is faster, just turn on window.setInterval(); function (three or four different at the same time) with some loops (not infinite, you can change top and left attributes of some div elements).
This game also wasn’t tested in the Safari browser. Works fine in the latest version of Opera, Firefox, and IE.
Enjoy…
Puzzle!
Making games (even simple games) is a challenge. The creation process is not very difficult and may be fun of course if you know what you are doing (or writing). When I have a new idea I’m asking myself if I know how to do it. This is very important thing! I have to be sure if I know how to make the key elements of the code, before writing any line I must know the algorithm which will describe these elements. So I’m making a few tests, searching for solutions on the internet, in books, or trying to figure out by myself how to create it. And the last step is writing the code (hmm, someone could say that is the first step).
Today I want to present my new project based on YUI library and Flickr API. I think the title say everything - PUZZLE. Each photo which you can find by searching Flickr, is divided in sixteen pieces and placed on the square board. All pieces are randomly set and the last piece is empty. All you have to do, is to set the pieces in their correct places by swapping empty piece with near placed pieces.
The hardest thing while creating this game was figure out how to divide images into pieces using only JavaScript. CSS give us very helpful attribute called - “background-position“. If you have image with size, for example 640×480 pixels, and you want divide it into 16 squares you have to do something like this:
640 / 4 = 160;
480 / 4 = 120;
- .square1 { background-position: 0 0; }
- .square2 { background-position: 0 160px; }
- .square3 { background-position: 0 320px; }
- .square4 { background-position: 0 480px; } - the last square on the first line
- .square5 { background-position: 120 0; }
- .square6 { background-position: 120 160px; }
- .square7 { background-position: 120 320px; }
- .square8 { background-position: 120 480px; } - the last square on the second line
- .square9 { background-position: 240 0; }
- .square10 { background-position: 240 160px; }
- .square11 { background-position: 240 320px; }
- .square12 { background-position: 240 480px; } - the last square on the third line
- .square13 { background-position: 360 0; }
- .square14 { background-position: 360 160px; }
- .square15 { background-position: 360 320px; }
- .square16 { background-position: 360 480px; } - the last square on the fourth line
This technique works well on a small images (640×480 or less), you can use it also with the largest images, however the loading time will be longer (especially in IE).
Have a nice puzzling!
Yetris
Welcome in the new year. I spent the last three days writing another web application based on YUI (Yahoo User Interface). This time I’d like to present a very old and class game - Tetris, but because I use libraries provided by Yahoo I called it Yetris!.
I used same ideas, algorithms (maybe I should call this engine) from the code which I wrote 5 years ago. Check my post from September 22nd (2006), I showed then a simple Tetris game written by me in assembly language. The new version is written in JavaScript.
This time I look deeper in YUI documentation especially in parts that concern animation, DOM and Event, what I’ve learned you can see by playing this game (A lot or not much? :))
You can find exactly three animations:
- Intro - brick image fade in, zooming text,
- Game Over - falling lines fade out,
- Yahoo YUI logo - zooming while mouse over.
I tested this game in 4 browsers (Opera, Firefox, IE 6, and IE 7) and works fine, however some unexpected things may occur. I will be grateful for any feedback about how this game works in Safari browser.
Have fun!
Gproto.js library
To faster and easier build web application based on Google Ajax Search API I created very simple library - gproto.js.
Gproto.js gives you control on every part of the result. You can change the font size, font colors, background color, margins, etc., by simply assigning the style class name to specified result element. You can also put the results of each search into a different containers, hide any parts of the results, control how many results will be displayed, set the “preloader” and “not found” messages, and more…
You can download and use it for free however you have to obey Google Ajax Search API Terms of Use, because it is based on a code provided by Google.
Image-Search
This time I used Yahoo Ajax to build my search engine. Yahoo provide more features than Google, and give us more opportunity to create better application. I’m only talking about Ajax, however with Yahoo we can build applications using Flash, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby - see Developer Center for more information).
Google vs. Yahoo
| Yahoo | |
| Maximum 8 results per search | All query results are available |
| Results can be loaded into specified container or we can manipulate on the array of results | Response data is in XML format |
| - | 5,000 queries per IP address per day |
| Web Search, News Search, Blog Search, Video Search, Local Search | Web Search, Audio Search, Content Analysis, Image Search, Local Search, News Search, Site Explorer, Video Search |
| Custom Search Engine | MyWeb |
| Google Ajax Search API Key | Application Id |
| - | Web Proxy for Cross-Domain XMLHttpRequest Calls |
| Only .setQueryAddition(term) method (for site:, link:, etc.) | Building request with URL parameters |
Yahoo providing more services and more products than Google, however it is much simpler to build application based on Google Ajax. This is because when we are using Google we don’t have to care about how results are formatted, we can use standard style and put the results into some container. Yahoo give us response in XML format, so first we have to read information from XML (Same with Google when we want to use information contained in array).
I like both solution, Google Ajax gives less but it is simpler, Yahoo Ajax gives more however we need to fight with XML (It is not that hard, but we have to do that). If you didn’t see my Custom Search Engine based on Google Ajax, look here, but today I would like to present my new project Image-Search based on Yahoo Ajax.
CSE and Google Ajax…
Finally I finished the new version of my custom search engine. Now it use Google Ajax Search API and lots of graphics effects and animated preloader. You can use it for searching information about music and movies, however this is only demonstration. I strove so that the code was easy to change and prepared for future implementation.
Quick manual:
When you type the query and click enter or press Search button, you will see the search results inside the panel(this may take a while depends of your internet connection speed).
Each result has its own bookmark button and responds with changing the color of descriptions when mouse pointer is over it.
At the left corner of the panel you can see vertical bar where you can choose how many results are displayed in the one query session.
The last feature you can find in the top right corner inside the panel (the red colored text) - more results… This link directs to Google page with my custom search engine, each link depends on query and the actual visible tab.
That’s all, If I will find some time I will add new features, maybe google add new ones… Will see. Have a nice play with CSE…
Custom Search Engine
I have been working on my Google Custom Search Engine, you can see the actual results here. The GSE documentation is not very comprehensive, for example, I can’t find anything about AdditionalData tag, but it is used in one of the featured examples (same with timestamp attribute). It is not very hard to build your own CSE because almost all what we need we have in the control panel of each search engine, and also we can use advanced options to extend our engine. But I think the best way to build more interesting application is to use Custom Search Engine and Google Ajax Search API, however doing that, we have to
find a compromise between full control and quantity of results. I will try to take as much as I need from both CSE and Google Search API, but I don’t really know how this frankenstein will be look like.
Green-links v1.0 (beta)
It is time for a new version of my Google Ajax Search API project, which I called the Green-Links!.
This is BETA version, becouse I didn’t test it very much, however it works fine since I implement it on this blog.
What’s new:
- New Code,
- Preloader,
- Icons in tabbar (Icons downloaded from Google),
- Back button instead of Close button,
- Video search,
- Query redirection to the Google main page,
- Multicolor background..
- Add to Google button - bookmarking results,
- New items in the results:
- Blog: Author, Date
- News: Location, Date, Publisher
- Video: Duration, Date, Publisher
Click on the GreenLinks in posts, to see how it works… Google
Also look at the standalone example.
enjoy…