Styling File Inputs in iOS6 with jQuery Mobile
File this post under: “stuff that’s in obscure forum posts but not really documented well”. As per a previous post, iOS6 brought about access to the camera in Mobile Safari. While access is not real time (getUserMedia would be amazing), we are able to prompt the user to take a new photo or access the camera roll. Presumably for security reasons, styling file inputs in desktop browsers has always been hell on earth. Mobile is much the same.
What you can do as a work around is rely on native browser functionality where clicking a <label> triggers the clicking of it’s associated <input>. I’ve relied on the native jQuery Mobile button styling for speed, but you can achieve pretty much anything. Hiding the input can be achieved in various different ways, but as far as I know it cannot be display: none; for security reasons. Setting visibility: hidden; or opacity: 0; will all achieve the same effect, and setting position: absolute; will take it out of the page’s flow.
You can see it in action in the JSFiddle below.
iOS Theme Update
I pushed an update to the iOS jQuery UI Theme to add support for the latest release - jQuery Mobile 1.2.0. Not much should change, but there is a notable syntax change to “in page” buttons.
The changes are:
- Added support for jQuery Mobile 1.2.0
- Support for, and styling of new
popupelements - An example iOS style
popupas per the image below (would be best if you set it up with a timer to hide after a couple of seconds?) - Major refactoring of “in page” button styling. No more messy
.ui-btn:not(this):not(that), instead it inherits from.ui-btn-plain. - Closed various issues and pull requests
- While basic popups are supported, no nested popup menu support is available
- As above, button syntax has changed. This causes an issue with
<button>elements. I’ve raised a bug here.
Delta jQuery UI Theme
Hey guys, just a quick heads up that I released the “Delta” jQuery UI theme a while ago over on the blog of my employer, Kiandra IT. It’s a completely free theme, and the best looking one yet. There are some known issues reported on the GitHub repo, so I’ve got to find some time to push up the fixes. All in all it’s pretty stable and cross browser compliant. It works on both light and dark backgrounds, something you don’t always see. It’s also retina display friendly and makes use of my OS-dependent modal script.
The details:
Enjoy.
JavaScript Trends (Presentation Resource)
As long as I continue to participate in the in-house Kiandra IT Friday presentations, I’ll endeavor to open source and post my material online where it makes sense.
Friday just gone, I gave a quick talk on the advances made to JavaScript in the last 12-24 months, and what changes are on the horizon. It tied in nicely with the release of a high-level roadmap from jQuery regarding versions 1.8, 1.9, 1.9.x and 2.0.
Topics included:
- jQuery Majors - 1.8 release notes, 1.9 vs. 2.0 and the oldIE debacle
- ECMAScript 6
- Patterns & Best Practices - MVVM/MVC, AMD, Compilation & Linting
I decided not to cover any of the hardware and browser based innovations as they’re more about exposing new device properties, inputs and outputs. I wanted to focus on how we’re writing our code, not WHAT we’re writing. I also forgot to add unit testing to the slides, but we covered it loosely.
Repository Updates (iOS Theme + jQuery.Gantt + Aristo)
Hey guys, not much has happening on the design/development front while I’ve been away on leave. Today I’ve landed some fairly big pull requests and bug fixes to what are probably my three biggest repos.
jQuery.Gantt
This is the big one. I made some pretty major changes before I went away but wanted a few more people to test it before I did the writeup.
I received a fairly major (and necessary) rewrite from Leo Pfeifenberger who sped up this project like you wouldn’t believe. It wasn’t a simple matter of landing the pull request, as the performance changes did come at the cost of coding standards and consistency. Some parts had been buggered by what looked like Visual Studio auto formatting, but they could have been hand-coded that way too.
For future reference, here are my own personal front end dev guidelines that have been received well by the community. They’ve changed in some regards based on feedback from individuals and organisations and represent how you should aim to format your code.
- Major performance increases.
A before and after IE9 test shows performance going from 20 seconds to 400ms.
That’s 2% of the previous run time. - All new click events - fired when clicking an item or when clicking the empty space. Use this to edit events or create new events at certain points.
- State persistance - requires cookie.js to work.
- Scroll to today on load
- Extensive documentation
- Defined a license (MIT)
- Removing
$.ajaxSetup, which was corrupting other scripts in the page.
According to this stackoverflow answer it was only there to ensure it worked in ASP.NET situations. If you’re using it there, consider setting$.ajaxSetupexternally.
Unfortunately that means there are some new issues:
- Code standards - I spent a considerable amount of time running the code through JSHint and fixing issues. I got most, but that included setting a few ignores.
- Eval - yep, as above, you’ll notice that there’s an eval in the code. Yuck.
- Holiday and “Today” highlighting are not occurring on the cell, only the header.
Two steps forward one step back. No biggie.
iOS jQuery Mobile Theme
I realised there was a big difference between what I was seeing in Chrome, the iOS simulator and my iPhone running iOS 5.1. Turns out the iOS simulator was only running 4.3.1, so I’ve now got the 5.1 simulator and that’s helped me resolve some visual quirks.
- Fixed: header bars had black top border
- Fixed: Vertical centring of header buttons was off (related to above, layout woes)
- Fixed: Black buttons had blue text shadow
- Fixed: Footer icons had crept to the right with last update (jQuery Mobile styles took precedence)
- Pull Request: <label> styles coming from poorly scoped selector
- Pull Request: Demo page typo
- Set demo page transitions to “slide” by default
- Set all demo page toolbars to be position=”fixed” by default
- Decided on licensing (MIT)
Aristo jQuery UI Theme
- Fixed: Cross browser CSS3 animations appear to have been re-instated.
- Pull Request: Added a non-prefixed value that I missed.
- Pull Request: Widget nesting issue fixed.
Repository Updates
iOS Theme for jQuery Mobile
Good news! I’ve just pushed some major changes for my iOS jQuery Mobile theme. It now works with jQuery Mobile 1.1.0, which was a bit of a struggle. It also forced me to do some major code cleanup, delivering cross browser gradients and various enhancements I had been putting off.
A full list of changes and resolved bugs follows:
- Supports jQuery Mobile 1.1.0 (this was a nightmare)
- Code cleanup more strictly obeys my coding conventions
- All gradients and effects are now cross browser compatible (Issue #2)
- Updated slider toggle to iOS 5 style (Issue #7)
- Got dialogs looking as close to native as possible considering jQuery Mobile doesn’t support overlayed dialogs (they’re standalone pages) (Issue #3)
The changes have introduced a few minor visual quirks relating to the .ui-focus box shadows etc, but hopefully these will be rectified in the near future.
jQuery Gantt
I made some minor code changes, but the most important thing here was the addition of documentation. The original creator didn’t provide any, so hopefully this makes a bit more sense. I’m sure I’ve missed something here and there (holidays?), but I’ll fix that up as we go.
The changes:
- Added documentation and better demo with bootstrap popovers
- Works with latest jQuery 1.7.2
- Merged pull request for “undefined error”, thanks Nathan Colgate.
- Code and folder cleanup
Front End Development Guidelines
The page now passes HTML5 validation. Apparently some people care about this.
jQuery Mobile 1.0.1 - iOS Theme Compatible
I haven’t touched the iOS inspired jQuery Mobile theme in quite a while, but a few of you have been messaging, mailing at tweeting at me asking if I’ll support the jQuery Mobile 1.0 build. And….. it’s done. Here’s the list of changes:
- Updated to jQuery Mobile 1.0.1 build
- Fixed graphical issues stemming from this: #23, #24 and #25
- Page buttons now take on gradient-less style (previously only <a> tags)
- Merged a pull request related to a button icon bug fix
As always, the demo is up to date and available.
bootstrap.footnotes.js - UX Lab 008
I love the Instapaper-style footnotes/endnotes that came about with the last major update. Here they are in web form, as a jQuery/Bootstrap plugin. Unfortunately there’s a dependency upon Bootstrap CSS/JS, but such is life. It’s retina ready too - as everything else should be these days.
Here it is in action:
Documentation and options are available on the demo page.
It also has its own GitHub repository.
HTML iOS Notifications - UX Lab 007
I thought I’d build a facsimile iOS notification plugin for shits and giggles. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of a good UX, but it’s more of a proof of concept than anything else.
- It’s 100% wide on standard and retina iPhones and 60% on desktop and iPad resolutions.
- It has built in retina icon handling.
- Doesn’t break middle mouse clicks when using a URL.
- Passes JSHint.
- It works with Chrome, Safari, Firefox and I believe Opera, but I haven’t tested.
Documentation and options are available on the demo page.
It also has its own GitHub repository.
jQuery-UI.toggleSwitch() - UX Lab 005
The last thing web devs need is another toggle plugin. But this was developed for sites that already run jQuery UI and don’t want the extra bloat of yet another library. It draws upon the theme .ui-slider for the look and feel, and can be applied to <select> elements with two child options.
Configuration options and examples are contained within the UX Lab page. I guess this warrants it’s own GitHub repository for change management and issue tracking. I’ll get around to that eventually.
Idle jGrowl Re-routing - UX Lab 004
Paul Irish wrote a pretty chill script back in 2009 for detecting when a user becomes inactive. It’s quite ingenious in its simplicity, as the best things usually are. What wasn’t explained fully is the ways in which this can be used to deliver a better user experience. It’s fantastic for preventing timed or asynchronous actions when users aren’t going to benefit from the action.
This quick little experiment is aimed at demonstrating the concept in the simplest form.
A jGrowl notification triggered every ‘x’ seconds, or by a server event, isn’t of much use when the user isn’t around. They disappear after a few seconds. So instead, if the user is deemed inactive, you should make them “stick” or push them to a modal, similar to the loathed Growl notification rollup pictured below.
Obviously the linked example isn’t quite as eloquent, but it’s not like the Growl rollup was that well received to begin with. See what other cool shit you can come up with.
I’ve just pushed some pretty hefty changes to the jQuery.Gantt project I’ve been developing with lately. I tried some other Gantt libraries, but they were either dependant upon ExtJS, no longer maintained or just didn’t play nicely with my pre-existing code.
I settled on jQuery.Gantt, but there were a few things I found that really kept it from being an accessible, front-end developer friendly resource. For instance, you could previously only specify a URL as a data source, and not a local object. I needed to pre-parse another JSON feed before plugging it into the chart. There were also some conflicts when using the Twitter bootstrap, and the inability to place attributes on the Gantt bars meant no sexy popovers like below.
A lengthy list of changes follows:
- Reduced conflicts with Twitter Bootstrap by name-spacing styles
- Source now accepts data from a local object, not just a JSON call
- Can now extend data properties on to bars for use with Bootstrap popovers etc.
- Code is now “use strict”
- Fixed a couple of errors resulting from “use strict”
- Various English translations: renamed months and days to english, hollydays/holidays
- Redesigned buttons and slider with CSS3 and an image sprite
- Modified category colours and styles
- Made chart 100% width so it responds to parent container width
- Began enforcing front end dev guidelines such as double quotations (but singles on HTML strings), triple equals comparison and using spans instead of hyperlinks for JavaScript interactivity
- Updated demo page doctype to HTML5
- Moved body styles from stylesheet to page to reduce style conflicts
Dynamic Credit Card Type Selection - UX Lab 003
If you find yourself buying a lot of things online, or perhaps building a lot of eCommerce websites - you will have experienced a range of credit card forms. The good. The bad. The ugly. Some fields are required to pass security checks. Some seemingly exist only to frustrate you. But what seems constant is the lack of innovation over the years in what is a staple in eCommerce design.
One example that does it really well is the purchase page for Coda, by Panic Software. Not only does it auto-select the card type of the credit card, but it also updates the select button with a background image indicating progress. The only downside I can really find to the Coda page is that when the card image changes, it’s not sprited so you see a flash of white as the images load.
Using a list of prefixes published to Wikipedia, it’s possible to identify nearly every card type in the world. This opens a host of possibilities to designers, like this:
“CC Rebound” by Ryan Rumsey
Not shown in this demo is the ability to isolate the first two or three characters, to further narrow the type of card. How would you differentiate between Diner’s Club (36) and American Express (37), both starting with ‘3’? Using substr(). The rest is up to you.
Developer Snippet - Pretty AJAX Errors
Tired of drudging through the console when looking for the cause of AJAX errors? Sick of trying to scan the stringified .NET or webservice error pages for the underlying error? Do I have the handy hint for you!
The following snippet creates a global listener for AJAX errors, shows a jGrowl reporting the error thrown, and then allows you to view the resulting error page - all without breaking the user’s workflow.
It was designed to work with .NET applications and webservice error messages which both return error pages, but there’s no reason why you can’t use this with RESTful services (or anything) returning error codes and error messages.
Requires: jQuery, jGrowl JS and jGrowl CSS
Repository Updates (iOS Theme + Front End Dev)
Front End Development Guidelines (Demo | GitHub)
The ability to “deep link” to categories and articles went in a while ago, but until today there wasn’t a UI to make it easy. I also added a section on centering content, both horizontally and vertically. It reflects the blog post I recently posted on the matter.
iOS jQuery Mobile Theme (Demo | GitHub)
I’ve replaced the CSS3 back button with an image sprite. The original snippet required a custom button syntax and just flat out looked terrible. I dabbled with -webkit-mask-images, but these are buggy and inconsistant. There was no reliable way to mask the button into the correct shape, and then apply the CSS3 gradients, shadows and border effects. It was a compromise, and currently only supports 1x (non-retina) displays, but it works. Here is the difference blown up.
I also styled the persistant footer bar and added in some sample Glyphish icons. Please consider the licensing if you want to implement the Glyphish icons on a commercial site.
