Mar

23

HTML5 Goodness – Enhance Anchors jQuery plugin

HTML5

Back in the day, when web pages tended to be walls of text, a nifty navigation concept was born – Anchor links, which looked something like this “somesite.com#article1“, and when clicked would skip down to said location. However they quickly fell out of fashion as web evolved. Now, as single page apps are all the rage anchor tags are making a comeback, but not as anchor links but as javascript animations: Click a link and the page will actually scroll.

It’s all fancy but there is one downside – Accessability. Have a browser that does not run javascript or just want to send a link to said position? You’re out of luck. Anchor links would solve this issue by not relying on javascript and changing the URL as you clicked the link but they are not sexy. Also, the problem with anchor links is that.. well, they suck at usability as well – When you are warped to a different position in the article you lose the mental context of the page structure; you might as well be on a different page altogether.

So, let’s bring back the sexy to anchor tags!

Enhance Anchors is a simple jQuery plugin, which when loaded, will enhance simple anchor tags (ie. “somesite.com#article2“) with smooth javascript scrolling transitions while retaining the good parts of a anchor link. It even supports back button (where possible)! And it’s as easy as just loading the plugin and you’re done.

 

Check it out at:
https://github.com/zonear/jquery.enhanceanchors

 

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Maa

14

Why Windows 8 will change the world

HTML5 / windows8 / Yleinen

Windows 8. Hate it or love it, there is certain something in the air when talking about it.

HTML5 as native language

Native applications for Windows 8 Metro are written in standard HTML5 instead of, for example C# – A language usually heavily endorsed by Microsoft. Why then JavaScript over C#, or anything else for that matter? It turns out that this is actually the most pivotal thing in future of Windows and it just might end up powering the next era of PC. Let me explain.

Personal Computer

PC stands for Personal Computer – A computer that one can tailor for their needs. This was the catalyst that fueled the computer revolution, as it made cheaper computers possible, thus commodificating  the computer itself, which in turn fueled the internet revolution and so forth. While Apple likes to rant about post-PC world, where PC becomes irrelevant, I suspect Microsoft has other ideas.

The very essence of PC are the countless different hardware configurations – Something that was the thorn in Microsoft side for the longest time: It turns out it’s quite hard to make something run rock-steady in 100 gazillion different computers. What this also means is that there are thousands of different display sizes and setups out there. Windows used to work around this problem by having toolbars and, well, application windows. Metro will have none of that – The applications run full screen, end of story. To up the ante, Microsoft even demoed Windows 8 running on 82-inch touch display. How the hell do you work around that?

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Maa

06

Dissection of Windows 8 Metro UI – 8 features

ui/ux / windows8
Metro UI

So, Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out. We already know that Windows 8 plays nicely with touchscreens, hardly surprising as it was designed from the day 1 to be touchscreen driven, but how about the good ol’ mouse & keyboard?

As it’s Windows 8, 8 features seems appropriate. So, without further ado – Dissection of Windows 8 Metro UI.

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Lok

07

Some articles recovered. Yay! \o/

Yleinen

Managed to recover few articles through WaybackMachine. <3

Decided to release them all, unedited and raw… (thus, there is “slight” possibility for typos and the likes)

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Lok

03

HTML5 Goodness, Part II – Symbolistic

HTML5 / webapp
Symbolistic

This here is a HTML5 game, made by yours truly. I originally made in few hours for 10k competition (Game entry on 10k), and decided to publish it on Mintusability as well. Specially, as it turned out 10k doesn’t allow Google Web Fonts, and instead forces everyone to use Typekit, so I was forced to release a Arial version of the game (yuck). Personally, I find this limitation rather weird, as Typekit allows only one domain (which should be the 10k domain) or you end up shelling cash-money to them, whereas Google Web Fonts allows them fonts to be used where-ever you feel like. Sounds like win for me.

Anyways, Symbolistic is a simple shape matching game, where you have to match the shape with two separate symbols, that when joined, create the shape in question.  There is a catch though, as the clock is running down and only way to turn it back for few seconds is to match another set of shapes, which in turn brings more symbols to the table. So be quick, survive and proceed to brag your scores to your friends! Tech-wise, Symbolistic does not use any external libraries, goes well under 10k even when unpacked and is even fully offline capable.

The game can be found from http://mintusability.com/symbolistic

More pictures after the break.

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