Fat Folder Design | JavaScript

November 12, 2011July 31, 2014

Improve iOS application responsiveness

If you’ve been working on an application (either web based or wrapped on in a cocoa layer) and you’ve noticed that it just seems slower than a native app then your not alone. I was experiencing this a while ago and wanted a decent way to fix it. After reading up the iOS developer guidelines and playing around a bit I found the reason, and a fix.

The cause of the problem is simple, the system is waiting. When you tap the screen it fires off a series of events, but not back to back. The <code>onclick</code> event, the one that most the web uses, it delayed a bit. This is done so the system has a chance to check for various gestures, primarily double click which zooms. The firing order goes something like this:

touch start, as soon as your finger touches the screen.
touch end, as soon as your finger leaves the screen
mouse down, no less than 350 milliseconds after touchstart
mouse up, about 5 milliseconds after mouse down
click, 1 millisecond after mouseup

I’ve uploaded a page that shows the delays, you can check out the Fire Order Example here. There are two solutions to this, first is the overkill method, simple fake a click every time you touch the screen, something like this:

$('*').bind('touchstart',function(e){
	$(this).click();
	e.preventDefault();
});

$('*').bind('touchstart',function(e){

$(this).click();

e.preventDefault();

});

That should work just fine, but personally I think it’s a bit overkill, instead I usually declare each click area with an initial control init. If your building an app with a lot of different inputs and want to clare them on the button using the inline <code>onclick=””</code> trigger than that might just me your ticked if you want a bit of speed improvement. Now I havent’ tested that code but it should work, if not I can test a trigger function that will work, just leave a a note in the comments.

November 4, 2011July 31, 2014

Better flexible site layout with resize detection.

This is an update to a previous post located here: Flexible site layout with resize detection.

A while back I posted an article about a simple and quick javascript that would add or remove styles to whatever elements you want based on window width. This is a great way to make a single site compatible with multiple display types, everything from a phone to a desktop with an unreasonable large screen if you’d like. That code used an if statement, and was rather ineffective, I have since rewritten it to be easier to deploy to new themes and came up with this.

var sizeable = 'body,#master,#content,#posts,#sidebar,#footer,#comments';
var sizes = {'450':'phone','750':'tablet','1000':'desktop'};
$(document).ready(function(){
       $(window).resize();
});
$(window).resize(function(classes){
       $.each(sizes,function(k,v){
               var w = parseInt($(window).width());
               if(w>=k){
                       $(sizeable).removeClass().addClass(v);
               }
       });
});

var sizeable = 'body,#master,#content,#posts,#sidebar,#footer,#comments';

var sizes = {'450':'phone','750':'tablet','1000':'desktop'};

$(document).ready(function(){

$(window).resize();

});

$(window).resize(function(classes){

$.each(sizes,function(k,v){

var w = parseInt($(window).width());

if(w>=k){

$(sizeable).removeClass().addClass(v);

}

});

Snipplr: http://snipplr.com/view/60562/flexible-site-layout-with-resize-detection-now-improved/

Short, more concise, and easier to implement all you do is create an object with a simple {width: ‘style name’} format and the script will do the rest. It’s then up to you do add all the appropriate styles to your CSS document. This can of course all be done with CSS and the @media tag, but I prefer this method because it simple to deploy and it’s switches are much faster. As always leave a comment with any question or problems and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

November 1, 2011July 31, 2014

rgbaColorPicker updated to version 1.2

Another update to my color picker that adds a few feature to flesh it out. Now, you can manually enter colors if you want (sometimes it’s just easier if you know the color’s code to type rather than poke around and find), and when you select a color (or one is selected automatically, like when the script is first loaded and it selects the inputs value as a color) the cursors move to the color positions. I also disabled the autorun as it was buggy at best and didn’t really add much to the picker anyways, and of course, as with any update that changes implementation I updated the example docs.

Like always I have uploaded the newest version to github, you can find it on the the rgba color picker github project page or, if you have no interest in forking it or, you can simple download a copy on the rgba color picker git hub download page.

This will probably be the last update for a while, as with these final features I can’t think of anything else I want to implement, of course suggestions are always welcome either here or on git hub.