Fat Folder Design | JQuery

December 16, 2011July 31, 2014

Mobile Safari Webkit Flicking Animation Fix

Back from a little vacation/job change/illness, lets get back to it.

While developing a web based app with some seriously smooth animations behind it I noticed that they would flicker every time they started. Initially I thought it was due to the animation enhancer I had installed. The jQuery animation enhancer seamlessly changes the traditional jQuery animations with the CSS3 animations. On a desktop browser this has mixed results, with safari being faster and chrome being slightly slower, but on an iOS device (in this case an iPad) it was much much faster. Continue reading “Mobile Safari Webkit Flicking Animation Fix”

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.