jQuery for Designers - screencasts and tutorials

A common question for beginners coming to jQuery: "Is there a function to return true or false if an element exists?" Not really, but there is a (very simple) way to find out.

Last month I showed you how to create a spy effect as seen on the first version of QuickSnapper (though they've since changed their site design with to release the release of Little Snapper). However I did promise I would demonstrate how to ajaxify the spy.

Ajax is made incredibly simple with jQuery. There's a number of helper functions to get in to the nitty gritty of Ajax, but if you want something that's quick and simple to get going with the .load function is the best place to start.

As the first in the series of API screencasts, but also as a good beginners tutorial, this short episode shows the difference between filter and find.

A few years ago Digg released a very cool little visualisation tool they dubbed the Digg Spy (it's since been upgraded to the Big Spy). Recently Realmac Software released the site QuickSnapper to accompany LittleSnapper. It's the QuickSnapper site (the left hand side) that makes use of the similar spy technique that I'll explain how to produce.

Making use of the overflow and scrollLeft DOM property to scroll elements is a much more effective use of the CPU, over animating using CSS top/left. So this episode of J4D demonstrates the same effect used in two completely different ways. The second was a request from Trevor Morris who's involved with/runs Geek in the Park. He asked whether the techniques I used in a jQuery marquee plugin I wrote recently could be used to smooth out CPU spikes that were occurring on his site when the header pattern flowed.

jQuery has got good base level support for effects out of the box. Setting them up and using them to reveal and hide elements is exceptionally easy. However, on more than one occasion I've found that after creating a sliding effect, the animation jumps on completion. Having found the cause, I thought it only fair to share and explain why it's happening and how to avoid it.

This episode is revisiting the image cross fade effect, in particular Dragon Interactive has a beautiful little transition for their navigation that some readers have been requesting. Greg Johnson takes it one step further to implement this method using jQuery and the methods shown here.

Although Panic didn't really invent the effect, the sliding panels on the Coda is great implementation of this effect. This article will pick apart the pieces required to create the effect, and how to better it.

A frequent query and request I receive (and have myself) as a developer is: "how can I fade one image in to another?". In particular, image rollovers are so 90s - we want rollover transitions!

Coda is one of the new web development tools for the Mac - and it's popular amongst designers and developers I know. Panic (the developers of Coda) are also known for their sharp design. In particular, Jorge Mesa writes to ask how to re-create their 'puff' popup bubble shown when you mouse over the download image. In essence the effect is just a simple combination of effect, but there's a few nuances to be wary of.

The Apple web site 'product slider' is similar to a straight forward gallery, except that there is a slider to navigate the items, i.e. the bit the user controls to view the items. Simple stuff. jQuery already has the plugins to create these effects so we don't have to go about creating them ourselves from scratch.

This tutorial will show how to load images in the background, and once loaded handle the event and create your own response. This is similar to the lightbox effect, except we have full control of the load event.

Tabbing has been common place on the Internet for some time now. Today web sites will make use of tabbing without the page having to reload with the addition of JavaScript. For this tutorial I have created two screencasts demonstrating how to quickly apply a dash of jQuery to different layouts of markup, which, if the markup is well designed, it will automatically degrade nicely without JavaScript enabled. In a future article we will cover default browser functionality (i.e. supporting back, forward and bookmark buttons) and saving tab states.

Tabbing has been common place on the Internet for some time now. Today web sites will make use of tabbing without the page having to reload with the addition of JavaScript. For this tutorial I have created two screencasts demonstrating how to quickly apply a dash of jQuery to different layouts of markup, which, if the markup is well designed, it will automatically degrade nicely without JavaScript enabled. In a future article we will cover default browser functionality (i.e. supporting back, forward and bookmark buttons) and saving tab states.