Entries for month: “October 2009”
Better Page Anchors with Anchor Slider Plugin
Here is another simple Mango Blog plugin that uses jQuery to make clicking internal links less jarring by adding an easing effect to select links. The obvious use is the back to top links found in footers, or at the end of long pages. Normally clicking one of these links jumps the page up or down to the specified section. The problem is that the quick jumping can be jarring and disorientating for some users.
Thankfully Cedric Dugas created a jQuery plugin that slides the page up or down with a nice easing effect so that users realize that they are in fact on the same page and not on a new one.
I really like these small finishing touches to sites. I feel that they make it a much more pleasurable experience.
The jQuery needed is only a few lines of code so at first it hardly seamed necessary to make a Mango Blog plugin from it. But after adding it to 4 sites in a row, I thought it made more sense to go ahead and make it a standalone plugin.
How to use it
Using the Anchor Slide plugin is easy. Just add a class of 'anchorSlide' to your links. That's It! jQuery does the rest! I recommend adding a new empty class in your themes adminEditor.css file of .anchorSlide {} so that you can use it within the TinyMCE editor.
Download Anchor Slider
- Plugin version:
- 0.1
- Last Updated:
- 2009-10-17
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/anchorslider.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Mango Blog · Plugins
Anchor Fade: Fade Link Colors using JQuery
I was reading the Janko At Warp Speed Blog the other day and he had this jQuery link fading script that he was showing off. I have no idea why this is useful but apparently another site: Retweetradar used it and Mr. Janko felt it was worth recreating. I still have no idea if I could ever see myself using this, but it was so easy to turn it into a Mango Blog plugin, that I did while I had 15 minutes of downtime while a movie finished transcoding. If anyone else can find a good use for then it was worth the 15 minutes I spent on it.
BTW: the video is still not done encoding. Quick, What else can I make into a plugin?
Auto Install URL
http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/anchorfader.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Mango Blog · Plugins
Unit PNG Fix
While creating a new MangoWear theme I needed a transparent png fix so I looked to Unit Interactive's unitpngfix.js. It's the easiest script to use and requires very little work to implement. Rather than manually adding the code to each theme I thought I would create a Mango Blog plugin so others can take advantage of it for your own themes.
If your not familiar with the unit png fix or why you need a png fix, here is a quick breakdown. Internet Explorer 6 does not support png's with an alpha transparency. So the genius minds over at Unit Interactive created a javascript that is really easy to use and fixes that lack of support for transparent png's Now you can create graphics for your page that have fades, drop shadows or anything with an alpha channel. Best of all it's only 1kb!
Unit PNG Fix will, by default, run automatically on all pngs on the page. If you wish, you can force the script to only fix specific elements by adding the class "unitPng" to those elements. This will cause only those specified elements to be fixed, and may help you work around any layout issues that the Unit PNG Fix may cause by default.
The Unit PNG Fix is not perfect. IE6 does not always properly with repeated background images. They talk about this on their website so if your needing this feature, check the Unit Interactive site for technotes and updates.
Download the Unit PNG Fix Plugin
- Plugin version:
- 0.1
- Last Updated:
- 2009-10-17
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/unitpngfix.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Mango Blog · Plugins
Juitter Plugin For Mango Blog
I read about Juitter this morning and thought it was a really cool twitter widget and decided to make a Mango Blog plugin from it.
Juitter is a lot like my twitter plugin but it does a lot more. In fact I would say that it's an all around better replacement plugin. It's feature list is rather impressive and covers some of items people had requested of the twitter plugin.
For starters you can display search results in your feed. So if you want to monitor the latest buzz about #mangoblog or #iphone you can. You can even search for multiple words at a time! You also have the option to show messages that were sent to you. Pretty handy if you like to display your feedback to the world.
Some other neat features include the ability to show twitter avatars in the feed. Of corse the text only option is also available too. Juitter also has a bad word filter. Now you can keep it clean and avoid any PR fiascos.
A few additional notable features include:
- Choose whether to open links in a new window or in the same window
- Restrict searchs by language
- Automatic linking of URLs and users(@)
- Update the tweets list by clicking on a hash tag (#)
- Support to update the search word or user after loaded
- Do not slow down your page while tweets are loading
The two plugins have similar functions but are slightly different in what they can do. For some people the two plugins might work best when used together. So try it out and let me know how it work.
Download Juitter Plugin
- Plugin version:
- 0.1
- Last Updated:
- 2009-10-13
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/juitter.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Freebies · Mango Blog · Plugins
