Modifying a jQuery Plugin - jquery-plugins

I'm trying to modify Brian Reindel's Accessible News Slider plugin (sorry, it won't let me link to it and also to my work location), to allow a visitor to fill in multiple copies of a form, sliding back and forth between them. I need for the visitor to be able to add and delete copies of the form from the list. I've modified one of his examples and created a little function to add an element to the list. However, no matter how many times I call the function, it only adds one element, and the plugin is not aware of it; I can see it in the DOM Inspector, but that's it. What am I missing?

this is Brian. Since you're already using jQuery and the plugin, you would gain a great deal by using the library to append elements to the DOM within your custom function. I wanted to give you some guidance, since this is probably more work than you were inititally expecting. Here are some hopefully helpful tips:
The plugin calculates some wrapper
element widths based upon the number
of list items. If you add/remove list
items, then you would need to modify
the calculations that were made or
else it won't scroll properly. You'll probably experience the same types of issues for the click events on the next/previous buttons.
If you have events registered on
elements that you add/remove from the
DOM, then you will need to
re-register those events, since when
the elements are gone, so are the
events that were "bound" to them. It
doesn't look like this is your
problem though at this point.
If you're adding form elements to the
DOM on the fly using the "Add" link,
then the user's cursor focus is no
longer on the form elements, and the
slider is no longer really
accessible. As much as I love
plugging my own plugin, it was meant
mostly to demonstrate usable, custom styled accessible
JavaScript, and I'm not sure it is
flexible enough to do what you want
without some rework.
If you have more specific questions about how to do certain things to get you started on the right track, let me know, and I would be happy to help. Depending on how much you plan to use jQuery on your projects (and I highly recommend that you use it), try out the book Learning jQuery.

Related

Asynchronously loading drop down menu - Flutter

I am trying to build a form with a phone input that includes country codes. Essentially, I am trying to make something a lot like this:
I already found and cleaned a list of flags, countries, and their codes, and built the method that creates a DropdownMenuItem for an arbitrary index. I then construct a list of them and pass it to the DropdownButton widget. It's all very simple, so I don't think the code is necessary. However, because I have so many countries, and therefore menu items, the menu lags significantly when opening. So, I was wondering if drop down menus are capable of loading large numbers of widgets in a smarter fashion than it seems they do.
Can a drop down menu could load the first 10 or so widgets around the selected index and display them, as that is all that will be in view initially, and then load the rest of the widgets asynchronously? I suspect that this will require a custom drop down menu, but I am not very well versed in the implementation of Flutter's drop down menu, so I am unsure of how to proceed with this.
Any help is appreciated.
I don't think that "loading" is the actual problem here, more likely it's the rendering/building of the widgets. You can improve the situation by using something like a ListView.builder that builds items on demand.
It seems like the default dropdown system is not based on a ListView.
You can create your own version of the dropdown (like a complete customized copy of the classes), which will require quite quite a lot of work and research.
Or alternatively, use something like a SimpleDialog with an embedded ListView to display the list. Like this one for Android.

Multiple synchronized CKEditor instances on the same page?

I'm working on a document-editing application using CKEditor, where the user can open multiple documents side-by-side in a pair of editor instances.
Most of the time, the user will be editing two different documents, but it's also possible that the two editor instances might contain different views of the same document. That makes things tricky, since I'd like to changes in one editor instance to be immediately reflected in the other instance.
Without hacking the CKEditor core, is something like that possible?
If not, would it be possible to write a plugin that would provide that kind of functionality?
What about if I was willing to get into the core code and hack around a bit? How difficult would it be?
This is a very similar case to a collaborative editing like Google Docs allows. The only differences are that you won't need to synchronize this via network and that it's very unlikely (if not impossible) that the same documents will be modified by two users at the same time. This makes things simpler... a little bit.
A year ago me and my colleague (we are both CKEditor core devs) took part in Node.JS Knockout and our plan was to create a collaborative editor based on CKEditor. It was only 48h, so the result is not impressive, but it worked. The source code is here.
The main problem you'll have is applying changes from editor A to editor B without breaking a caret position in editor B. Basically, you cannot just take data from editor A and set them in editor B, because everything in editor B will be reset including scroll position and caret. Unless this is not a problem, but I assume it is.
So you would need to:
either find a nice algorithm for extracting changes (like diff, but working on a DOM tree, not an HTML string) made in editor A and an algorithm to apply them to editor B (and this is what we implemented on Node.JS Knockout),
or find a way to guess caret position after resetting data in editor B; for example you can remember the caret context in editor B before setting data and try to find it in data that will be loaded.
Both ways are doable, but the first way will give better results if you'll implement it well. However, if your you don't know enough about DOM and contenteditable, then this task may overwhelm you. In this case I would advise to block possibility of opening one document twice.

pivot with in Panorma ....swipe both together

when i use pivot with in the panorama .pivot are used as a gallery view. i want to move pivot when i swipe it .but the problem is this because of both panorama and pivot are the same gesture event so both are they move .
i want swipe only my pivot view .
I would like some sample code or any other suggestion to do this.
so please give me a solution for doing this and
also give me a link where i easily understand this. Thanx in advance
You shouldn't have a Pivot in a Panorama control. End of discussion.
I believe it is achievable, because I've already solved similar issues with having WebBrowser control inside a custom horizontal-scrollable overview container like Pivot/Panorama, but believe me, it is NOT worth it. I've had to dig very deep into the visualstructure of the controls and attach my own manipulation-handlers to their viscera, manually choose which horiz/verti events to pass and which to cancel, and so on. This is not so easy, takes a lot of time, and doesn't guarantee that on the end you will have something behaving in a way you wanted to achieve in the first place. If you are not bound by some contract to preserve the shape of the UI, please, drop the idea and redesign your UI, just to save on your sanity and nerves.
But, if you are already insane or really want to dig where noone should, start on analysing your UI as a two rectangles: large pano and small pivo, and think which part should behave how on different possible touches/h-v swipes/h-v pans/pinches/so on. Write it down just to for reference, or soon you will probably start making small mistakes that will interfere with your understaning of the flow of the events.
I've checked the version I have, and "my" Panorama uses internally the UIElement.ManipulationXXXX events. In that case:
Display visualtrees of your UI and try attaching manipulation-events to every control. In those events, write/log which control's which handler was invoked. Then make some swipe/scroll on your APP and observe events. Analyze how they were bubbling and try cancelling (e.Handled=true) the manipulation-completed and/or manipulation-delta events somewhere between pivot and panorama. Your goal is to have the panorama see that e.Handled=true, while your pivot must see e.Handled=false. Your Pivot will probably see the event sooner than the Pano, so that point should be relatively easy.
If it fails to work, then you should check your version of the Pano, and check how it detects movements. If, for example, it uses the GestureListener - try the same trick with it. Etc.
And remember, you can always make your own horizontal-overwiew-container that will look like Pano, behave like Pano, and that will work with Pivo better - because it will be your code and you will tell it what and when to move. if you want to go this way, start on google and check all the preliminary Panorama previews that random people have published before that control was published by MS.

Windows form with many controls UI pattern

I have a form with almost 60 controls on it and the client wants all that information to be fillable on one form, because all that is related to one document. Are there some usable patterns to do that? Some ways of dealing with such problem i see:
put many controls on one page with vertical/horizontal scrolling(for example i hate scrolling, dont think that decision is suitable).
create tab pages for sections. But here is a small problem: the sections are not really there, because all information is related to one thing..Tho still i can create some sections, but must save/validate all tab pages at once.
Please suggest some common practices for such problems.
Well, my app has forms with far more than that on and so I feel your pain.
I would avoid scroll bars. It's much harder for the user to be sure that they have seen everything when you have scroll bars.
I'd recommend page controls (i.e. tabs). I'm sure if you try hard enough you'll find some sort of grouping that makes sense.
The other approach you sometimes see used which is similar to a page control is pages but with Next/Back buttons. The problem with this is that it is needlessly linear.
It's harder to advise on validation. If the validation only depends on the value of the single value in question, then validate on entry. Consider using colour highlighting rather than dialog boxes. Only show hard fail dialogs when the user tries to dismiss the dialog.
Validation for values whose validity depend on other user input is harder. I'd postpone that to dialog dismiss time.

Talking Among GWT Panels using UIBinder Layout

New to GWT here...
I'm using the UIBinder approach to layout an app, somewhat in the style of the GWT Mail sample. The app starts with a DockLayoutPanel added to RootLayoutPanel within the onModuleLoad() method. The DockLayoutPanel has a static North and a static South, using a custom center widget defined like:
public class BigLayoutWidget extends ResizeComposite {
...
}
This custom widget is laid out using BigLayoutWidget.ui.xml, which in turn consists of a TabLayoutPanel (3 tabs), the first of which contains a SplitLayoutPanel divided into WEST (Shortcuts.ui.xml) and CENTER (Workpanel.ui.xml). Shortcuts, in turn, consists of a StackLayoutPanel with 3 stacks, each defined in its own ui.xml file.
I want click events within one of Shortcuts' individual stacks to change the contents of Workpanel, but so far I've only been able to manipulate widgets within the same class. Using the simplest case, I can't get a button click w/in Shortcuts to clear the contents of Workpanel or make WorkPanel non-visible.
A few questions...
Is ResizeComposite the right type of class to extend for this? I'm following the approach from the Mail example for TopPanel, MailList, etc, so maybe not?
How can I make these clicks manipulate the contents of panels in which they do NOT reside?
Are listeners no longer recommended for handling events? I thought I saw somewhere during compilation that ClickHandlers are used these days, and the click listener "subscription" approach is being deprecated (I'm mostly using #UiHandler annotations)
Is there an easy way to get a handle to specific elements in my app/page? (Applying the "ID" field in the UI.XML file generates a deprecation warning). I'm looking for something like a document.getElementById() that get me a handle to specific elements. If that exists, how do I set the handle/ID on the element, and how can I then call that element by name/id?
Note that I have the layout itself pretty well nailed; it's the interaction from one ui.xml modularized panel to the next that I can't quite get.
Thanks in advance.
If you don't have a use for resizing events than just use Composite
What you want is what the GWT devs called message bus (implemented as HandlerManager). You can get a nice explanation in the widely discussed (for example, on the GWT Google Group, just search for 'mvp') presentation by Ray Ryan from Google I/O 2009 which can be found here. Basically, you "broadcast" an event on that message bus and then a Widget listening for that event gets the message and does its stuff.
Yep, *Handlers are the current way of handling events - the usage is basically the same so migration shouldn't be a problem (docs). They changed it so that they could introduce custom fields in the future, without breaking existing code.
If you've set an id for any DOM element (for Widgets I use someWidget.getElement().setId(id), usually in combination with DOM.createUniqueId()) you can get it via GWT.get(String id). You'll get then a RootPanel which you'll have to cast to the right Widget class - as you can see it can get a little 'hackish' (what if you change the type of the Widget by that id? Exceptions, or worse), so I'd recommend sticking with MVP (see the first point) and communicating via the message bus. Remember however, that sometimes it's also good to aggregate - not everything has to be handled via the message bus :)
Bottom line is I'd recommend embracing MVP (and History) as soon as possible - it makes GWT development much easier and less messy :) (I know from experience, that with time the code starts to look like a nightmare, if you don't divide it into presentation, view, etc.)

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