Tag Archives: javascript

Use location.hash to pre-select a jQuery UI tab

I have noticed quite a few people asking how to set a default tab during page load using the jQuery UI Tabs Widget. My method is as follows…

<script>
$(function(){
 $('#tabs').tabs({
  selected: (location.hash && parseInt(location.hash.substr(1)) != 'NaN') ? parseInt(location.hash.substr(1)) : 0
 });
});
</script>

I am checking the url for a hash value (eg: mypage.htm#3). If one is found and it can be parsed to an integer, it will use that number for the selected tab, otherwise it defaults to zero.

jQuery UI Tabs Widget documentation

If you are not familiar with the short-hand if/else syntax above, here is an example…

variable = (condition) ? true : false;

Written long-hand it would be…

if (condition) {
 variable = true;
} else {
 variable = false;
}

Adding mouse events to table rows using jQuery

In my example I will only be modifying the row’s css classes. The behavior would be very similar to what you may already be familiar with in phpMyAdmin’s interface.

<script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" /></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
 $('tr').hover(function() {
  $(this).toggleClass('highlight');
 });
 $('tr').click(function() {
  $(this).toggleClass('selected');
 });
 $('tr:even').addClass('odd');
 $('tr:odd').addClass('even');
});
</script>

Everything should be pretty easy to understand except for the last 2 addClass commands. jQuery’s “:odd” and “:even” selectors behave differently than you may expect. You could assume the “odd” selector to start at the “first” row but that is not the case (an array’s first element zero-index unless otherwise defined). Unless I included a heading row, my “first” row is actually an even row since it is referenced as an array and has an index of zero. That’s why it looks like I am doing it backwards 😉

Open all external links in a new window using jQuery

In the following code we set the “target” attribute to “_blank” for every anchor that has an “href” attribute starting with “http(s)://”…

<script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js" /></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
 $('a[href^="http://"],a[href^="https://"]').attr('target','_blank');
});
</script>

Most examples of this type only check for links starting with “http”, this of course would cause internal relative links such as “httpd_info_page.html” to open in a new window. This is why I check specifically for the full strings.

jQuery Preload and Swap Navigation Images

UPDATED CODE: IMPROVED jQuery Image Preloader with Rollover Effect (extension independent)

I have been researching Javascript libraries quite a bit lately and have decided on jQuery. Don’t ask me to say why it is better or worse than the other libraries out there. After reading the documentation I just happen to prefer it.

Suprisingly enough, one of the most common things Javascript is used for is navigation rollovers. Swapping an image source using markup attributes such as onmousover and onmouseout is not difficult by any means. We have all done it the “old” way and most of us still do, but there is hope!

I normally use unordered lists for my menus, but for simplicity’s sake, and no need to reference CSS rules, here is an example of a very basic menu.

<div id="navWrapper">
 <a href="page1">
 <img src="../assets/images/page1.png" /></a>
 <a href="page2">
 <img src="../assets/images/page2.png" /></a>
 <a href="page3">
 <img src="../assets/images/page3.png" /></a>
</div>

Now what we would usually do is add “onmouseover” and “onmouseout” events to each anchor (link) and an “id” attribute to each anchor’s child image. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to clutter the (X)HTML with javascript? There must be a better way… this is the thought that started me on my introduction to jQuery 🙂

Using only the markup above and the Javascript referenced below, we can achive the same result of my previous Javascript image preloader/swapping function post. Continue reading

Set element’s CSS min-height using JavaScript minHeight

Recently I have been doing a lot of work on new sites that incorporate fixed-position footers (similar to the Facebook chat bar). A few examples sites are: Power Core USA and Douglas Stevens, MD (both of which I coded, graphic design by Brand Chemist). I ran into an issue with Power Core layout where the main content borders were not reaching the footer on larger displays in pages with small amounts of content (eg: not enough to activate scrollbars). So I ended up writing a quick JavaScript function to set the minHeight property of the DIVs causing the issue. Continue reading

Javascript Image Preloader with Image Swapping Function

In this post you will find a simple image swapping function that will work for all images that need a hover effect.

The ‘img’ argument is required of course. I can either be a reference the the image object itself (eg: swapImg(this)) or a string (eg: swapImg(‘ImageID’)) if calling the function from somewhere other than within the <img> tag. If no arguments are passed, it aborts execution. If a string is passed, we first make sure that getElementById is supported. Then we check to make sure the ID passed is valid, of not we return.

After ‘img’ has been checked and confirmed, we move on to the 2 optional arguments. The ‘find’ argument (case-sensitive) indicates the string we are looking for at the end of the image src attribute. If the string is found, we know that the image is currently in the ‘over’ state and we replace ‘find’ with ‘repl’ to return the image back to it’s normal state. On the other hand, if ‘find’ is not located, we rebuild the src attribute and insert ‘repl’ at the end of the image url (before the file extension) to activate the hover state. Continue reading

XHTML compliant external links based on anchor href attribute

The inspiration for this code was New-Window Links in a Standards-Compliant World. They were using the “rel” attribute and checking it for “external” to update the anchor’s target attribute. I lean towards not opening new windows unless it’s an off-site link to improve the user’s experience. Furthermore, I try to avoid adding more code when I can simply use an element’s existing attributes to serve my needs.

Continue reading