Recently I’ve fallen in love with node.js a web server written in JavaScript. Ok it’s not really a web server, it makes IO functions available to JavaScript code in a completely non-blocking way! What does that mean? It means it’s incredibly fast. Yeah ok, how fast is incredibly fast I hear you saying. Right now [...]

$(document).ready(function(){ //Turn all the select boxes into rating controls $(“.rating”).rating(); //Show that we can bind on the select box $(“#serialStar2″).bind(“change”, function(){ $(‘#serialString2′).text( $(‘#serialStar2′).serialize() ); }); }); What An easy to use rating control. It takes a normal select box, and turns it into a rating that your users can click on. The select box is [...]

I want to talk a little bit about scope. Normally, scope is an easy concept, but there are a few little twists and turns in Javascript that make scope more complicated than it would seam. First, some basics.

What: A plugin for jQuery that makes serializing input elements easy. Once serialized you can send the elements back to the server with AJAX. Why: There is a big problem with jQuery’s built in $.serialize() method. It only uses the input elements name attribute. In practice I found that the name attribute is rarely used, [...]

If you’ve played around with the demos, then you might have noticed a little bug. If you click down in one square and let the mouse up in another square, the square you clicked down in will stay green. I haven’t addressed this issue in earlier examples because it’s not actually a bug. What I [...]

Last time we managed to create a very simple grid and change colors when you clicked on a cell. But, being a first attempt the grid wasn’t flexible and it had a lot of duplicated code. In this post we are going to improve it.

I’m going to need a Grid, so let’s start with a simple grid. A 2 by 2 grid will work just fine. There’s three ways to draw the grid, one is to draw filled rectangles, another is to just draw the outlines of the rectangles, and finally we could just draw a few lines. It [...]

One of the biggest problems I’ve been having with taking the KnitProject to the next level is drawing with JavaScript. This is where the Canvas element comes in. If you’re an IE user you can leave right now, Unless you download some plugin, none of this will work. Frankly I don’t care about IE and [...]

I’ve been working on the Knit Project application because I need to have it done by xmas. I ran in to a problem once I started to run it as an Adobe AIR application. (It’s stupid to call it ‘Adobe AIR’ because AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. So I’m really saying Adobe Adobe Integrated [...]

Welcome to Zen Software.*note: I know that some may dissigree with the way I am using the word “Zen” I am using it in the meaning of simple and without excess. My goal is to develop simple applications that focus on getting the job done. I want to move away from all of the features [...]