Karl's Blog

I decided to have some fun with HTML5 canvas and Javascript, so why not develop a game. Well, I’m really happy with the decision. I realized that developing a game in a language gives you the opportunity to deal with really basic logical problem solving. Dealing with the dynamics of the moving ball and collision was so much fun. I’m in the process of getting it better, specially the collisions, they need some more work. I have to give some credit to the basic logic to this tutorial, but I basically didn’t like the code so I changed it a lot to be OO. Also the collision dynamics with blocks wasn’t great for something that should grow with more levels.

If you’re interested in trying it out you can play it here. Soon I’ll have more levels designed. Now if you want to get the Javascript and modify it or add more levels feel free to fork it on GitHub. I’ll add more comments to the code so it’s easier to understand.

If you’re a web developer that is interested in understanding more about Javascript I would definitely recommend developing a game, it’s fun and it will improve your skilss.

Thank you all for the feedback on this plugin. I fixed some bugs and made it compatible with the latest version of jQuery and jQuery UI. Also now in order to give more information about the image you can use the html attribute data-.

For those first visiting here, this is a Facebook like photo tagging plugin for jQuery, it’s mainly for tagging people into pictures but it can also be used for notes.

For more information on how to implement visit the jQuery Photo Tag plugin post.

Demo and unit testing
GitHub Project Home Page – On the download section you can find some examples on how your server responses should look like.
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Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming

I read the whole book even though I was interested in a few chapters. I would fully recommend for almost any level programmers. It starts with the very basics of JS, but it climbs to a good advanced level.

Javascript can be fun and evil, so I strongly recommend you always seek more knowledge on this language. If you read the article about learning jquery or js and realized you’re a great jquery programmer but doesn’t know javascript yet, this is a great book to start with.

Javascript is a language created for everybody: developers, designers, both advanced and beginners. That can be good and bad at the same time, what we can say is that it has been proven effective since is so widely used. The problem for advanced programmers is that it’s oversimplified and not strongly typed, at the same time, those two problems are the solution for designers and beginners. It makes it easy to get results without understanding what exactly is happening. But there are things in Javascript that need to be explained, someone cannot live their whole life without understanding what’s happening behind the scenes, it’s just not right. That’s why I’ll try to explain a few weird things that Javascript does to make it work for everybody. (more…)

Thank you all for the feedback on this plugin. I fixed some bugs and made it compatible with the latest version of jQuery and jQuery UI.

For those first visiting here, this is a Facebook like photo tagging plugin for jQuery, it’s mainly for tagging people into pictures but it can also be used for notes.

I still have to apologize for the lack of documentation, but I’m planning on keep working on it and hopefully I’ll have it ready soon.

For more information on how to implement visit the jQuery Photo Tag plugin post.

Demo and unit testing
GitHub Project Home Page – On the download section you can find some examples on how your server responses should look like.

(more…)

Last week I read an interesting post called Hiring Front-End Engineers, in this article Chris Zacharias talks about his experience on hiring Front-End Engineers for Youtube. Basically he’s saying how hard it is to find good professionals for this position. One of the reasons is that good Front-End developers must know JavaScript, not only jQuery.

Well, that made me think about what kind of skills should I focus on for my career. I would say that I’m a advanced JavaScript programmer, but I also can say that since I’ve been working with jQuery so much, I’m becoming an advanced jQuery programmer. And my question is: is that good or bad? (more…)

Today Bonzzay (The web development company I run together with 3 other partners) released the first Beta version of DecidoKit. It’s a social network linked with Facebook designed to help people make decisions. We are working on improvements and soon we will start releasing more features. (more…)

Today I just moved all the code related to the Jquery Photo Tag Plugin to GitHub. Actually it’s my first time with GigHub but I think we’re going to have a great time together.

GitHub Project Home Page

I’m really looking forward to get more developers onboard to keep updating this plugin. If anyone would like to help please contact me.

Update: Version 1.3 now compatible with jQuery 1.7 and jQuery UI 1.8. – release post.

This is a highly configurable photo tagging plugin. It has been used in Ikluu (Social Network for travelers). It’s primely for tagging people on photos but it can also be used to create notes, but you will need to adapt the form part a little bit. The code is really clean and easy to understand, it follows the jquery plugin recommendations. (more…)

I’m working on a social network project at this moment, I’m taking care of creating some  javascript (jQuery) + HTML + CSS components so the developers can use all those components without knowing why or how they work. One of the needs was to be able to create modal windows for warnings or even forms. (more…)