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Basic JS - Is this function okay?

I have a carousel (Owl Carousel) with vertically centered controls. Because of the structure, I have to absolutely position the previous and next arrow. Because the page is responsive, their position is dynamic. The size of the controls may also change.
I've written a function that runs on load and resize. It gets the height of the image and the height of the controls, subtracts the latter from the former, divides by two, and then uses that number as the controls' margin-top.
It works, but I'm questioning if I'm getting and using all the variables correctly. Does JavaScript read in order? Where it runs the first line, then the next, then the next... I'm strong in CSS but JS has always been a crutch.
Can I write this more efficiently?
function centerCarouselControls() {
var carouselImage = $('.carousel-card > img');
var carouselControls = $('.owl-nav > div');
var carouselHeight = carouselImage.outerHeight();
var controlHeight = carouselControls.outerHeight();
var controlMargin = (carouselHeight - controlHeight) / 2;
carouselControls.css('margin-top', controlMargin);
}
$('.carousel-card > img').load(centerCarouselControls);
$(window).on('resize', centerCarouselControls);
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
I feel like this might be the type of question that gets flagged on here for not being specific enough. If that's the case, could someone please point me to a community where this would be more appropriate? Thanks!

In some browsers your code works like firefox 51, but it is more complete code this:
carouselControls.css('margin-top', controlMargin + 'px');

Print Only SVG from Browser

I'm working on a webpage that will dynamically render SVG graphics based on user interaction. Once complete, I would like the user to be able to print the graphics only - not simply print the webpage they reside on and the SVG along with it, but just the SVG. Also, the printed version will ideally be drawn slightly differently than the onscreen browser version. Is this sort of thing possible with current browsers and SVG?
In Java, I can provide either a paint engine or a print engine to my applications drawing routine, and this handles the same problem simply. I'm a novice to SVG, however, and I can't determine whether some similar mechanism exists.

You can use jQuery. Assume you have your svg in a DIV(svgDiv) in the web page, include a print button that calls the following, where the root svg has an id=mySVG, to get width/height, or use the svgDiv width/height. This will print the view that is currently in the svg window.
//---print button---
var printSVG = function()
{
var popUpAndPrint = function()
{
var container = $('#svgDiv');
var width = parseFloat(mySVG.getAttribute("width"))
var height = parseFloat(mySVG.getAttribute("height"))
var printWindow = window.open('', 'PrintMap',
'width=' + width + ',height=' + height);
printWindow.document.writeln($(container).html());
printWindow.document.close();
printWindow.print();
printWindow.close();
};
setTimeout(popUpAndPrint, 500);
};

You can call window.print to start the printing process from javascript.
You can make the printed and visible versions different using media queries E.g.
#media print { different css for print SVG }
If you don't want existing stuff on the page to print, use the media query to set it display:none or visibility:hidden.

change css on scroll event w/ requestAnimation Frame

I want to change the background color of in-viewport elements (using overflow: scroll)
So here was my first attempt:
http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/
As you see, there is a brief flicker of the previous color before the new color is painted. Others have had similar problems.
Following the HTML5 rocks instructions, I tried to introduce requestAnimationFrame to fix this problem to no avail:
http://jsfiddle.net/RETbF/
What am I doing wrong here?
Here is a simpler example showing the same problem: http://jsfiddle.net/HJ9ng/
Filed bug with Chromium here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=151880

if it is only the background color, well why don't you just change the parent background color to red and once it scroll just change it to pink?
I change your CSS to that
#dad
{
overflow-y: scroll;
overflow-x: hidden;
width: 100px;
height: 600px;
background-color:red;
}​
I remove some of you Jquery and change it to this
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
dad.css('background-color', 'pink');
});
And I remove this line
iChild.css('backgroundColor', 'red');
But is the Red color it is important that won't work for sure http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/5/

I like Manuel's Solution.
But even though I don't get what you're exactly trying to do, I want to point out a few things.
In your fiddle code, I saw that you included Paul Irish's Shim for requestAnimationFrame.
But you never use it.
(It's basically a reliable setTimeOut, nothing else) it's from frame based animations.)
So since you just want to change some CSS properties, I don't see why you would need it. Even if you want transitions, you should rely on CSS transitions.
Other than that your code could look something like
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
dad.css('background-color', 'pink');
eachElemNameHere.css('background-color','randomColor');
});
Also you should ideally not use something like that if you can help it. You should just add and remove class names and add all these properties in your CSS. Makes it work faster.
Also, again I don't quite get it, but you could use the jQuery function to find out each elements' position from the top to have better control.

Your problem seems to be that you only change the background color of the elements which have already been scrolled into view. Your code expects that the browser waits for your code to handle the scroll event before the browser redraws its view. This is most probably not a guarantee given by the HTML spec. That's why it flickers.
What you should do instead is to change the elements which are going to be scrolled into view. This is related to off screen rendering or double buffering as it is called in computer games programming. You build your scene off screen and copy the finished scene to the visible frame buffer.
I modified your first JSFiddle to include a multiplier for the height of the scroll area: http://jsfiddle.net/2YeZG/13/.
dad.bind('scroll', function() {
// new: query multiplier from input field (for demonstration only) and print message
var multiplier = +($("#multiplier")[0].value);
$("#message")[0].innerHTML=(multiplier*100)-100 + "% of screen rendering";
// your original code
var newScrollY = newScrollY = dad.scrollTop();
var isForward = newScrollY > oldScrollY;
var minVal = bSearch(bots, newScrollY, true);
// new: expand covered height by the given multiplier
// multiplier = 1 is similar to your code
// multiplier = 2 would be complete off screen rendering
var newScrollYHt = newScrollY + multiplier * dadHeight;
// your original code (continued)
var maxVal;
for (maxVal = minVal; maxVal < botsLen; maxVal++) {
var nxtTopSide = tops[maxVal];
if (nxtTopSide >= newScrollYHt) {
break;
}
}
maxVal = Math.min(maxVal, botsLen);
$(dadKids.slice(minVal, maxVal)).css('background', 'pink');
});
Your code had a multiplier of 1, meaning that you update the elements which are currently visible (100% of scroll area height). If you set the multiplier to 2, you get complete off screen updates for all your elements. The browser updates enough elements to the new background color so that even a 100% scroll would show updated elements. Since the browser seldom scrolls 100% of the area in one step (depends of the operating system and the scroll method!), it may be sufficient to reduce the multiplier to e.g. 1.5 (meaning 50% off screen rendering). On my machine (Google Chrome, Mac OS X with touch pad) I cannot produce any flicker if the multiplier is 1.7 or above.
BTW: If you do something more complicated than just changing the background color, you should not do it again and again. Instead you should check whether the element has already been updated and perform the change only afterwards.

jQueryui animation with inital undefined height

See the following fiddle:
[edit: updated fiddle => http://jsfiddle.net/NYZf8/5/ ]
http://jsfiddle.net/NYZf8/1/ (view in different screen sizes, so that ideally the image fits inside the %-width layouted div)
The image should start the animation from the position where it correctly appears after the animation is done.
I don't understand why the first call to setMargin() sets a negative margin even though the logged height for container div and img are the very same ones, that after the jqueryui show() call set the image where I would want it (from the start on). My guess is that somehow the image height is 0/undefined after all, even though it logs fine :?
js:
console.log('img: ' + $('img').height());
console.log('div: ' + $('div').height());
$('img').show('blind', 1500, setMargin);
function setMargin() {
var marginTop =
( $('img').closest('div').height() - $('img').height() ) / 2;
console.log('marginTop: ' + marginTop);
$('img').css('marginTop', marginTop + 'px');
}
setMargin();

Interesting problem...after playing around with your code for a while (latest update), I saw that the blind animation was not actually firing in my browser (I'm testing on Chrome, and maybe it was firing but I wasn't seeing it as the image was never hidden in the first place), so I tried moving it inside the binded load function:
$('img').bind('load', function() {
...
$(this).show('blind', 500);
});
Now that it was animating, it seemed to 'snap' or 'jump' after the animation was complete, and also seemed to appear with an incorrect margin. This smacks of jQuery not being able to correctly calculate the dimensions of something that hadn't been displayed on the screen yet. On top of that, blind seems to need more explicit dimensions to operate correctly. So therein lies the problem: how to calculate elements' rendered dimensions before they've actually appeared on the screen?
One way to do this is to fade in the element whose dimensions you're trying to calculate very slightly - not enough to see yet - do some calculations, then hide it again and prep it for the appearance animation. You can achieve this with jQuery using the fadeTo function:
$('img').bind('load', function() {
$(this).fadeTo(0, 0.01, function() {
// do calculations...
}
}
You would need to work out dimensions, apply them with the css() function, blind the image in and then reset the image styles back to their original states, all thanks to a blind animation that needs these dimensions explicitly. I would also recommend using classes in the css to help you manage things a little better. Here's a detailed working example: jsfiddle working example
Not the most elegant way of doing things, but it's a start. There are a lot more easier ways to achieve seemingly better results, and I guess I just want to know why you're looking to do image blinds and explicit alignment this way? It's just a lot more challenging achieving it with the code you used...anyways, hope this helps! :)

How can I resize a swf during runtime to have the browser create html scrollbars?

I have a swf with loads text into a Sprite that resizes based on the content put into - I'd like though for the ones that are longer than the page to have the browser use its native scroll bars rather than handle it in actionscript (very much like http://www.nike.com/nikeskateboarding/v3/...)
I did have a look at the stuff nike did but just wasn't able to pull it off. Any idea's?

The trick is to use some simple JavaScript to resize the Flash DOM node:
function resizeFlash( h ) {
// "flash-node-id" is the ID of the embedded Flash movie
document.getElementById("flash-node-id").style.height = h + "px";
}
Which you call from within the Flash movie like this:
ExternalInterface.call("resizeFlash", 400);
You don't actually need to have the JavaScript code externally, you can do it all from Flash if you want to:
ExternalInterface.call(
"function( id, h ) { document.getElementById(id).style.height = h + 'px'; }",
ExternalInterface.objectID,
400
);
The anonymous function is just to be able to pass in the ID and height as parameters instead of concatenating them into the JavaScript string.
I think that the JavaScript is fairly cross-platform. If you want to see a live example look at this site: talkoftheweather.com. It may not look as though it does anything, but it automatically resizes the Flash movie size to accommodate all the news items (it does this just after loading the news, which is done so quickly that you don't notice it happening). The resize forces the browser to show a vertical scroll bar.

I've never done it that way around but I think swffit might be able to pull it off.

I halfway looked at swffit but the height (and width sometimes but mainly height) would be dynamic - swffit let's you declare a maxHeight but that number would be constantly changing...maybe I could figure out how to set it dynamically. A great place for me to start though - thanks!

What I've mostly been using if for is to limit how small you can make a "fullbrowser" flash, and for that it works great.
Happy hacking!
(and don't forget to post your findings here, I might need that too soon ;))

SWFSize
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