jQuery's $(selector).position().left Sometimes Fails in Firefox, Chrome Browsers - javascript

I have a content slideshow:
slide container
|--> wrapper
|------> slide1, slide2, etc.
that works as simple as calculating wrapper's position X and slide's position X to determine where to slide the wrapper for the next/previous slide to show up within container's viewport. It's pretty straight forward.
For Firefox and Chrome I am using CSS3 transform and transition-duration to animate the slides. Everything works perfect. Almost.
The problem is only when I click next button very fast. I am using jQuery's
$(selector).position().left
to read the slide's position X (left) and position becomes 0 (instead of expected, say, 300px). I do have a flag isAnimating to prevent users from going too fast but that does not help either. It does prevent from scrolling content too fast but position left may still be 0 as if something else is causing it to fail to determine.
I did a brief search and discovered that if it was image being loaded, some browsers would fail to determine its position until loading is over. However, each slide has an image but inside of it. The slide's CSS seems to have all widths and margins set fine.
The question is why may this be happening based on the scenario I described and possibly what can be improved to determine position X at all times for Firefox, Chrome browsers?

I've decided that if offsetLeft is not reliable for me at all times, I could use width of an element and its index position within container to figure out position X
var newWrapperPos = undefined;
$(lotWrapper).children('div').each(function(index){
if($(this).attr("id") === "slot"+id){
var width = $(this).width();
newWrapperPos = index * width;
return false;
}
});
//now I can shift wrapper to position = newWrapperPos
Sorry I couldn't share the code - it is a bit time consuming to rip off all pieces of functionality involved. But if somebody has a better answer, let me know. For now this works fine for me.

Related

How to increase speed of mousemove/clientX/Y and applying a transform?

I have built a WordPress theme. I came across a website that created a div to follow the user's cursor. The div was enlarged smoothly when the user hovers over a button or a link.
I want to add this nice functionality as an optional feature.
I added a div to the web page, #ambition_cursor and added some basic styling. The div now shows like a blue circle. The circle has position fixed to the top left corner of the site. The position can be changed by adding a CSS translate property.
I managed to make it work with the following code:
var ambition_cursor = document.getElementById("ambition_cursor");
function ambition_mouse(e) {
var ambition_cursor_x = e.clientX; // Get the horizontal coordinate
var ambition_cursor_y = e.clientY; // Get the vertical coordinate
var ambition_cursor_pos = `translate(${ambition_cursor_x}px, ${ambition_cursor_y}px)`;
ambition_cursor.style.transform = ambition_cursor_pos;
}
window.addEventListener('mousemove', ambition_mouse);
The big downside here is the lag (?). There's quite a big delay, especially when moving the mouse around very fast. You can try it out on this site. I also put the situation in a JSFiddle; although the delay doesn't really happen there.
I didn't apply yet much styling (the default cursor is visible, so you can get a better idea of the real position). I first want this to work better, before I spent much time on that.
How can I increase the speed of this, so that the div position follows the mouse more accurately? I'm a beginner, so I don't really know which JavaScript optimisations I should make.
Current code is JavaScript, but jQuery is also an option.
Many thanks in advance!
Update: example how it looks on my computer.
All elements on the page have a transition applied. Remove/override this style and the delay goes away (tested).
As an alternative to the great answer of Joseph Atkinson:
var ambition_cursor = document.getElementById("ambition_cursor");
function ambition_mouse(e) {
ambition_cursor.style.left = e.clientX + 'px'; // Get the horizontal coordinate
ambition_cursor.style.top = e.clientY + 'px' ; // Get the vertical coordinate
}
window.addEventListener('mousemove', ambition_mouse);
See: https://levelup.gitconnected.com/use-javascript-to-make-an-element-follow-the-cursor-3872307778b4
I visited the site example, cracked open the dev console, and found throttled(20, ambition_mouse) It is not a performance issue, and the solution is to not throttle the events. It was too smooth to be a performance issue, which gave me the first clue it had to be an accidental/deliberate effect.

JavaScript scroll based animation is choppy on mobile

I have 2 divs (left and right) and i want to scroll the left based on the right.
https://jsfiddle.net/3jdsazhg/2/
This works fine on desktop, but when i change to mobile, it's not smooth anymore...
This can be noticed very easily, by changing
_left.style.top = _content.scrollTop - (_content.scrollTop * ratioLeftRight) + 'px';
to
_left.style.top = _content.scrollTop + 'px';
Where it should act as a fixed positioned div
I would like to know the exact reason why this isn't smooth... I know that it's not the animation. Simple animation on the div is smooth, the issue comes up when it's based on scroll.
How can i make this animation smooth?
It's probably choppy because it's being fired ALOT when being scrolled, in fact i'm pretty sure IOS mobile pauses the javascript execution whilst the user is scrolling.
Instead I'd suggest using an interval, you could tweak the time between each interval to what feels good for your use-case.
Although it may seem intensive that it's firing this logic every X millisecond when using the scroll event you could be firing the event off hundreds of times per second, which is going to be far more intensive and noticeable to a user using a device with limit processing power.
(function () {
var interval = null,
//Currently set at 0.4 seconds, play with the code
//and change this value to see what works best for
//this use-case
time_between_interval = 400;
setInterval(scrollLogic, time_between_interval);
function scrollLogic () {
//The function body of what you're assigning
//to the scroll event.
}
//I have omitted clearing the interval but you would want to do that, perhaps on page change, or something.
//clearInterval(interval);
})();
I finally managed to think out a solution.
From my point of view, i'm guessing the mobile view fires the scroll event less often and because we are scrolling the wrapper, we first scroll the whole page and then scroll back with js the left part and because it's different from the desktop version, this issue becomes visible...
The solution was to change the left side to fixed position, and substract from the top instead of adding to it.
_left.style.top = -(_content.scrollTop * ratioLeftRight) + 'px';

Maintaining page view on window resize in a responsive website

Situation:
Suppose we are reading the content somewhere down the page that is built to be responsive. Suppose also that we resize the browser window to a smaller size and that some content above get extended down due to the thinner width, hence making the whole page longer. Then as we resize, whatever content we are looking at will get pushed down the page accordingly.
Example:
Suppose we were to look at the Helper classes section in this page. Then shrinking/expanding the window a sufficient amount moves the bit we were reading down/up the current view.
Prompt:
Is there any way we can fix this? I.e. maintain our current view of the page regardless of what happens to the contents above it when we resize the window.
Thoughts:
I am thinking that we could at least start with javascript and put an event on window resize. Then automatically scroll the page to the top-most element that was in our view on event fire. I don't know how this will affect the performance, however, especially in bigger pages.
There's also the problem of refering to the top-most element in current view. The top of our current view might be cutting off the top portion of some elements, not to mention that there's usually more than 1 element layered on top of one another at any point within the page. The notion of top-most element I've mentioned is not very well-defined :(
Also rather than a problem of responsive design in general, instead it seems to me like this is a problem with the default scrolling behaviour of web browsers? Or perhaps I am missing some circumstances where the current behaviour is desirable.
Edit 2 4
Updated fiddle (see fullscreen result) based on Rick Hitchcock's solution's solution.
With jQuery:
//onresize:
var scrollAmount;
if (topNode.getBoundingClientRect().top >= 0) {
scrollAmount = $(topNode).offset().top - topNode.getBoundingClientRect().top;
} else {
scrollAmount = $(topNode.offset().bottom - topNode.getBoundingClientRect().bottom;
}
$(window).scrollTop(scrollAmount);
The fiddle is acting a bit weird even in the same browsers, I've uploaded the same script using a free hosting here.
Still need to incorporate the IE, Opera and Safari fix for elementFromPoint.
Edit 3
Thanks for all the help, Rick Hitchcock. Welcome to stackoverflow, by the way :)
The discussion is turning into cross-browser compatibility issues so I've accepted your answer since we've pretty much got the answer to the original question. I'll still be fixing up my implementation though. The focus being cross-browser issues, topNode criteria, and topNode cut-off handling.
An edge case
While playing around with it, I noticed that when we were at the bottom of the page in a small viewport, then switch to a larger viewport (let us assume now that some more elements that were originally above the element we saw now came into view due to shorter container from wider viewport) the window cannot always lock the topNode to the top of the viewport in such a case since we've reached the scroll bottom. But then switching back to the small viewport now uses a new topNode that got into the viewport during the switch.
Although this should be expected from the behaviour being implemented, it is still a weird side-effect on scroll bottom.
I will also be looking into this in due course. Initially, I am thinking of simply adding a check for scroll bottom before we update topNode. I.e. to keep the old topNode when we've reached scroll bottom until we've scrolled up again. Not sure how this will turn out yet. I'll make sure to see how Opera handle this as well.
Here's what I've come up with:
(function(){
var topNode;
window.onscroll=function() {
var timer;
(function(){
clearTimeout(timer);
timer= setTimeout(
function() {
var testNode;
topNode= null;
for(var x = 0 ; x < document.body.offsetWidth ; x++) {
testNode= document.elementFromPoint(x,2);
if(!topNode || testNode.offsetTop>topNode.offsetTop) {
topNode = testNode;
}
}
},
100
)
}
)();
}
window.onresize=function() {
var timer;
(function(){
clearTimeout(timer);
if(topNode) {
timer= setTimeout(function(){topNode.scrollIntoView(true)},10);
}
}
)();
}
}
)();
If there were a window.onbeforeresize() function, this would be more straightforward.
Note that this doesn't take into account the scrolled position of the element's textNode. We could handle that if only the height of the window were resized. But resizing the width would generally cause reformatting.
This works in Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari.
Edit
How it works
The code's closures make variables private, and the timers prevent the code from running constantly during scrolling/resizing. But both tend to obfuscate the code, so here's another version, which may aid in understanding. Note that the onscroll timer is required in IE, because elementFromPoint returns null when it used in onscroll event.
var topNode;
window.onscroll=function() {
setTimeout(
function() {
var testNode;
topNode= null;
for(var x = 0 ; x < document.body.offsetWidth ; x++) {
testNode= document.elementFromPoint(x,2);
if(!topNode || testNode.offsetTop>topNode.offsetTop) {
topNode = testNode;
}
}
},
100
)
}
window.onresize=function() {
if(topNode) {
topNode.scrollIntoView(true)
}
}
topNode maintains the screen's top-most element as the window scrolls.
The function scans the screen left to right, along the 3rd row: document.elementFromPoint(x,2)*
It doesn't scan along the 1st row, because when IE does scrollIntoView, it pushes the element down a couple pixels, making the top-most screen element the previous element. (Figured this out through trial and error.)
When the window is resized, it simply positions topNode at the top of the screen.
[*Originally, onscroll scanned left to right along the 11th row (in pixels) until it found an element with just one child. The child would often be a textNode, but that wouldn't always be the case. Example:
<div><ul><li>...<li>...<li>...</ul></div>
The div has only one child – the ul. If the window were scrolled to the 50th li, scanning left to right would incorrectly return the div due to the inherent padding of lis.
The original code has been updated.
]

How do I move the background image of a DIV based on the scrollbar movement?

I have been looking into parallax effects for vertical scrolling on my web page, and after some research, I'm not sure that what I want to do is technically a parallax effect.
From what I've seen, most parallax effects assume you want to be able to scroll indefinitely with many background images rolling by, or with huge images that repeat.
What I want to do is have the background of two DIVs be filled with a background image as the scroll bar reaches the bottom of the page. Note that I do not want the background images to stretch. I'm assuming to get the effect I want that these images would have a vertical height bigger than most people's viewport, and then their vertical position would change. When the user's scrollbar is at the top, a certain amount of the background is visible, and then it moves vertically to fill the background space as the user scrolls down.
Please see the image below for a visual explanation of the effect I hope to acheive:
The height of the veiwport will vary depending on the length of content inside the inner DIV.
My trouble is that if what I am trying to do is not exactly a parallax effect, then I don't know what else to call it, and my attempts to search by describing it keep landing me back at pages offering tutorials on parallax effects. So I've been stumped by a lack of terminology.
If someone could direct me to how I can control the vertical position of the background depending on the scrollbar position, that would be much appreciated. If this can be done with just CSS that would be great, but I'm assuming some Javascript would be required. A jQuery solution would also work for me.
Update:
After searching using the terms provided in comments, I've got the background image in the outer DIV to almost do what I want with the following code:
$(window).scroll(function () {
var yPos = $("#outerDiv").height() - ($("#outerDIV").height() * ($(window).scrollTop() / $(window).height()));
document.getElementById('outerDIV').style.backgroundPosition="0px " + yPos + "px";
});
It moves the background image in the right direction relative to the scrolling, but what it lacks is constraining that motion to within the viewport. Getting the right proportions based on the viewport and DIV sizes is proving to be just a little beyond my mathematical abilities.
For your requirement, you have to use a jquery parallax plugin to guide this activity, my best suggest it to use a Superscollorama and play with the elements as your wish...
As far as your question, Try this example,
controller.addTween(
'#examples-background',
(new TimelineLite())
.append([
TweenMax.fromTo($('#parallax-it-left'), 1,
{css:{backgroundPosition:"(0 -54px)"}, immediateRender:true},
{css:{backgroundPosition:"(0 -54px)"}}),
TweenMax.fromTo($('#parallax-it-right'), 1,
{css:{backgroundPosition:"(0 -54px)"}, immediateRender:true},
{css:{backgroundPosition:"(0 54px)"}})
]),
1000 // scroll duration of tween
);
You serial vice change as far as your wish...
Try practice this plugin, hope that works for you...
http://johnpolacek.github.io/superscrollorama/
Thanks...
Turns out what I want to acheive is possible with no special plugins, just some carefully thought out math. I did use a little jQuery syntax, but I don't think it's strictly necessary.
The code below has copious notes, so hopefully it's largely explanatory. In summary, you just need to find the position of the background image when the scroll would be at the top, and the position it would be if the scroll bar was at the bottom, and then you can use the percentage of the scrollbar's movement to work out where you are between those two points. It's a little tricker than just that, of course, in that you have to account for the difference between the total height of the scroll bar and where your DIV appears on the page and a few other adjustments, but the details of what I did are below.
What I've done here is just for the "outer DIV" that I described in my question. To get a background to move like the "inner DIV" I described, you'd have to modify the code, presumeably by reversing a few parameters. I haven't done that yet, but it seems like a straightforward task.
Hope others find this code useful. If anyone has suggestions on how it can be made more efficient or better, please let me know.
function moveBG(){
// imageHeight is not the total height of the image,
// it's the vertical amount you want to ensure remains visible no matter what.
var imageHeight = 300;
// Get the maximum amount within the DIV that the BG can move vertically.
var maxYPos = $("#outerDIV").height() - imageHeight;
// Get the amount of vertical distance from the top of the document to
// to the top of the DIV.
var headerHeight = document.getElementById("outerDIV").offsetTop;
// Calculate the BG Y position for when the scrollbar is at the very top.
var bgTopPos = $(window).height() - headerHeight - imageHeight;
// I don't want the image to wander outside of the DIV, so ensure it never
// goes below zero.
if (bgTopPos < 0)
{
bgTopPos = 0;
}
// Calculate the BG Y position when the scrollbar is at the very top.
var bgBottomPos = $(document).height() - $(window).height() - headerHeight;
// To prevent the BG image from getting cut off at the top, make sure
// its position never exceeds the maximum distance from the top of the DIV.
if (bgBottomPos > maxYPos)
{
bgBottomPos = maxYPos;
}
// Subtract the top position from the bottom, and you have the spread
// the BG will travel.
var totalYSpan = bgBottomPos - bgTopPos;
// Get the scrollbar position as a "percentage". Note I simply left it as a
// value between 0 and 1 instead of converting to a "true" percentage between
// 0 and 100, 'cause we don't need that in this situation.
var scrollPercent = ($(window).scrollTop() / ( $(document).height() - $(window).height()));
// The percentage of spread is added to the top position, and voila!
// You have your Y position for the BG image.
var bgYPos = bgTopPos + (Math.round(totalYSpan * scrollPercent));
// Apply it to the DIV.
document.getElementById('outerDIV').style.backgroundPosition="0px " + bgYPos + "px";
}
// Place the BG image correctly when opening the page.
$(document).ready(function() {
moveBG();
});
// Make it update when the scrollbar moves.
$(window).scroll(function () {
moveBG();
});

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! :)

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