Rethinking My Use of Modal Windows....

Hey Everyone,

Just thought I'd put it for the record, in case anyone else comes
along looking for this same thing, that I've found what seems to be
just the solution I was looking for!

http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001717.php

It's a pretty comic book-style dialog balloon (though upside-down! Do
Italian comics do it that way?? No matter, easy fix in GIMP or
Inkscape, I'm sure) and what's more, the code is simple enough that a
n00b like me can hack for my own purposes!

Indeed, there's even a very helpful -- structured, thorough, and n00b-
friendly -- explanation of how it works and how to use it.

Wow, the internet is so cool...wish the offline world worked the same
way! ^_^

On May 3, 4:47 am, Ben C <spams... (AT) spam (DOT) eggs> wrote:

On 2008-05-03, Jeff <jeff (AT) spam_me_not (DOT) com> wrote:

Prisoner at War wrote:
On May 2, 4:31 pm, Ben C <spams... (AT) spam (DOT) eggs> wrote:

Easily done.

I found this code athttp://colorado-springs.pm.org/balloonHint.html
but the site doesn't seem to provide a working example!

That's just a regular popup window.

Don't use a real modal window, instead use a "Web 2.0 popup".

Perhaps Ben will write a simple example for you, I'm too sleepy at
the moment to dig mine out.

Here you are:

http://www.tidraso.co.uk/misc/bubble/

I don't do much JavaScript usually so this is unlikely to be the best
way of doing it. And it probably won't work in IE.

Question: at the moment each <span class="bubble"> has to have a unique
id just so I can identify it in createBubble. What's the best way of
avoiding that?

For example can the JS just create a bubble on the most recently parsed
node? Then the position of the SCRIPT elements in the document would
contain all the information necessary about where to attach the bubbles.

GOOD GOD!!!

YOU, LIKE, SCANNED MY BRAIN!!!!

That's really scary stuff, man! Did you install some kind of spyware
on my computer through one of these newsgroups????

Holy cow, that's ***199%*** EXACTLY what I'd been looking for!!!

What is it you do for a living, besides practice remote MRI???

Any hot stock tips, BTW, Ben???

Holy cow, you must be a great person to have at a party! ^_^

Sorry I can't help you with your questions (even though I know you
weren't asking *moi*)...I'm going to go try to digest your script and
see if I can at least hack it for my purposes (namely, the "fade-
timeOut"), much less comprehend it....

Honestly, thanks, Ben. That's absolutely incredible. I'm putting you
and these newsgroups up in an "acknowledgments" page on my site...let
me know if you want a link to your blog or something; I'll put it in
there. That goes for all you folks who have helped -- you know who
you are. A seriously big thank-you. Wow.

On May 3, 5:59 am, Ben C <spams... (AT) spam (DOT) eggs> wrote:

Good idea. Then you can also use a cartoony font.

I can't help thinking that anyone sensible enough to worry about font
sizes and readability isn't going to be doing fading-out pop-up speech
bubbles in the first place.

Now now, don't be such a snob about it...I know it looks silly, but
hey, so are flowers!

Anyway, I promise to use them very judiciously...I was all set to go
with modal windows, then realized that they're too in-your-face,
freezing the browser like that, demanding an onClick to return to
normal viewing...so a dialog balloon is much better, you see...and
given the theme of my site, a comic book style one rather fits more
than not.

I definitely shan't be doing a "comic sans" font, though! Don't want
to get carried away here...actually, I will be trying to change the
colors of your balloons -- that's just too in-your-face-khaki, don't
you think! ;-)

Thanks again. Wow, you've just made my weekend, dude!!

On May 3, 5:51 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:

I was thinking this last. Perhaps, given the tricky nature of this task
and cost-benefit, just pics of text to go in pics of bubbles. And make
big enough for most people?

LOL, that's an idea! I'm still thinking in HTML terms, but I suppose
with CSS it's possible to, say, set up a <div> as a layer and have it
contain an <img> of the balloon with text -- would that be your
strategy? Using CSS to position the <img> precisely on the page, when
called....

--
dorayme

On May 3, 6:54 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:

Probably not! Also on the cards are animated gifs, positioned or
whatever. You could, I suppose, do all the fading in them...

Cards?

Confession, I went through a small love affair with the animated gif
once.

Of course, everybody did -- I particularly remember those mailboxes
set up to run like a mouth, flapping as if in gossip! They're still
hilarious, you know, like the "download-the-web" .gif on
w3schools.com....

And this talk of cartoons has reminded me. This was part of a long
story and I think I can do much better these days... but here are a
couple of oldies:

http://dorayme.890m.com/alt/pics/boastfulA.gif

and

http://dorayme.890m.com/alt/pics/proudZ.gif

For some reason, it looks a bit corny now to me. (Travis, you fancy
Flash geek, please don't laugh!)

Hey, that's really neat! I particularly liked the "boastful A"...wow,
some truly creative people here! So you folks are mainly graphic
artists and designers who picked up some scripting for web work,
right? I'm impressed. Me, I'm just a dabbler. I like intellectual
fun, even if it's too much for me most of the time!

--
dorayme

On May 3, 1:46 am, Jeff <jeff (AT) spam_me_not (DOT) com> wrote:

That's just a regular popup window.

Is it? None to be found on that site anyway, it seems. Wonder why a
Perl guy would call a JavaScript pop-up a "help balloon"...even HTML
alt/title attributes would better qualify!

Perhaps Ben will write a simple example for you, I'm too sleepy at
the moment to dig mine out.

Jeff

Dude, thanks for the assist! It's too bad his JavaScript isn't
accepted by IE7 at all ("object doesn't support this property or
method"); hopefully I can find a fix for that! Why does the IE DOM
seem to always be an issue???

Prisoner at War wrote:

Why does the IE DOM seem to always be an issue???

Because it's <slowly style="patronizing">special!</slowly>

Seriously, same reason we battle with it with CSS.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On 2008-05-03, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On May 3, 5:59 am, Ben C <spams... (AT) spam (DOT) eggs> wrote:


Good idea. Then you can also use a cartoony font.

I can't help thinking that anyone sensible enough to worry about font
sizes and readability isn't going to be doing fading-out pop-up speech
bubbles in the first place.

Now now, don't be such a snob about it...I know it looks silly, but
hey, so are flowers!

I don't mind if it's silly. It's your website, put whatever you want on
it.

Anyway, I promise to use them very judiciously...I was all set to go
with modal windows, then realized that they're too in-your-face,
freezing the browser like that, demanding an onClick to return to
normal viewing...so a dialog balloon is much better, you see...and
given the theme of my site, a comic book style one rather fits more
than not.

I definitely shan't be doing a "comic sans" font, though! Don't want
to get carried away here...actually, I will be trying to change the
colors of your balloons -- that's just too in-your-face-khaki, don't
you think! ;-)

You can probably also draw less wobbly balloons.

What you might want to do is to start the fade out on the mouseout
event. That way slow readers can hold the mouse on the element if they
want to read the text without it disappearing.

In article
<9f71d6e6-26f6-4896-8f41-595ee01f78b3 (AT) f36g2000hsa (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On May 3, 5:51 am, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:


I was thinking this last. Perhaps, given the tricky nature of this task
and cost-benefit, just pics of text to go in pics of bubbles. And make
big enough for most people?

LOL, that's an idea! I'm still thinking in HTML terms, but I suppose
with CSS it's possible to, say, set up a <div> as a layer and have it
contain an <img> of the balloon with text -- would that be your
strategy? Using CSS to position the <img> precisely on the page, when
called....

Well, you have noticed a site (bubble tooltips) that explains how to do
this stuff to your liking as you said in an earlier post. You need to
focus on one thing and perhaps you are diffusing your energies?

You can place a gif, or even an animated gif, in all sorts of places on
your webpage. It can appear not to have boxy dim by having transparent
edges. The question of how to so display such a thing on what trigger is
another issue and was being addressed by Ben.

--
dorayme

On May 3, 2:44 pm, Ben C <spams... (AT) spam (DOT) eggs> wrote:

I don't mind if it's silly. It's your website, put whatever you want on
it.

Well, you were suspicious of the sense in so doing. My webhost
http://webhosting.sitesell.com/sunnyside.html seems to share such
prejudices. They wouldn't tell me why .ani and .cur file formats are
not supported. They simply say "it was a policy decision that was
made." Like, no kidding (the question is, why not??).

Animated cursors are an important aspect of "branding." If my site
were about "everything blue" -- anything you want in blue, we have it
-- it would make sense to have a blue-colored mouse pointer, wouldn't
it? Little details like that show "intelligent design"...a certain
sensibility...akin to craftsmanship....

You can probably also draw less wobbly balloons.

Nah, they were lovely just so! The informal nature of them is
wonderful.

What you might want to do is to start the fade out on the mouseout
event. That way slow readers can hold the mouse on the element if they
want to read the text without it disappearing.

Indeed -- more pressing, however, is the fact that MSIE does not
accept it. Damn it, will no one stop Microsoft from wreaking such
havoc??? Where are all the eWarriors who battle so fiercely over top-
posting?? If only we could channel their passion towards Microsoft's
maverickism and anti-social behavior...isn't non-W3C-compliance a more
serious breach of netiquette?