It’s been forever since I’ve posted here, due to being busy with a great responsive design project.  However, the project is over now, and now that the holidays are behind us I’m focussing on a lot of the little projects I’ve had on the back burner for awhile.

One of those is dealing with something that came up on my last contract: the jQuery “jumping” bug with slideUp, slideDown and slideToggle. If you’re not familiar with it, check out Remy Sharp’s great screencast on the issue.

So I’ve made my first attempt at writing a jQuery plugin from scratch to deal with this issue. The result is BetterSlide which is intended to be a replacement to the native slideUp/slideDown/slideToggle calls.  Complete documentation is below.

You can download the plugin from GitHub.

This plugin is very much in beta, so I’m looking for any and all feedback, especially bug reports, you can throw my way. Thanks.

Documentation

BetterSlide Plugin
Replaces jQuery’s native SlideUp/SlideDown/SlideToggle functionality to eliminate the “jump” bug.

Version 1.0b
Updated 2012-01-17
License: MIT (https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/master/MIT-LICENSE.txt)

Usage:
$(‘element’).betterSlide( { options } );

BetterSlide Options

action: ‘toggle’; Slide action desired. Also accepts ‘up’ or ‘down’

duration: 400; time in milliseconds for animation. Also accepts ‘fast’ (200 milliseconds) and ‘slow’ (600 milliseconds)

easing: ‘swing’; Desired easing effect. Supports any easing effect you have installed, including jQuery UI effects.

callback: ”; Function to perform upon completion of the animation

Alternate Usage (to more closely match native jQuery commands):
$(‘element’).betterSlideUp( { options } );
$(‘element’).betterSlideDown( { options } );
$(‘element’).betterSlideToggle( { options } );

The same options are recognized, except for the “action” option.

Hi there, fellow web developers. I stopped testing for Internet Explorer 6 a while ago, simply because I had enough trouble managing virtual machines to handle testing in IE7, IE8 and IE9.  Now with my primary client fully switched over to IE8, I find myself rarely, if ever, even testing in IE7.  In fact, I removed that VM from my VMWare Virtual Machine Library just yesterday (although I did not delete the VM’s file off my hard drive).

So my question to you all is: do you still test in IE7? Or is it only 8 and above for you guys now?

Thanks for your input!

“Do You Still Test in IE7?” continues…

HTML5 goodness is all around us now, with its semantic nature in elements such as <article> and <section>. But when it comes to using HTML5 in websites for the U.S. federal government, there are some major obstacles in the way.

“Why HTML5 Isn’t Ready for Government Prime Time” continues…