YUI Hidden Treasures: Selector - the Fire from Heaven

While there are many many reasons to use YUI libraries, you probably know about the most popular features or perhaps are stuck on your favorite JS library. Or, perhaps you are new to DHTML development and are just not quite sure which one to try out. My goal with these posts is to jump into the thick of YUI and bring back some gems from the depths.

One gem which almost outshines them all is something that you may not know even exists inside YUI. It's called Selector and consists of code that allows you to use CSS3 style selectors to grab a hold of DOM nodes. Imagine if the DOM was a database and Selectors are the SQL statements to access various pieces and parts.

Doesnt sound too intersting? Well with today's standards of using classnames for states and unobtrusive javascript, you can use Selector to do such things as grab all A tags that are children of your sidebar class and add a title attribute for accessibility. Or use the powerful attribute selector to make divs that are 300px wide be green. All kinds of really interesting possibilites open up.

So, if you have been stuck on YAHOO.util.Dom.get, give Selector a try.

Switched to Aptana Studio - so should you...

I've been a long time Eclipse user - despite it's sometime slowness and high learning curve. This patience has paid off for me many times as I've moved from place to place and computer to computer, as Eclipse runs fine on Mac, PC, or Unix (I think). Anyway I've been using plain vanilla Eclipse for a long time with some essential extensions like subclipse and I have been toying with Aptana off and on. Today I shelved my old Eclipse build and switched completely over to Aptana Studio. (No, I'm not getting paid by them, I don't even think they know I exist, nor does it matter). With CSS, JS, DHTML, and Adobe AIR editing as well as version control with Subclipse Aptana is a true killer developer tool for Ajax developers. If you havent tried it out, I recommend you give yourself a day or so to get accustomed to the way things work.

If I had one request it would be I wish that Aptana would give you an option to download a version their tool with Adobe AIR and subclipse already pre-installed. As it is, you have to go through the awkward update process to include those features. It's not a big deal however once you learn how to add extensions to (Eclipse) Aptana.

Nine Paths to Indie Game Greatness

From Rampant Games comes a short article commenting on Gamasutra's article about 9 Paths to Indie Game Greatness. Read his article first before jumping to Gamasutra - especially for folks with time issues.

Geeking out: Free Subversion Hosting

It is interesting that I discovered this by clicking on an ad, however this service is really cool. Once I discovered subversion + subclipse for eclipse I've never turned back from writing code to a repository instead of just my local file system. This site oozes polish and ease of use. Basically it's a site that hosts an SVN repository for you - and if you know much about SVN you will immediately see the value of that. Check it out (pardon the pun).

More Zynga announcements

From the mashable post:


Zynga, the developer of games for social networks, has launched Game Center, an API for getting your games exposure through Facebook. The API allows you to integrate what Zynga calls “the SocialBar” into your applications, which is essentially a way for developers that partner with Zynga to cross-promote their games. For example, you may see games that your friends are playing, or new games that have been recently added to Zynga’s network.

What I've Been Doing for the Past 5 Months..

You've probably already heard about it - but if not - this is the site I've been pouring my heart and soul into for the past 5 months. It's a great site and I'm very proud of it. Imagine a Yahoo site you'll actually visit and find cool stuff every day. There are tons of javascript , CSS, and HTML tricks, workarounds, and techniques. I hope you like it as much as I do...

YUI in AIR - a "complex" example

Dav Glass has taken his "complex" example and ported it to Adobe AIR 1.0. The possibilities open up like a huge field of flowers.

Adobe Launches AIR 1.0!

It appears that the beta period for Adobe AIR is over and 1.0 is finally out. I for one am pretty excited about this, but not for the reasons that probably many folks are. I dont care that much about flash, or even Flex, although Flex is pretty snazzy. (*sigh* Laszlo, you coulda been a contender) Instead, I think that having the ability to create desktop apps using just HTML and Javascript is totally the way to go. While AIR does not hold a monopoly on web apps via DHTML, it does present a really nice way to allow both cross domain api access and local file system writing.

Anyway, if you do any DHTML work or care about the social web at all - you'll owe it to yourself to download AIR 1.0 and get to building apps with it.

I hope Aptana releases an AIR 1.0 compatible Aptana Studio soon.

YUI Hidden Treasures: YUI file hosting

There are many hidden treasures in YUI - and given that I've spent alot of time messing around with the code, I feel obliged to share what I've learned (and continue to learn). I've talked about how YUI can make web development easier using javascript and CSS, and now I want to tell you that you can use YUI without having to download a single file or upload a bunch of code to your server. Instead, you can actually access and use the YUI libraries directly from Yahoo!'s servers. Using the YUI file hosting service you are able to tap into a powerful and reliable server which services files for Yahoo's own sites as well.

Another side effect of this YUI hosting is that you are able to go back in time if you need to and access older versions of YUI. Say you've built a DHTML application on version 2.1.3 or something, and depend on the quirks of that specific version. You can use this hosting to fetch those versions or simply place the urls directly on your server.

Another great use of YUI file hosting is for testing. You can create test pages quickly, or even create a bookmarklet which can dynamically embed YUI files on any page.

I encourage you to take advantage of this feature.

Ojay: YUI Development Made Easy

YUI is by far my favorite web library - as you obviously know. One issue some folks have with it is the awkwardness of the syntax -- foo.bar.baz.bat() . This new YUI wrapper shrinks everything into one and allows you to create very concise code that still taps into the power of YUI. Check it out.

Web RPG's

I'm starting a new side-blog called Web RPGs.
It'll be located here: http://webrpg.blogspot.com/.
I'm posting here to petition readers of this blog to send me links to any web-based
rpg's that you play or know about. I plan to write up descriptions and reviews
of as many web based rpgs that I can find, as I really enjoy games like this. So, send me your favorite web rpgs urls! Email me at triptych at gmail dot com.

Raptr - a new game service platform

Much like Steam, it appears that Raptr will provide behind the scenes game updating and other social type stuff. Check out the article from Techmeme.

A "YUI" for CSS

One of the coolest hidden features of YUI that I've yet discovered is the the YUI Base CSS. You might be familiar with CSS reset code - which does things like make every browser have the same margins and padding for all elements, remove bullets, and other items which basically force all browsers to display elements in their most primitive state. This RESET makes webdev's life so much easier because you will be dealing with one set of display problems versus 3 or 4. CSS reset is nice but only goes so far. It's like making the forest even by chopping down all the trees. YUI Base brings back the types of display you are expecting such as bullets in lists, and for elements, etc. Only this way you can be pretty well assured that they will appear uniformly across all browsers. This may seem like a lot of work just to get your links and tables to look "the same", but it is essential to most web work nowadays that you create interfaces that are uniform regardless of browser types.

In the same way that YUI normalizes many of the javascript interfaces to DHTML methods and such, YUI Base makes it much less painful to build CSS based websites with relative ease.

I heartily recommend you check out this relatively new and "hidden" feature of YUI.

The Hidden Treasures of YUI

I will be over the course of the next few weeks exploring the amazing capabilities of the YUI libraries. YUI fulfills the promise of a platform for the web. It not only makes straight the crooked road of browser support and bugs, it also provides an excellent, free, and open platform to develop your next web app upon. Look for more interesting posts soon.

Phun - 2D physics sandbox

If you have ever played with those various "sandbox" games you know basically what this is about. However this a step up from those flash games into a full fledge application with tons of interesting features. You'll find yourself spending way more time playing around with this than you might imagine.

Battle for Social Gaming

From Techcrunch comes an article about two social gaming platforms that are going to compete for your time and your development skills ... its a great time to be a game developer - especially for the web.

What's Happening at AW.COM

So, you've heard me talk about projects off and on alot here at aw.com. What happened? Did they all just fade out? Well, yes and no. I am concentrating right now on porting the greate JavascriptGameLib over to modern js standards. I'm also working on a number of web based games that will also use this framework. In addition I'm beefing up my Adobe AIR skills by creating a nice script editor. With these fundimentals down, I'll be able to create games for the web and many widget engines - perhaps even to Facebook and beyond.

So, it may seem like nothing's happening, but eventually, you'll start to see the fruits of my late night Full Throttle soaked labors.

20 Free Tutorials to Create Your Own Flash Game

If you are like me, I need lots of tutorials in order to understand something. This set of tutorials for flash should help you get started in building flash games.

Interview: Indie MMO Lila Dreams Designer

An interesting interview from some very creative folks. From the story:


Creatrix Games, the creators of indie MMO Lila Dreams, has no use for traditional wisdom and has created a game that seems designed specifically to flout every convention the industry has so far created.

Nanobots - Nitrome

Nanobots is a Spore like game (well, at least Spore when you are a tiny single celled organism) that pits you against different colored microscopic enemies. The interesting thing is that you can only take out one color at a time, and the means by which you dispatch each color is different. Definitely a game worth poking around with.

Yahoo! Media Player

It's really something quite revolutionary if you think about it. Imagine if you could bring up a media player on any blog or website and play the content in the page without plugins and such...

From the site:


A revolutionary and easy to use music player that
plays audio on your website.

* Adds audio to your site with one line of HTML
* Uses simple, easy-to-hack HTML instead of complicated proprietary markup, ushering in the REAL Media Web
* Magical floating design never gets lost, is available when you need it, gets out of your way when you don't need it
* Automatically finds all audio links on your page, turning your page into a playlist
* Plays all your blog entries with a single button click
* Allows you to put the play buttons where they belong: IN CONTEXT
* Keeps the user in the page rather than sending them away to a media player
* Picks up your images and adds them as cover art
* Requires no download, install or maintenance

Idea: Code-By-Post

I was wondering the other day about all these folks who have lived their experiences on the web via blog posting. They fire up their favorite blogging tool, and create stories and articles via simply choosing some options on a web page and typing in a few sentences in a text field. I began to wonder: "What if creating a game (specifically an RPG) could be as easy as posting to a blog?" It got me thinking about a new way to create content and apps via "post". It would not be a way similar to traditional programming. No matter what you posted, you'd still have a running "app". However via your posts you could add content such as (in a game) dungeon maps, characters, character profiles, dialogs, etc etc. You might use tagging to designate which area you were updating or adding to. This may seem like perhaps coding via a database, and perhaps thats right, but the idea would be to have a running app that you could modify and enhance just by sending "posts" to it. Very non-programmer and requiring alot of up front work... Basically imagine merging Inform7, Blogger.com, RPGMaker, and RIA web game development into one...

Privatepaste.com - you own personal code sharing site

This is a great application for sharing code with other folks, publicly or privately via ecryption. It even does things like foo.bar.privatepaste.com so you can have your own sorta namespaced site. It also does syntax highlighting and line numbering. Kinda cool!

Metaprogramming Javascript

What is metaprogramming? It's basically code that generates code. Check out this very interesting slideshow about metaprogramming in javascript.

Buzzword - the MSWord KILLER

I heard that Adobe bought this company, and I can understand why. If you have a network connected machine, there's no longer any reason to have to fire up MSWord any longer. With sharing and review features, this word processor is simply amazing, and really drives home the whole RIA concept in a big way.

Life's a Game and Then You Die

Here's the blurb from the site:


Charlie Stross lives in Edinburg, Scotland, where he writes science fiction. He won a Hugo for his 2005 novella, "The Concrete Jungle." Readers of Locus Magazine selected his most recent book, Accelerando, as the best science fiction novel of 2006. His next novel, Halting State, will deal with the impact of future massively multiplayer games on society and is due out by the end of 2007. In this premier of GuildCafe's PlayerVox section, Charlie shares his predictions on where MMOGs might take us over the next two decades.

iClone - make your own 3d movies

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a movie director? Someone who controls all your actors, props, stage elements, etc? Well this app might be for you. It's one of the first apps I've seen that is specifically designed for machinima /3d realtime films.

Dogma: Old School DnD Game

Here's a great snippet from this article:


Right on! My group sometimes busts out the old-school DMG for a few rounds of what we call Dogma. You roll 3d6 6 times, those are your stats. Decide on class. Roll for hit points. Roll for money. Buy some gear. Bang, you’re in the game. No backstory, no bullshit, just pop, there you are.

The GM uses the random encounters and dungeons in the back of the DMG. If you make it to third level, you get an alignment and a name (you even get to pick your own name!). If you die, you just immediately roll 3d6 6 times, etc, until you pop back into the game again.

The DM’s role is to abide by the decisions of the almighty Gygaxian algorithms, and to discourage players from actual role-playing until they’ve ‘earned it’ at third level. In practice, Dogma is fast-paced and not entirely unlike a game of fantasy Quake. In the right hands, it can be very, very funny… well, funny if you’re a dork, anyway!

Protector: Tower Defense meets RPG

Every so often I'll run across a game that brings together some really great concepts from different genres. Like Puzzle Quest for instance. This game from Kongregate is called Protector, and it has aspects of both the "tower defense" style games and a more traditional RPG. Now if they could include some dungeon crawling and some tactical aspects this could be a real genre-busting game.

Javascript: Add and Remove HTML Elements with Javascript

Dustin Diaz has an excellent article about how to add and remove elements via Javascript. It sounds easy perhaps, but the article talks about it in a sensible and comprehensive way.

Video Game Speed Runs

Think you are a gaming god? Think again. These folks use every trick in the book to beat or get to the end of many popular video games. You have to wonder if they are using emulators or some trickery to get to the finish line in incredible times.