Using ES6 template strings to generate unique strings

The following technique is something that I found template strings in ES6 to be quite useful for. I needed to generate XML chunks (as a string) where each node had a unique ID every time the XML was generated.

Most examples of template strings I see around the web just use simple variables inside template strings. I found that you can also use functions that return a value, making the string even more dynamic.

I ended up writing a function that creates the string and inserts unique IDs in specific locations every time the function is called:

const generateID = () => {
  // ... some code to generate and return an ID
}

const getUniqueString = () => {
  return `id=${generateID()}`
}

getUniqueString(); // "id=dJsdnUSD"
getUniqueString(); // "id=5nd9gHfs"
getUniqueString(); // "id=vn9s8fFQ"

You can place ${generateID()} any number of times in the template string and in each location a unique ID will be inserted.

Now I can call getStringTemplate() and get a unique chunk of XML every time.

Using Cardboard Camera and A-Frame to create a simple WebVR scene

I have been playing around with VR a bit lately after getting a new Android phone (Nexus 6P), and I thought I’d share a simple experiment I did using Google’s Cardboard Camera app, and the WebVR library A-Frame.

The result of this will be a simple WebVR scene that displays the photo captured from Cardboard Camera in a scene that you can look around.
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Paint stencilling with HTML5 canvas

I have recently been playing around with re-writing my Spray paint stencils in Flash using JavaScript and HTML5’s canvas element. One thing I discovered is that since SVGs are natively supported in browsers I can have stencils scaled to any size and remain crisp, unlike the Flash version which used transparent PNGs.

I have implemented stencils, including having a muck layer, and stickers – graphics that you can place and cut out through stencils. When I first started playing around I was writing it all plain JavaScript, but eventually I converted everything over to TypeScript which allowed me to easily separate everything out into their own classes with event listening/dispatching capabilities. Almost mimicking the way things were written in AS3.

Below is a video of the early prototype, I will provide a live demo when it is more ready for public use.

Inspiring Inspiration #16

A collection of cool video, motion graphics and interface design.

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Automatic typography substitution

After reading the series of Death to Typewriters articles on Meduim, I decided to have a go at implementing their automatic character substition rules in JavaScript. Following the guide provided at Death to Typewriters: Automatic replacement and clean-up, I created a simple function that can be called as you type, or when text is pasted, into a text area. Certain character combinations and locations are looked for and replaced with other characters such as correct quotes, arrows and ellipsis. I have put the code up on GitHub with a little bit of documentation.

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New website for Nemen Visual

I have just launched a new website for Nemen Visual. The new site is a big departure from the old site which I created over 3 years ago. I took the redesign as an opportunity to explore some new techniques and modernise it a bit.
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Recreating the Apple Watch UI using a hexagonal grid

Building on the hexagonal grid from earlier, I have added a little JavaScript and have created an effect similar to the Apple Watch home screen UI.

Below is a video of it in action, I am using IE11 (metro version) on a Surface Pro 2 which I found to be the most performant for this effect. Chrome was janky as hell, and Safari on the iPad doesn’t like to do things while scrolling.
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Triggering a ‘finish’ event on an external video with Storyline HTML5

If you have at some point needed to use Articulate Storyline – you have probably come to a point where you want to murder everyone around you (not literally of course!) due to its ridiculous, quirky limitations. More often than not I find myself hacking the published code to make things works how I want.

One of the big limitations in Storyline is video – if you want to trigger something when the video starts or finished you must use the built in player. But the built in player cannot load videos from an external site (such as a streaming server – a common requirement) so you are left with using the ‘video embed code’ option, which doesn’t seem to allow custom embed codes – all I could get to work was YouTube and Vimeo. And even if you can get this to work you can’t add triggers to it for when the video ends.

I found a little hack which uses the Web Object and a custom video player in a HTML page. You can listen for the video complete event in the custom player then change a variable in the Storyline player. Then in Storyline add a trigger for when that particular variable changes, which will be when the video finishes.

Here’s how to do it.

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CSS Diamond grid

Following on from the last post I decided to play a bit more with the hexagonal grid and created a diamond grid. It works similar to the last grid except it uses squares rotated 45 degrees, so it is basically a regular grid tipped on its side with even-odd number alternating rows.

Here is a live demo of the grid:

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CSS Hexagonal packed grid

Most grids are square packed – that is each cell is stacked like a block which is great, but if you are after something slightly different maybe you should try a hexagonally packed grid. I will show you how to create a hexagonally packed grid using only CSS. But first, here is the difference between a square and a hexagonal packed grid:

packing

View demo

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