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to clocks and calendars for some specialized uses
Credit: See link next to each component
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Dynamic Drive has provided a dynamic, movable analog clock that stays in the righthand bottom corner of the page as users scroll the application. Now what possible use could this have other than gimmickry? As it turns out a couple of clients have needed exactly that type of functionality - as they scroll through their work, advisors want to record exactly how much time is spent on each activity. So we just added an onclick() event and logic and were away to the races - so to speak. That was exactly the other use - a client needed to keep track of how much time was being spent with each page so we switched the clock to be a timer - voila, done. The trade off ? This script eats up significant CPU time on 700MHz 256MB Pentium 3 - about 10-20%. |
| Mishoo-DHTML Calendar is one of the neatest flat (shown here) and/or popup calendars we have run across in a long time. Being cross-browser, it runs in Mozilla, IE and Opera. The install is simple and support for at least a dozen languages makes it easy to adapt to different locales. Users have 5 CSS templates for different calendar stylings; and of course if they are comfortable with CSS, they can customize the calendar look themselves. The pop-up version is also very versatile and competes very well with our previously shown popup calendars. Finally, the documentation on how to customize nearly everything is top notch. An excellent, free JavaScript component (and there is more, check out the website link above). | |
Time
- The Time in Plain English |
Plain English Clock inspired this bit of Wordsmithing Clock work. Would this be the first clock we have demo-ed not to use CSS ? Well not CSS but DOM programming gets this <DIV> block to change itself every two minutes or so-ish. |
Once again we find ourselves spending more time on dates, clocks and calendars. The problem is that these components are just now reaching maturity, especially the clocks and calendars. The fact that CSS and DOM has matured in the Opera and Mozilla browsers also helps - users have an alternative browser when IE just refuses to work (as we found in trying out a number of very innovative calendar components that IE just would not support smoothly).
The other factor at work here is the need to supply more programs that do calendaring and project management support services. Be these to-do lists, tasks schedules, or meeting plus co-ordination lists - having good calendaring and database/table capabilities is becoming more important than ever. Unfortunately, the direct connect of database with JavaScript is better through third partry tools like Trolltech's QSA or Macromedia's Flash ActionScript (JavaScript clone) than from mainstream JS.