open event webapp generator

Working with Absolute Positioning

During the past week, I have done a lot of work for making the feature that allow the users to view the schedule of events according to track and time. The toughest part was to have a headstart to think of the mockup that fulfills this criterion.

After the mockup, I started coding it and realized that I have to add CSS by using Javascript. The frontend needs to calculate the top of each pop-up that appears when the track is hovered and to append the box just below it.

a

The interesting part was to calculate the top each time the element is hovered and to place the box at the right position by using jQuery.

Position Absolute 

The difficulty becomes maximum when we use “position : absolute “. As, it takes the element out of the layer. The element with absolute positioning is difficult to handle when it comes to responsiveness. Here also the pop-overs showing the speakers are to be made with absolute positioning.

The code snippet shows the calculation for exact position of the pop-up box.

$(document).ready(function(){

 $('.pop-box').hide();
 $('.item').hover(function (event) {

 event.preventDefault();
 event.stopPropagation();
 var track = $(event.target);
 var link = track.children(0);
 var offset =$(link).offset();

 var position= offset.top-link.height()-30;
 if( $(window).width()<600){
 var position= offset.top-link.height()-48; 
 }
 if(offset.top){
 
 $('.pop-box').hide();
 var p=$(this);
 $(p).next().show();
 var posY = event.pageY;
 nextOfpop=$(p).next();
 
 var toptrack = position ;

 $(nextOfpop).css({'top':toptrack
                 });

 $(document).mouseup(function (e)
 {
 var container = $(".pop-box");

  if (!container.is(e.target) 
  && container.has(e.target).length === 0 && (e.target)!=$('html').get(0)) 
   {
   container.hide();
   }
   });
  });
 })

This code sets the value of top of the pop-over in the variable position and copy it to toptrack that is passed to CSS to adjust the top dynamically.

Responsiveness for top

I was struggling a whole day to find out the best possible way for the responsiveness of track page. Obviously, the difficult part was the recalculation of top with the screen-size. Currently I have used $window.width() to check the width of screen and adjust the top on mobile. But, it will include more complexity when it is done for other screen sizes rather than mobile.

 if( $(window).width()<600){
 var position= offset.top-link.height()-48; 
 }

The tracks page is ready now with both light and dark theme.

10.png

That’s how the position absolute is handled with jQuery. To remove the complexity, all the CSS except the calculation of top is written with SASS.

Continue ReadingWorking with Absolute Positioning

SASS for the theme based concept

Until yesterday, I was exploring all around the internet, to find the best possible way for the theme concept in the web app. The theme concept allows an organizer to choose the theme for the web app from the set of provided themes.

After some time, I realised that this awesomeness to the web app can be added by using Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets.

How SASS supports the theme concept?

 

In the web app, a folder name _scss is added which has the directory structure as shown

tree
_scss folder directory structure

There is a file _config.scss inside the _base folder that includes the SASS variables which are used in all the files after importing it.

Each of the SASS variables uses a flag !default at the end, which means it can be overwritten in any other file. This property of SASS leads to the theme concept.

//_.config.scss

@charset "UTF-8";
 
// Colors
$black: #000;
$white: #fff;
$red: #e2061c;
$gray-light: #c9c8c8;
$gray: #838282;
$gray-dark: #333333;
$blue: #253652;
 
// Corp-Colors
$corp-color: $white !default;
$corp-color-dark: darken($corp-color, 15%) !default;
$corp-color-second: $red !default;
$corp-color-second-dark: darken($corp-color-second, 15%) !default;
 
// Fontbasic
$base-font-size: 1.8 !default;
$base-font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Sans-Serif !default;
$base-font-color: $gray-dark !default;
 
// Border
$base-border-radius: 2px !default;
$rounded-border-radius: 50% !default;
$base-border-color: $gray !default;

The main file that includes all the required style is the application.scss. Here, $corp-color takes default value from  _config.scss. It can be overwritten by the themes.

//application.scss

@charset 'UTF-8';

// 1.Base
@import '_base/_config.scss';

/* Offsets for fixed navbar */
body {
 margin-top: 50px;
 background-color:$corp-color !important;
}

Making a light theme 

 

The light theme will overwrite the $corp-color value to $gray-light which is defined in _config.scss. This will change the background-color defined in application.scss to #c9c8c8. So, in this way a light theme is generated. The similar approach can be followed to generate the dark theme.

//_light.scss

@charset 'UTF-8';
@import '../../_base/config';
// 1.Overwrite stuff
$corp-color: $gray-light;

@import '../../application';

Making a dark theme 

 

//_dark.scss

@charset 'UTF-8';
@import '../../_base/config';
// 1.Overwrite stuff
$corp-color: $gray;

@import '../../application';

How to compile the CSS from SASS files ?

 

  1. We can easily compile these SASS files by using command 
    sass /path/application.scss /path/schedule.css

    For generating light theme and dark theme:

    sass /path/_light.scss  /path/schedule.css
    sass /path/_dark.scss  /path/schedule.css

Optimization of Code

 

SASS is very powerful for optimizing the code. It allows the concepts such as nesting, mixins which reduce the line of code. I have rewritten schedule.css into application.scss to make it more optimized.

/* Adjustments for smaller screens */

@media (min-width: 450px) {
 body {
 font-size: 14px
 }
 .session {
   &-list{
     .label{
         font-size: 90%;
         padding: .2em .6em .3em;
           }
         }
    &-title {
         float:left;
         width: 75%;
         }
    &-location {
         float: right;
         width: 25%;
         text-align: right;
        }
  }
}

Further Exploration

 

This is one of the ways to deal with the SASS structure, but there are other resources that can be helpful in dealing with SASS projects.

Also, check out, Jeremy Hexon article here.

Continue ReadingSASS for the theme based concept

Open Source Event App Development

Some background about myself, I am a 3rd year Information Technology student from JSS Academy of Technical Education, Noida, India. I love Front-end development and is currently working on an awesome project Open-Event .

The project will make it easier for the events, tech summits to create a web app and mobile app quickly by providing necessary information such as speakers for the event, sessions, tracks, location etc. The project itself consists of three core components :
1. Open-Event Organiser Server
2. Open-Event Android App
3. Open-Event Web app
It’s the end of community bonding period before the past week, which was the best time to get ourselves familiar with the practices of the community, understanding of the codebase, making new friends and setting up goals. I have already set up my goals and is working on Open-event-web app.

The first version of the web app is to make the web app functional by just uploading a JSON file, the second part is to make it sync with the REST API provided by the Orga-server. I with Arnav have created the User-Story for the web app. Also, I have created the data-flow for the work, we will be carrying forward.

I am having a good time, and will work hard to complete the goals of the project.

Thanks

Continue ReadingOpen Source Event App Development