Angular 4

Read more about the article Changing Dimensions of Search Box Dynamically in Susper

Changing Dimensions of Search Box Dynamically in Susper

Earlier the Susper search box had a fixed dimension. When a user types in a query, the dimensions of the search box remained fixed. This approach resulted in several issues like:

  • Matching the dimensions of the search bar following the market leader.
  • When dimensions are dynamically changing, it should not disturb alignment w.r.t tabs in the results page.

What actually happens is, when a user enters a query, the search box quickly changes its dimensions when results appear. I will be discussing below how we achieved this goal.

On the home page, we created the dimensions of a search bar with 584 x 44 pixels.

On the results page, we created the dimensions of search bar 632 x 44 similar to market leader:

How we proceeded?

Susper is built on Angular v4.1.3. It automatically comes with a function ngOnInit() whenever a new component has been created. ngOnInit() is a part of life cycle hook in Angular 4 (in Angular 2 as well). The function is called up or initialized when the component is rendered completely. This was the key for changing dimensions of search bar dynamically as soon as a component is created.

What happens is when a user types a query on the homepage and hits enter then, results component is created. As soon as, it is created – ngOnInit() function is called.

The default dimensions of search bar have been provided as follows:

search-bar.component.css

#nav–group {
  height: 44px;
  width: 584px;
}
When the homepage loads up, dimensions by default are 584 x 44.

search-bar.component.ts

private navbarWidth: any;
ngOnInit() {
  this.navbarWidth = ‘632px’;
}

search-bar.component.html

We used [style.width] attribute to change the dimensions dynamically. Add this attribute inside input element.

<input #input type=“text” name=“query” class=“form-control” id=“nav-input” (ngModelChange)=“onquery($event)” [(ngModel)]=“searchdata.query” autocomplete=“off” (keypress)=“onEnter($event)” [style.width]=“navbarWidth”>
As soon as results component is loaded, the dimensions of search bar change to 632 x 44. In this way, we change the dimensions of search bar dynamically as soon as results are loaded.

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Read more about the article Aligning Images to Same Height Maintaining Ratio in Susper

Aligning Images to Same Height Maintaining Ratio in Susper

In this blog, I’ll be sharing the idea how we have perfectly aligned images to the same height in Susper without disturbing their ratio. When it comes to aligning images perfectly, they should have:

  • Same height.
  • A proper ratio to maintain the image quality. Many developers apply same width and height without keeping in mind about image ratio which results in:
    • Blurred image,
    • Image with a lot of pixels,
    • Cropping of an image.

Earlier Susper was having image layout like this:

In the screenshot, images are not properly aligned.  They are also not having the same height. We wanted to improve the layout of images just like market leaders Google and DuckDuckGo.

  • How we implemented a better layout for images?

<div class=“container”>
  <div class=“grid” *ngIf=“Display(‘images’)”>
    <div class=“cell” *ngFor=“let item of item$ | async”>
      <a class=“image-pointer” href=“{{item.link}}”>
        <img class=“responsive-image” src=“{{item.link}}”></a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
I have created a container, in which images will be loaded from yacy server. Then I have created a grid with an equal number of rows and column. I have adjusted the height and width of rows and columns to obtain a grid which contains each division as a cell. The image will load inside the cell. Each cell consists of one image.
.grid {
  padding–left: 80px;
}
.container {
  width: 100%;
  margin: 0;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

After implementing it, we were facing issues like cropping of the image inside a cell. So, to avoid cropping and maintain the image ratio we introduced .responsive-image class which will avoid cropping of images inside cell.

.responsive–image {
  max–width: 100%;
  height: 200px;
  padding–top: 20px;
  padding: 0.6%;
  display: inline–block;
  float: left;
}

This is how Susper’s image section looks now:

It took some time to align images, but somehow we succeeded in creating a perfect layout for the images.

We are facing some issues regarding images. Some of them don’t appear due to broken link. This issue will be resolved soon on the server.

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