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The GX framework aims to become one of the best, full-featured, simpler and easier-to-use framework for creating animations in a Web page using Javascript. With the latest release GX has improved its powers dramatically, but there are a lot of new things to implement, including a solid alghoritm for handling all possibile CSS properties/values and particluar tecnhiques for handling each kind of multiple-element situations that could happen with a system for saving resources and improving performances.

Therefore, the main goal is to push GX in a new dimension of  Javascript animations frameworks with next release. 

However, there are a lot of things to do, besides developing the software: writing full detailed and downloadable documentaition, writing complex and detailed demos, handling the new Website that will be a lot more Web 2.0, handling the blog (currently not available) and so on. All these tasks are essential to improve the framework quality and the community quality: in a few words, for the software growth.

This is why we are looking for members that could help us out with GX production (yes, we are looking for a Dev Team). Currently we are looking for 3-4 members that should provide the following tasks:

• Creating demos
• Wrinting documentation (engine and relative syntax are already completed)
• Directing the new Website and the Blog (very important!!)
• Helping in the code/software production

If you are intersted in helping us out providing one or more of these tasks (and in sharing your knowledges for creating a new, better and amazing Javascript animations framework), do not reply to this post, but send a mail to riccardo.degni@gmail.com. Otherwise, if you have any question to expose, you can either send a mail or leave a comment directly here.

Until the Dev Team isn’t composed, the GX works are currently stopped.

Riccardo Degni

GX  

The new GX package is now available! This is a recommended upgrade for all users who have previously downloaded GX.

IMPORTANT: we’re building out a list of resources that use GX. Therefore, if you are using or will use GX for your Websites, projects and/or applications, please report them to us. It can either help us out to discover new features/usages and help you to share your works.

Now let’s see the new features!

GX Core

Multi-element animations

This new release of GX increases the internal power of the Core engine, for handling very complex DOM multi-element animations with single function calls.

While testing GX, Christop Stickel has noted that GX didn’t handle complex multi-element animations that needed mulitple DOM operations which may include the same elements.
For example, if in a page we have 3 divs, it’s perfectly legal to animate all divs simultaneously and a specific div, for example the one with the id “#el2″.
That element appears in both the two set of elements (”div” and “#el2″), so the second animation didn’t fire correctly.

Another case could be a multiple-element animation that involves the use of relative values.

This happened because GX haven’t been designed for handling multi-element animations. As I said a while ago, it would have been an additional task provided by a Plug-In.

By now this isn’t needed anymore: with the release 1.2 that feature is included directly in the Core engine. This is a very important point: first of all, since this a part of the Core, it’s available with all the GX extensions (as GX Extras). Secondly, you don’t have to worry about downloading a lot of scripts… it’s all in one place.

Read more…

GX, Javascript GX, Javascript, RD, Softwares 

Today there are two great news: either the version 1.1 of the GX framework and the its extension called GX Extras are now available. In this post I’ll expose either the major changesets that affected the previous version and the new features, and I’ll explain how to use them properly.

GX 1.1

This new release brings many changes, especially in the API usage/naming. Now the engine is more consistent and the size is.. smaller! Right, the incredible super tiny size of the previous version has been reduced: now the uncompressed version weights about 10.0kb , against the 10.4kb of the 1.0.

Now let’s talk about the changesets:

• the gxPause and the gxResume methods are gone in favor of the gx method, that is the unique method for creating, pausing and resuming animations. You can now pause and resume your effects by writing the following:

  // pauses an animation
  $('myEl').gx('pause');
  
  // resumes an animation
  $('myEl').gx('resume');

  The API is now more solid and less verbose.

• there are no more aliases: the anime method is gone.
• the new delay option is now available (see a demo): you can delay all the animations in the queue by specifing the “delay” option. In opposite to the standard behaviour, where animations are fired immediately one after another, with the delay option you can delay all step in the queue:

  $('myEl').gxInit({delay: 2000});
  
  $('myEl').gx({width: 200}, 4000)
           .gx({width: 0})     // after 2000ms (+4000ms of the previous ring)
           .gx({width: 400})   // after 2000ms (...)

• the GX Extras API has been added (see below)

Read more…

GX, Javascript GX, Javascript, RD, Softwares 

Before starting the tutorial, I would like to thank Dion Almaer of Ajaxian for his kidness and for having dedicated a post about the GX framework (which I appreciated very much) as well as all the users that downloaded and are downloading GX in these days. I’m glad to report here the responses directly from the Download Counter:

• Friday: 288
• Saturday: 493
• Sunday: 637
• Monday: 894
• Tuesday: 1026
• Wednesday: 1081

I’m very happy to read the data informations placed above and I hope you’ll enjoy GX in all its features.

Now stop talking and let’s start the tutorial!

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GX, Javascript, Tutorials GX, Tutorials 

GX, my latest project, is come.

As the official page says, “GX is a full-featured, cross-browser, super-tiny (10kb uncompressed) Javascript Animations Framework. Using GX you can create complex animations working with every w3c CSS property. Currently, GX is designed in order to work with the jQuery Javascript Library and is being released under the MIT License“.

That’s not all. GX is not like an usual library for creating animations, its main goal goes further, in order to build a real FULL-FEATURED framework for creating smooth, custom and complex animations WITH EASE.

First of all, i want to start saying that GX is designed for everyone: beginner, intermediate and expert Javascript users. I decided to integrate GX with the jQuery Javascript Library for two main reasons: first, i really like the jQuery framework and its awesome community, and i find that the former is one of the best open source products available on the Web.

However, when i needed to make some complex animations, i was really getting mad (too many scripts required and placed in the same page for extending the core engine, too many kb). Secondly, i have already developed a software based on MooTools called moo.rd, so i wanted to create something else based on another library.

I’ve developed GX keeping in mind mainly two Design Patterns:

• the “Write Less, Do More” Pattern picked from the jQuery Library. With GX you’ll always write as less code as possible to get the best results.
• the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Pattern. If a GX’s functionality is needed more than once, it will be internally reused with no duplicate.

GX respects the Strict Standards and doesn’t generate CSS/Javscript warnings. Moreover it prevents possible Memory Leaks because it will always use the same instance for a determinate element (say goodbye to “flickering”) to avoid either memory leaks and flickering issues. This technique allows you to always keep track of your animation’s state.

Although GX is completely cross-browser, it doesn’t contain any Browser sniffing: it’s 100% pure Javascript engine.

Read more…

GX, Javascript GX, Javascript, jQuery, RD, Softwares 

This is the very first post on this blog.

In these pages you’ll find a lot about my projects and my works, as well as my personal opinions about Web technologies, Web programming and, of course, all the related topics.

My blog isn’t and will never be a periodic magazine nor a truly-defined “blog”, it simply represents the preferred way to expose my projects and my opinions to Web.

Now let’s talk about the theme. I developed the blog section of my official Website using Wordpress and choosing to create a usable, simple and funny theme with a dark-toon color scheme. It’s 100% valid XHTML and 100% valid CSS because, as i wrote in my Profile, i love either the standards and all the recent stricts.

I think you’ll find it very simple to use and explore.

I’ll be very glad to hear your suggestions, your tips and your personal opinions about my projects and my topics and I hope you’ll let me know what you think about them!

Riccardo Degni

General General, RD