I came across this nice Flash image crossfader at Hunter Boots and thought I’d have a go at creating something similar in jQuery. Basically it crossfades images when one of the text columns is hovered over, then slides the caption across (makes better sense if you look at the demo).

You can View the Demo here. Or download it here (188kB).

I used the following jQuery plugins:

• Hover Intent (so there’s a bit of delay in triggering the columns)
• Easing (for the caption animation)
• Color Animations (for the column backgrounds)

With everything put together the actual javascript file is only about 5kB - so nice and compact. Please feel free to adapt or improve it!

I’d like to share a little javascript function I’ve been working on. Click on the folder image below:

Basically what I wanted was an interesting and animated way of displaying groups of images.

jUmble simply randomises the distance, spread and rotation of your group of images, splaying them out next to the folder. You can use as many images as you want and have multiple folders. It works well with lightbox too (as in the demo above). The image rotation part uses jQuery rotate - but it’s kinda just hacked into this plugin at the moment (one of the things to fix). The script is a bit over 3kB when minified.

Anyway, download the demo (46kB) (or the lightbox version) and have a play around with it, if you feel inclined.

Let me know what you think.

I stumbled upon this neat way to view Flickr photos, called Flickriver. Basically, you search for a topic (like orangutans) or a member’s photostream and it displays the photos as one continuous ‘river’ down the page. But the nice thing is it only loads them dynamically in small batches, so you only use extra bandwidth if you scroll the page.

I’m guessing it’s based on this jQuery plugin Lazy Load which is basically the opposite of pre-fetching. Might be worth incorporating into a project. Hmm…

Check it out and be sure to also have a look at stuck in customs photos. He does some absolutely stunning HDR images. Highly recommended.