About FlyTabs
I created this plugin because I am of an abstract mindset. That is, I want everything that I create be as abstract as possible to be reusable. A good programmer should refrain from hardcoding anything that can be reused, customized, or manipulated.
So how long did it take me to write this plugin? It took me a lot of time, because I wanted to challenge myself to not only make it cross-browser compatible, but also specific how it is used, and give it a basic level of intelligence. Knowing this, altogether FlyTabs took me about 5 months to write, where development occured a few hours daily throughout that period. It's amazing how much can be accomplished on a daily 4 hours busride commute.
The end result is a cross-browser compatible jQuery plugin that is quite resilient to browser differences as it doesn't rely only on CSS, but calculates various dimensions and distances. This is not solely by preference, but out of necessity due to the way the tabs are created.
How are the tabs created?
I tried to follow the latest trends in web development when writing this. This means that these tabs use unordered lists to get created, and then stylized with CSS. The code itself uses much trickery to make it cross-browser compatible. This is as a result of deficiencies in Internet Explorer, FireFox, as well as in how jQuery works. If you are interested in writing plugins, read this code. It is clear with the intent to pass on knowledge. If you gain something from the code, pass on this favor to another programmer - share your knowledge.
It was necessary for me to break jQuery apart about three times to get a solid understanding of the internals. It's quite a piece of work, and would not encourage anyone doing it unless they have a long busride.
About Me
My name is Milan Adamovsky and I have been programming professionally for about 12 years now. I specialize in both front-end and back-end Internet programming. My passion lies in Perl and I am working on developing a Perl community at
http://www.perlscript.com wherefrom I got the idea for FlyTabs. Front-end UI development is my next interest, where I've done anything from a webbased clone of Windows to highly interactive "AJAX" applications - before AJAX was even a methodology.
I am always eager to connecting with other enthusiasts around the world, so feel free to look me up on LinkedIn or e-mail me.
Milan Adamovsky created this.
