Aldenta: Handcrafting the Web

Some of you may already be using the PDF bookmark plugin I put together for Adobe Reader. It provides a quick and easy way to bookmark the page your on and return back to that spot later. It’s especially handy when reading large PDF books.

Thanks to the input of Michael Hartl, I updated the plugin to work properly with Adobe Reader 8. Adobe turned on some security settings by default in the new Adobe Reader which broke the previous version of the plugin.

See the full details and download the plugin.

1 Comment

For those of you using the script.aculo.us Slider demos I’ve just added a new one. Sometimes you may have a slider and a text field to show the value. This example lets you change the value in the text box and the slider will update to match the value.

Example: Change Slider Value by Changing Text Input Field

No Comments

I’ve been following along the script.aculo.us Slider Demo discussion area recently and have tried to answer questions when possible. Since it’s difficult to post examples to the discussion I’ve compiled a more extensive set of Slider demos. Some are examples that I’ve wanted and others are in response to questions in the discussion area.

The demo code includes the following slider examples:

• Standard Slider
• Reversed Slider
• Slider Controlled with Mouse Wheel
• One Slider Controlling Multiple Sliders
• Using Images to Spruce Up a Slider
• Two Colored Slider
• Submit the Slider Value in a Form
• Use a Slider as a Scrollbar (added Nov 21, 2006)
• Change Slider Value by Changing Text Input Field (added Jul 16, 2007)

It’s really amazing what you can do with the script.aculo.us library. Please let me know what you think!

90 Comments

You may have noticed that Google Maps will zoom in and out when you use your mouse wheel (or trackpad scrolling). If you want to do the same thing using the script.aculo.us JavaScript Slider here is an example to get you started.

The example uses a slightly modified version of Adomas Paltanavicius’ mouse wheel event code. Firefox 1.5 seems to work fine but not Safari 1.3. Please let me know how it handles in other browsers.

Example: Using Mouse Wheel to Control Slider

Update: I’ve created a more extensive set of Slider demos which includes the mouse wheel demo. (Nov. 12, 2006)

No Comments

With the long, yet wonderful, books in PDF format these days (Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson with Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, Thomas Fuchs, and Andreas Schwarz [570 pages]; Programming Ruby by Dave Thomas, with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt [864 pages]) there needs to be a better way to digitally bookmark where you left off. For some reason Adobe Reader (Acrobat Reader) doesn’t have this capability built in. I found a plugin for Acrobat Reader to do multiple bookmarks per document from PDF Hacks. However, I really just want it to be simple like a physical book - you bookmark the page you’re on when you stop and go to that page when you pick back up. So here is my plugin to bookmark your page in Adobe Reader.

Download:

PDF Bookmark 1.1

Change Log:

• 1.1 - Dec 20, 2007 - Update to work with Adobe Reader 8 due to security changes (app.trustedFunction)
• 1.0 - Sep 15, 2006 - Initial release

Installation:

Adobe Reader 8 - copy pdf_bookmark.js to:

• Mac: ~/Library/Acrobat User Data/8.0_x86/JavaScripts (or similar)
• Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\8.0\JavaScripts (or similar)

Adobe Reader 7 - copy pdf_bookmark.js to:

• Mac: ~/Library/Acrobat User Data/7.0/JavaScripts (or similar)
• Windows: C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat\7.0\JavaScripts (or similar)

Note: you may have to create the JavaScripts folder

Usage:

Open your document in Adobe Reader. Then choose Tools -> Bookmark from the menu. “Bookmark This Page” adds the bookmark. “Go To Bookmark” sends you to the bookmark you created. It remembers which PDF document you bookmarked so it works on all of your PDFs simultaneously. (Tested with Acrobat Reader 7 and Adobe Reader 8 (thanks Michael) on Mac OS X and Windows)

56 Comments