Here's a quick personal note (nothing wrong with giving your blog some personality, right?). I just came back from a great vacation in the Philippines and I'm sorry for the lack of updates. To cheer up your, I wanted to share some wonderful pictures that I took while I was on the other side of the world (I live in the Netherlands).

All pictures (except from the last one) were taken with a Sony DSLR-A200. So, sit back and enjoy viewing a couple of beautiful photos.

Pretty fast after I placed the Polaroid Photo Viewer with CSS3 and jQuery example online, I received loads of e-mails and comments requesting another feature. The original example was only full-screen, but people wanted it to "stick" to a box (Placing it inside a <div>).

By making a couple of changes to the original code, I managed to make this work too. So today, I present you the non-full screen version of the popular Polaroid Photo Viewer with CSS3 and jQuery.

Try dragging the polaroids around in the demo. You'll be able to do so, but the surrounding division seems to prevent the user from actually dragging it outside it's container.

  

Just like with the original example, this example only works on modern browsers supporting CSS3 (Safari, Chrome and Firefox 3.5). This probably would work with Opera too, but I haven't tested it.

Now to show you which small changes are made to the original script to make this one work.

It has been a while since I placed my previous high resolution texture pack online. Today, I'm presenting you another texture pack called Water Splashes. This pack contains 8 textures (1500 px of width) of some great water splashes behind a speedboat. I made these pictures while traveling to Camiguin (Philippines).

I hope you enjoy them and use them well. The textures are totally free for all kinds of use.

Don't forget to check out some other great high quality textures that are released on this website before.

Quickly after jCharacterfall, I came up with this game. It looks a bit like jCharacterfall, but is mainly inspired on and JamLegend, RockBand and (obviously) Guitar Hero. But, instead of tapping to beats, you'll have to press the correct character on the correct time in a totally random order. Each correct press will make the game faster, which makes it harder but you'll be able to earn more points.

Just like in the previous game, this one can be pretty fun and addictive, but it might help you improve your typing skills too.

Little disclaimer: If you find this game too easy, I suggest you download the source and change the JavaScript file, changing some values placed on top (like DROPPINGSPEED and NEWORBTIME). This will increase the amount of multiple dropping orbs and will also speed up, but that also means your browser will take a lot away from your CPU.

Once again this is just a simple Proof of Concept showing the amazing power of jQuery (combined with some CSS3).

  

Just like with jCharacterfall, I'm inviting you to poke around in the source to see where you can make some improvements. What highscore can you get in this game?

After my first jQuery plugin, I wanted to create an actual jQuery game. While I was swimming in a pool nearby, I came up with the following idea (inspiration can be found everywhere): Characters in water drops falling. You can save them from a splashy death, by pressing the correct character on your keyboard.

Keeping that in mind, I created jCharacterfall - A small, addictive jQuery game. After each character save, the game gets harder and the droplets will fall faster. When playing this game over and over, you might even improve your typing skills.

I'm aware of a couple of bugs in the game, but if you "just play it", you probably don't encounter any of them. This game combines the power of jQuery, jQuery UI, the jQuery Easing plugin and CSS3.

  

Feel free to poke around in the source, just to see if you could improve the script in any way! What highscore can you get?