Remember the "good old days" when you were still using Windows XP? If so, I'm pretty sure you remember the loads of error dialogs that would pop up at a totally random time. Although these dialogs always show up at a bad time, you could do something pretty neat with them. Drag the window around and it would duplicate itself over and over!

Sadly, I haven't seen this effect alive in Windows 7, so to keep those memories alive for XP, I re-created the effect using HTML/CSS with jQuery and jQuery UI.

Simply check out the demo to see if you can remember how it would look like. Be creative and fill up the screen with some beautiful error dialogs.

  

I hope you understand that I'm pretty sarcastic; I don't like these kind of error messages that would make your PC crash. Yet, I wanted to give it a try to bring this effect to your browser. Now let's see on how you can create this fantastic effect yourself!

Remember jTypingHero? This was a fun little game to test your typing skills based on the ever popular Guitar Hero. Lately, I came across some news about a new "Hero" game: DJ Hero. Since I really love Proof of Concepts/experimenting, I wanted to bring the vinyl to the browser. That's why I present to you: jQuery DJ Hero.

By combining CSS3 and jQuery, I created two records that you can start spinning (faster and slower) and even scratching is enabled. In a future version, this could be used together with some real sound (this version has no sound).

To achieve the desired effect, I made use of jQuery, Animate CSS Rotation and Scale jQuery Patch and the jQuery Easing library. The picture of the vinyl has been taken from stock.xchng.

  

Since we're using CSS3's transform property (to rotate the vinyls), this example only works in browsers that support CSS3 (Currently, the latest versions of Safari, Firefox and Chrome support this). I've added a video for those people that don't use those browsers and still want to see how the effect looks like. Make sure to check out the demo and let's see how you can create that yourself.

Just recently, I noticed something pretty cool at Google Images: When you resize your browser, search results are hidden/shown, depending if it makes a full row. It does really have a big advantage: you'll never have any "empty spots" on your website. The grid is always fully filled and results that don't fit in the grid, are simply hidden.

I wanted to recreate this technique using jQuery. Just like Google Images, it check how many images fit in each row and hides the one that fall off (depending on the browser size).

The difference between my HTML and the one Google, is that Google uses a table to display the image. My version uses floating images (but essentially, they work the same). Just make sure to check out the demo.

  

Now let's take a deeper look at the problem, the solution and how you create your own browser size aware content scaling.

Last week, I started experimenting with Microsoft Silverlight. I've never worked with the technique before, but after using it, I was impressed. It works pretty good and the separation of the XAML and CS file is great.

Today, we're going to create a Smokey Mouse Follower in Silverlight. This was my first experiment too and pretty fun to see. I have to admit that the layout can be improved in loads of ways, but this tutorial is intended to be for beginner Silverlight users.

We'll be using Microsoft Expression Blend 3 in this tutorial. Visual Studio will probably give the same effect, but I haven't tested it. We're going to create the program using Visual C#. The images (cursors) I used are from IconFinder.

  

Make sure to check out the demo to see what we're going to create! As you can see, it's not really that useful, but pretty fun to see. Also, it's a great way to get in touch with Silverlight. Let's start!

Style Sheet switchers (or "colour theme choosers") are not really that new. Apart from that fact, they still are pretty fun to use and cool to see. I was wondering how jQuery could help me achieve this technique. While searching, I came across several solutions.

There is a problem when using these techniques, which I will explain later. I created a little work-around to create a better jQuery stylesheet switcher. We'll simply change some colours for the user!

Make sure to check out the demo to view what we're trying to accomplish.

  

The cute little monsters used in the demo are created by Fast Icon (Dirceu Veiga). Now, let's take a look at how you can create something like this yourself!