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!

Don't you wonder sometimes, when looking at something, how you can create something like that yourself? I have to admit that I do. This is why I came up with the Skype for Mac and the iPhone examples in your webbrowser. Today, we're trying something new in this Proof of Concept category: creating a theatrical movie trailer with jQuery

This technique could be really well used when creating a slide-show that just needs some text. Using the CSS letter-spacing property, we can really make it look like the movies.

  

I'll leave out the CSS in this tutorial, since not much really important stuff is going on there. This example works best in Firefox - Although it works in Safari and Opera too, the letter-spacing CSS property gets rounded up (or down) and you won't be able to see the full effect. Also, you'll need to imagine the sound effects yourself.

There is a problem on the web. Displaying actual programming code takes away a lot of space of the webpage (especially the longer ones). You can split up the code in several parts, but that's really hard to read for programmers. You can leave it "as it is" and users would have to scroll a lot if they're not interested in the code itself. And scrollbars in code-examples - that's just horrible (and yes - that's what I have on this website).

I created a solution for this problem and call it the jQuery Code Expander. It does exactly what you think it does - Expand any code you want to place online using jQuery.

But, before you can expand anything, it has to be cropped. That's where the CSS kicks in. It's like a combination of using scrollbars and fully showing the code!

  

This script only changes those elements that needs to be expanded and doesn't touch those who don't. An additional overlay image is added, just to show the user that it can expand the code example. Check out the demo and read below what the secret of this technique is.

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.