Note Textify is now 2.1. It supports cookie level saving and by-paragraph gradients.
It's been long overdue, and has done all sorts of things like suck at being PHP and slow (and occasionally core dumping). Jokingly, I told my friend it should be the responsibility of the client's computer to coredump. After a bit more joking, more on my part than his, I realized Aaron was right and I should rewrite the Textify module. I needed to get down and dirty with Prototype(Prototype JS Library Home Page) anyway, and what better way than some powerful string processing libraries and amazingly quick regex. Pound for pound, indexOf() and charAt() leave me returning to PHP with a longing for some really basic functionality. For historical background, gradient text became a trend back in the days of Yahoo! Chat, with programs like CheetaChat and YChat making colored text blending commonplace (or at least that was how my generation remembered it). I found myself wanting that effect, so I wrote something. That was version 1 almost a year ago. This is now version 2, and it got a major overhaul.
The most significant aspect of this rewrite is of course, the Javascript. In addition to Prototype, this was also an active experiment in integrating the Colourmod Color Picker(Visit the Colourmod Home Page) and making use of the fancy Lightbox Javascript Effect(Particletree - Lightbox Gone Wild!) that has been going around.
How it Works
The Textify package consists of 3 JS files * textify.class.php: the core and engine. Controls the conversion process * textify.interface.php: provides a common class library for DOM manipulation * textify.js: the primary included file, includes other 2 files
The interface class is really straight-forward. Methods exist for adding points to the dom, and later collecting those points when invokeTextify() is called. The first pass removes all existing bbcode, replacing it with symbol markers (for restoration later). A second pass then applies the gradient, and then finally, the symbols are restored. The extraction is performed with regex. On large sections of text (more than 15000 characters with all symbols removed), even the linear pass for the gradient text is too much for Internet Explorer to bear. Firefox, Camino, and Safari sweat a bit, but it all works out in the end for them.
That's enough about the technical details, let's get into interface.
The gradient bar is the rainbow colored bar across the middle of the screen. It provides a rough (very rough) estimate of what the gradient will look like. These points define the gradient's pattern. Clicking on any point will remove it from the list. A point can be added by entering RGB values or selecting the Color Picker to choose a color. [Add Point" will place this gradient point into the bar. When you have built the gradient to your liking, you may click "Save Gradient" and hang onto it for later. Drop in your text into the top box and click "Convert" to make the colored text appear! You can view bbcode versions, a preview, and an HTML version of the text. If you want to unbalance the gradient, simply add more "points" of the same color and watch the gradient bar shift to accommodate the change.
"Load Gradient" takes a string of values (red,green,blue red,green,blue red,green,blue etc) and will load the appropriate gradient. This makes it easy to share color patterns with others (via "Save Gradient"). Lastly, "Clear Gradients" will give you a clean slate to work with.
The Future of Textify
It took almost a year to get this out again, but it's certainly up for more robust updates now. The most important of these is the ability to "save" previous gradients and have a way to retrieve them. Now that the burden has been shifted to client-side, it might also find its way onto Gaia (in simplified form). The license changed slightly (from Public Domain to a creative commons one), but the old PHP source is still freely available. The most significant change is that the Name/Link in the Textify source needs to be left in there. This way people can find a centralized place for the tool. And of course, Colourmod (free non-commercial), lightbox, and prototype all have their own individual licenses which should be properly respected.
The Goods
Gaia Textify 1.0 zip (please follow above link and click "info")
In response to "Textify 2.0 has Arrived":
Jessa misses Cheetachat D:. I made so many friends back in the mid/late 90s that I haven’t talked to in years.
But yay for shiny new textifier :D. *gives Jakob a cookie
You are so awesome, Jakobo!
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