Category: How to

Use textarea in Phaser Game

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Phaser, Quick Tip

In order to use textboxes in canvas we can use html input components and position them over the canvas. I recently had a requirement to display a message board resembling “textarea” in a Phaser game. The game was responsive so it also required repositioning and resizing of the textarea. I am posting bare minimum code to achieve this fuctionality here. Add following html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Demo</title> <meta http-equiv=”Content-type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″> <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, minimum-scale=1, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=no”> <link rel=”stylesheet” href=”css/app.css”> <script src=”js/phaser.min.js”></script> <script src=”js/game.js”></script> </head> <body> <textarea disabled id=”txtArea” style=”display:none” class=”txtArea”></textarea> <div id=”container”> <div id=”mygame”></div> </div> </body> </html> We have added a textarea which is hidden initially. We will display this component after resizing and repositioning inside the game. Now add css as following in app.css body { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; background: #862C2C; overflow-x: hidden; } .txtArea{ position: absolute; background-color: #ffffff; color: #000; padding: 10px; border: 3px solid #9E9E9E;[…]

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Quick Tip

Shun window.onload in HTML5 games

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Phaser

A lot of javascript developers have been using window.onload casually in their code but this is something which we should completely avoid since window.onload is only called once and if there are multiple window.onload events, then only the last onload event gets called. In our Phaser games we normally initialize the game as following var mygame; window.onload = function() { mygame = new Phaser.Game(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight, Phaser.AUTO, “mygame”); mygame.state.add(“Boot”, Boot); mygame.state.add(“Loading”, Loading); mygame.state.add(“MyGame”, MyGame); mygame.state.start(“Boot”); }; window.onload is called after the main HTML, all CSS files, images and other resources have been loaded and rendered. We don’t want to stall loading of the game and its resources until everything else on the page has been loaded and rendered so as soon as initial HTML document has been loaded and parsed, we can start loading our game without waiting for page stylesheets, images, etc to finish loading. An alternate approach for this using vanilla javascript would be var mygame[…]

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Add Link to Rating Feature in Windows UWP App

NG How to, JavaScript, Quick Tip, Windows Store App

In oder to add a link to rate your app following code can be used in javascript UWP app var storeID = ‘xxxxxxxxxxxx’; function rate() { var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri(“ms-windows-store://review/?ProductId=” + storeID); var options = new Windows.System.LauncherOptions(); Windows.System.Launcher.launchUriAsync(uri, options); } Replace storeID with your app’s Store ID and call “rate” method on a button click event which will open the app in windows store with rate popup overlay.

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App Promotion Trick for Windows Store App

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Windows Store App

If you are a publisher who has published multiple UWP apps in the windows store and want to add a catalog of all your other apps in your UWP app, then there is no need to write a lot of code to achieve this capability. Microsoft has provided URI scheme to launch the Microsoft Store app to specific pages in the store. We can use search capability to find products from a specific publisher and simply launch that URI using LaunchUriAsync API method. For ex. in order to launch all products published by some “XYZ Corporation” in the windows store we can simply call the following URI ms-windows-store://publisher/?name=XYZ Corporation Following code example demonstrates how this can be achieved using 3 lines of code in Javascript store app function showPublisherApps() { var publisherDisplayName = “Microsoft Corporation”; // Change this to your publisher name var uri = new Windows.Foundation.Uri(“ms-windows-store://publisher/?name=” + publisherDisplayName); var options = new[…]

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Open Share Dialog from Universal Windows Javascript App (UWP)

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Windows Store App

Opening Share Dialog Popup in Windows Universal App is very simple and with a few lines of code, this functionality can be quickly added to any app. The code below can be used to share an app’s web URL (you can use MS Store URL of the app as well) in UWP Javascript application var page = WinJS.UI.Pages.define(“/index.html”, { ready: function (element, options) { var dataTransferManager = Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.DataTransferManager.getForCurrentView(); dataTransferManager.addEventListener(“datarequested”, dataRequested); }, unload: function () { var dataTransferManager = Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.DataTransferManager.getForCurrentView(); dataTransferManager.removeEventListener(“datarequested”, dataRequested); } }); function dataRequested(e) { var request = e.request; var storeID = ‘xxxxxxxxxxxx’; request.data.properties.title = “Your title”; request.data.properties.description = “App description”; request.data.setWebLink(new Windows.Foundation.Uri(“https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/” + storeID)); } function showShareUI() { Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.DataTransferManager.showShareUI(); } In the application page ready event we need to initialize DataTransferManager and attach an event listener for “datarequested”. In that method you can set title, display, web link properties which will be used by the dialog popup. Store ID[…]

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Quick Tip

WebP Image Fallback Options

NG How to, HTML5, JavaScript, Quick Tip, SEO

WebP is a relatively new image format which provides lossless and lossy compression for web images. It was developed and released by Google in 2010. Accroding to Google WebP format saves around 25-30% of image size which is a big saving for image-heavy sites. Even for normal sites, it saves a lot of network bandwidth and results in overall performance improvement of a web site (in turn a better ranking by search engines). Even though this format has been there since 2010, it is still not supported by all browsers.The good thing is that it is natively supported in Google Chrome and the Opera browsers which cover for bigger chunk of browser market share. For mobile sites this format has become a necessity to optimize load time of websites on mobile. Google provides tools to convert images from one format(png, jpg etc) to webp and viceversa https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/ If we are using webp format of[…]

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Quick Tip

Solution: Windows PC not reading Xiaomi Phone via USB cable

Simy How to

The first step is to enable developer option in the phone. Go to Settings -> About Phone and tap MIUI version 6 times. You will see a pop up notification confirming that the developer option is enabled. Now enable USB debugging in the phone Go to settings -> Additional Settings -> Developer options then enable USB debugging. Now connect your Xiaomi phone to your Windows PC via USB cable. When you connect phone to the PC, it might ask to select an option to connect for charging only or files transfer. Make sure to select files transfer option. On your computer go to PC -> C drive (or whatever is the installation drive of your Windows) -> Windows -> INF -> Look for wpdmtp.inf. Right click on wpdmtp.inf and click install with your phone plugged in. Now you should see the phone showing up under PC.

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Compile Cordova App for iOS

NG Cordova, How to, HTML5, iOS, Mobile

I recently planned to compile my Phaser games for iOS App Store. These games were build using Cordova CLI and have already been published on Android Store so I already have a functioning game which was to be ported to iOS. I decided to document the steps I had to follow to get my game compiled and published to iOS App Store. You can develop the game on any platform of your liking but in order to compile and publish these games to iOS App Store you do need to have a Mac. It can not be done from Windows or any other platform. Steps to compile the game: Download MacOS installer for Node.js and install it on your Mac. Go to App Store on your Mac and install latest version of XCode. You need XCode to build the game. Open Terminal console (Finder -> Applications ->Utilities) on your MacOS and install cordova using npm utility of Node.js by[…]

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