Year / 2016

by Nirupam Biswas

Wifi STB Remote+ (JAVA) for laptop and desktops

My Android App Wifi STB Remote+, which works as a remote for TataSky+ HD Settop boxes, now has a laptop/desktop counterpart.

Wifi STB Remote+ JAVA - Main screen

Wifi STB Remote+ JAVA – Main screen

Wifi STB Remote+ JAVA - All channels screen

Wifi STB Remote+ JAVA – All channels screen

This application is built over Java and packaged as a Jar file. (Download link below.) So, Java (JRE 8 or JDK 8) needs to be installed on the computer where you want to run this.

Please note this is an experimental application. Unlike its Android counterpart this application is not that chatty and articulate about the issues it faces while making connection to the STB (Set Top Box).

To start this app usually just double clicking on it should work. If that doesn’t work then use then you need to open command prompt and use cd to goto the directory where you have kept this app then use the command – java -jar WifiStbRemotePlus.jar.

To use the app make sure your computer is connected to the same Wifi as the STB. Then click on “Connect Device”. When the connection is successful then you will notice a “Connected” message. If you keep on seeing “Connecting…” message for a long time then that means something is not right and it is unable to reach to the STB. In that case fix the issue and click “Connect Device” again. Note unlike the Android app this app does not let you choose the STB. It just finds the STB and when it finds it simply connects to it.

Download WifiStbRemotePlus jar file

by Nirupam Biswas

Displaying a DOM while dragging

First check out the demo below.

See the Pen EKeVXZ by Nirupam (@applegrew) on CodePen.

There are no drop targets so you won’t be able to drop it anywhere.

Code for this directive can be seen on https://github.com/applegrew/drag-dom

The basic trick applied by agDragDom, is setting a one pixel transparent gif as the drag image. Since the drag image is set based on how the image “looks” on the webpage, it has to be added to the document and should be visible. However, since it transparent and have only one pixel dimension, it remains hidden in plain sight.

The second trick was to clone the DOM being dragged and absolutely position the cloned DOM, such that it is always at a particular location with respect to the drag pointer location. If you want an effect like drag to move, and want that it should feel like the user is moving the actual DOM, then on dragstart, hide the actual DOM after cloning it.

However, as is evident from the directive code the trick is not straight forward to implement. This code works well on Chrome. On Firefox it has trouble animating drag over element which does not bubble up the dragover event. It is not tested on any other browsers as of now.