Using Multiple Containers to Build Pop Up DIVs with the DOM and AJAX
If you're a web developer who wants to expand your background in building AJAX-based applications, I’m pretty certain that this article will be helpful to you. Welcome to the second part of the series “Building pop-up DIVs with the DOM and AJAX.” This series goes through creating pop-up boxes, which can be used in any web page to display additional information pulled from static or dynamic sources.
Using Multiple Containers to Build Pop Up DIVs with the DOM and AJAX - Listing the improved version of the pop-up generating application (Page 4 of 4 )
At this point, and after seeing how the original application was modified to include many pop-up DIVs in the same web page, I'm sure that you're intrigued about how the improved version of the program now looks. So, in response to this situation, below I listed the full source code that corresponds to this application. I included all the changes that were properly covered in the previous section, and the respective CSS rules and markup as well.
Here is the pertinent code listing:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>JavaScript-based Pop-Up DIVS</title> <style type="text/css"> body{ padding: 0; margin: 0; background: #fff; } h1{ font: bold 24px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000; } .popupcontainer{ width: 300px; padding: 10px; margin: 0 0 10px 0; background: #eee; border: 1px solid #ccc; font: normal 12px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000; } .popupdiv{ position: absolute; width: 200px; padding: 5px; background: #ffc; border: 1px solid #ccc; font: normal 12px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #000; } </style> <script language="javascript"> // display Pop Up div element function displayPopupDiv(e){ var posx=0; var posy=0; if(!e){var e=window.event}; // determine target DIV var targ=e.target?e.target:e.srcElement; // calculate mouse coordinates if(e.pageX||e.pageY){ posx=e.pageX; posy=e.pageY; } else if(e.clientX||e.clientY){ posx=e.clientX; posy=e.clientY; // check for scroll offsets in IE 6 if(document.documentElement.scrollLeft || document.documentElement.scrollTop){ posx+=document.documentElement.scrollLeft; posy+=document.documentElement.scrollTop; } } // assign attributes to pop-up DIV element and append // it to web document tree var div=document.getElementById('popup'); if(!div){ var div=document.createElement('div'); div.setAttribute('id','popup'); div.className='popupdiv'; div.appendChild(document.createTextNode('This is a sample content for pop-up DIV element.')); document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild (div); } // move pop-up DIV element div.style.top=posy+5+'px'; div.style.left=posx+5+'px'; } // remove pop-up DIV element function hidePopupDiv(){ var div=document.getElementById('popup'); if(!div){return}; div.parentNode.removeChild(div); } // activate pop-up DIV elements function activatePopupDivs(){ var divs=document.getElementsByTagName('div'); if(!divs){return}; for(var i=0;i<divs.length;i++){ if(divs[i].className=='popupcontainer'){ // display pop-up DIV element divs[i].onmousemove=displayPopupDiv; // hide pop-up DIV element divs[i].onmouseout=hidePopupDiv; } } } // activate pop-up DIV elements when web page has been // loaded window.onload=function(){ if(document.getElementById && document.createElement && document.createTextNode){ activatePopupDivs(); } } </script> </head> <body> <h1>JavaScript-based Pop-up DIVS</h1> <div class="popupcontainer"> <p>Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...</p> </div> <div class="popupcontainer"> <p>Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...</p> </div> <div class="popupcontainer"> <p>Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...<br /> Content for containing DIV goes here...</p> </div> </body> </html>
That's all the source code that you need to have at your disposal a web application that's capable of displaying multiple pop-up DIVs in the same web document. In this case, I also included three pop-up containers within the respective markup code, so each time the mouse is over them, the corresponding pop-up boxes will be displayed.
Finally, I'd like to highlight a final detail concerning the signature of the "displayPopupDiv()" function. As you can see, this function incorporates the following new lines of code:
// check for scroll offsets in IE 6 if(document.documentElement.scrollLeft || document.documentElement.scrollTop){ posx+=document.documentElement.scrollLeft; posy+=document.documentElement.scrollTop; }
As you might have guessed, the above code snippet simply fixes an Internet Explorer bug, and it makes all the pop-up DIVs display correctly when the web document is scrolled down.
All right, now that you know how all the previous improvements fit into the general structure of the application, have a look at the following image. It illustrates how different pop-up DIVs can be attached to multiple containers. Here is the picture:
As usual, feel free to incorporate your own modifications to the original pop-up generating script to suit your personal needs. Possibilities are really numerous!
Final thoughts
We've come to the end of this tutorial. In this second article of the series, I showed you how to improve the original application so it is able to handle many pop-up DIVs in the same web document. As you saw, the process was really straightforward and painless.
However, the application hasn't used the capabilities of AJAX. So, how does this technology fit into the whole picture? Well, as you may have noticed, the pop-up DIVs weren't capable of displaying data pulled from a remote source, like a database table or a file located in the server.
That's why I saved the best for the last. In the final installment, I'll teach you how to use AJAX to populate different pop-up DIVs with dynamic data. Based on this premise, I don't think that you're going to miss the last part!
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JavaScript 
Building Pop-Up DIVs with the DOM and AJAX
