SnowStorm 1.1 released

peregrine

@vrijvlinder said:
No but I got an idea to create an extension for this plugin which has a snow plow scroll left and move all the pile up of snow at the bottom of the page

http://freeplanet3.com/Forum/discussions

your snow is falling like comets. mine just floats done, as snow does.

peregrine

@whu606 said:
Thanks for that, peregrine.

I have made those changes, but to no avail.

At least now I know that it is something my end, so will have a poke around.

if you zip up your theme and post it somewhere, I can try it out.

vrijvlinder

@peregrine said:
your snow is falling like comets

Or hail ! yea I am not sure how to fix that. I tried changing the animation delay to a higher number

peregrine

change it to a 1.

vrijvlinder

No it still is way fast..

peregrine

@vrijvlinder said:
No it still is way fast..

I suspect you smatched it.

reinstall the plugin with original code

and change class.snowstorm.php

to this for a light blue snow flurry

snowStorm.followMouse = false;
                         snowStorm.snowCharacter =  "❄";
            snowStorm.snowColor = "blue";
            snowStorm.vMaxX = 1;
            snowStorm.vMaxY = 1;
            snowStorm.animationInterval = 50;
            snowStorm.flakesMax = 10;
            snowStorm.flakesMaxActive = 10;

vrijvlinder

ok, that makes them hover slowly but the sizes are the same decreasing the realism ... but it does slow them down

peregrine

@vrijvlinder said:
ok, that makes them hover slowly but the sizes are the same decreasing the realism ... but it does slow them down

sizes are different. maybe you have snowstorm-learning disability.

and change the snowstorm-min.js

    this.flakeHeight=this.flakeWidth=8
    to
    this.flakeHeight=this.flakeWidth=128

vrijvlinder

I guess I don't need the snow plow anymore....

whu606

OK

I'm now seeing the snowflakes as expected after adding

snowStorm.snowCharacter = "❄";

rather than the actual icon.

There are browser issues, however.

Firefox insists on showing the snowflakes as blue, whilst Opera, Chrome and IE show them white, as expected.

That said, those three browsers make it look like a blizzard, while Firefox has them drifting down gently.

No biggie, just thought I'd say it here in case anyone else finds the same situation.

Bleistivt

Regarding the colors, newer Firefox versions display symbol characters as colored emojis: ❄ ❤

You would need to add this.o.style.fontFamily="Segoe UI Symbol"; somewhere around line 20 where the snowColor is set.

whu606

Thanks @Bleistivt‌

Would it just go under the color line?

I've added it there with no obvious change, although that might be a cache issue, I suppose.

peregrine

@whu606 said:

Thanks @Bleistivt‌

Would it just go under the color line?

I've added it there with no obvious change, although that might be a cache issue, I suppose.

open snowstorm-min.js in a text editor.

search for this.o.style.fontFamily="arial,verdana"

replace with 

this.o.style.fontFamily="Segoe UI Symbol"

whu606

WooHoo!

Thanks @peregrine‌

After adding that, it is working as expected on my development site. Can't test it live, atm, as CloudFlare is down, but now I know it works.

Thanks also to @Bleistivt for pointing out why Firefox was behaving differently.

vrijvlinder

The same happens with chrome on a mac. But it could also be because I have the emoji in the browser Chromoji extension for chrome.

On Safari I get the symbol not the emoji. I do like the emoji better because it is somewhat 3d and the graphics are nice.

Do notice that the speed varies from browser to browser.

this is what the source puts out with chromoji browser extension for chrome

<img class="chromoji" title="Snowflake" alt="❄" src="chrome-extension://cahedbegdkagmcjfolhdlechbkeaieki/images/apple/2744.png">

Possibly the speed variations are due to the fact that one is pulling images and the other font. The rendering time must vary for sure.

Linc

I recently logged into a forum I'd been neglecting and found a 2-month old discussion of sadness — there'd been no snow this holiday season. I'm delighted to report this plugin still works, and snow has been delivered well within (northern hemisphere) seasonal parameters. These days I do make one modification: I change base_render_before to discussionsController_render_before to limit the snowfall to the main discussions list because I've learned that folks with reading difficulty (like dyslexia) find it troublesome on discussion pages, and I only keep it on for about a week. Such a silly thing, but it's the sort of thing that give communities just a bit of extra glue.