Windy: A Plugin for Swift Content Navigation

Windy is a jQuery plugin that allows a rapid navigation through a pile of items using some CSS 3D transforms and transitions. The effect of a continuous navigation flow reminds of a deck of cards or sheets flying away, hence the name. This plugin idea is inspired by the CSS shaders examples as shown in the CSS shaders Flipbook video by Adobe.

There are several options available, including defining the range of spreading the items when navigating, speed (CSS transitions), adding custom navigations, etc.

For browsers that don’t support CSS 3D transforms or transitions, there will be a simple fallback, i.e. normal navigation of the items (appear/disappear).

For using the plugin, an unordered list with the class “wi-container” is expected:

<ul id="wi-el" class="wi-container">
	<li>
		<img src="images/demo1/1.jpg" alt="image1"/>
		<h4>Coco Loko</h4>
		<p>Total bicycle rights in blog four loko raw denim ex, helvetica sapiente odio placeat.</p>
	</li>
	<li> <!-- ... --> </li>
	<li> <!-- ... --> </li>
	<li> <!-- ... --> </li>
	<!-- ... --> 
</ul>

The plugin can be called like this:

$( '#wi-el' ).windy();

Options

The following options are available:

// the options
$.Windy.defaults = {
	// if we want to specify a selector that triggers the next() function. Example: '#wi-nav-next'.
	nextEl : '',
	// if we want to specify a selector that triggers the prev() function.
	prevEl : '',
	// rotation and translation boundaries for the items transitions
	boundaries : {
		rotateX : { min : 40 , max : 90 },
		rotateY : { min : -15 , max : 15 },
		rotateZ : { min : -10 , max : 10 },
		translateX : { min : -200 , max : 200 },
		translateY : { min : -400 , max : -200 },
		translateZ : { min : 250 , max : 550 }
	}
};

The boundaries define the values for the “dispersing” or “flying away” of the items. The plugin will randomly select a value between the indicated limits.

The following public methods are available to use in combination with navigation elements:

• next()
• prev()
• navigate(position)

If you’d like to see some examples on how to use navigation elements, check out the demos where we use arrows and the jQuery UI slider element.

The CSS transition and basic styling is defined in the windy.css file.

Check out the three demos with different configurations:

• Demo 1: Default boundaries with navigations arrows
• Demo 2: Higher range values for boundaries with navigation arrows
• Demo 3: Slightly lower range values for boundaries with jQuery UI slider