Charlottescoming day technology

Unfortunately my girlfriend is from Wales, so I look forward for her to come to me for Christmas in order for us to be together. And since I didn't have anything else to do a few days ago, I decided to program a web counter showing how long it takes until she arrives.

The idea of a counter originally came from her sister Millie and I (being inspired by Slapsgiving day of the show How I met your mother) decided to implement everything. And I wanted to use a bit of modern technology too to  demonstrate my programming skills.

On http://charlotte.albireo.eu you can now see the result. Used technologies are XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, SVG and VML. Supported languages are English, Czech, Welsh and Japanese.

Technology

The background is a small XHTML Web page that displays information about loading. It immediately begin downloading JavaScript frameworks jQuery and Raphael and of course my scripts into memory.

When it's finished, the browser starts the initiation function, which displays Raphael created loading wheel. Raphael is a framework for working with vector graphics SVG and VML. JavaScript is then loading a large photograph to be used for the page background. The script is written to support various sizes of monitors from netbooks to large LCDs.

When the background is displayed, you can see  new vector animation and the counter itself gets going. Animation is created using again the Raphael framework.

Changes in the language of application are done in real time using JavaScript. I had all the translations, including Japanese, checked and  therefore  they should be correct.

Tested browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and MS Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Internet Explorer 6 couldn't be tested as I currently don't have it.