Fixie.js - Automatic filler content for HTML documents.

http://fixiejs.com/

by zacharytamas • 14 years ago

115 38 14 years ago

fixiejs.com

teuobk• 14 years ago

This looks pretty cool. It would be a great companion to http://placehold.it (which fills a similar role for images).

dag11• 14 years ago

It uses placehold.it, actually: http://ryhan.me/fixie/sample.html

kwamenum86• 14 years ago

Depending on what browsers you're supports it's probably far easier to use generated content (:before, :after). Maybe combined with calc or CSS expressions.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

Sure, but it's hard to get a variety of content in that way. If you have a paragraph that begins with lorem ipsum over and over again, you'll quickly notice.

taitems• 14 years ago

Then add some :nth-of-type() wizardry to it.

abrichr• 14 years ago

I can't remember the number of times I've wished for something like this. I'll be sure to check it out for the next web project :)

kailashbadu2• 14 years ago

Like it. The only nuisance is the class attribute you have to repeat across all tags that you need to fill in.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

On a side note, you can now change the class name to whatever you want (thanks Luke Holder via github).

jberryman• 14 years ago

What is the better alternative?

kailashbadu2• 14 years ago

don't know. But the smart folk behind should be able to figure something out.

eskimoblood• 14 years ago

this is fixed: https://github.com/rthprog/fixie/pull/18

SirensOfTitan• 14 years ago

Very cool. However, I don't particularly like the fact that I need to add a class to each applicable container.

Maybe a configuration file that allows for selection of specific classes/ids instead?

rthprog14• 14 years ago

Now you can use a specific class instead. Just call fixie(myclassname);

rthprog14• 14 years ago

This has been replaced by `fixie.init(["CSS-selector"]);`

minikomi• 14 years ago

Thought this might be something like http://jsfiddle.net/MNFV8/1/ but I like the addition of the paragraph generators too.

duopixel2• 14 years ago

I dislike using lorem ipsum or other non-sensical text for mockups, but I admit that it fills a very real need for designing content-centric websites when the content isn't ready yet.

I've encountered just too many cases where the design looks great as a mock-up but when you start plugging in real data the layout start breaking apart, either because the content is too short, too long, or the designer didn't consider long usernames.

My dream for a filler content generator would be a large database of real content types, so you would have a list of real twitter handles, facebook names, blog post titles, world news articles and so on. You could then do stuff like h1 class="fixie worldnews title" or class="fixie twitter username".

Designers often argue that the purpose of Lorem Ipsum is to help the client focus on the look and not the content. I think this posture is wrong because you need the client thinking about content as early as posible.

Front-end developers also need the randomness of real world data to test the sturdiness of their layouts and account for edge cases as early as posible.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

Agreed, lorem ipsum can become a crutch - good copy is integral for good design. That said, this script will give you random length paragraphs, articles, and what not, giving you some room to test your layout, and makes it easy to throw in temporary content until you've written something yourself.

wattjustin• 14 years ago

If we can get Samuel L. Ipsum integrated, I'm in. Either way, I think this is great if for no other reason than the amount of time it will save.

splatzone• 14 years ago

Would you object if I tried to implement this? Seems like a fun weekend project.

duopixel2• 14 years ago

No objection at all, I'd be willing to design the landing page if you come around to implementing this :)

stephenhandley• 14 years ago

awesome. maybe an alternative api would be to allow for something like

  fixie.init([".array", "#of .selectors", ".that", ".should", "#be .populated .with .lorem"])

or just a string like

  fixie.init(".string, #of .comma .separated .selectors, .that, .should, #be .populated .with .lorem")

I think that would address the class proliferation issue and still be explicit about which dom nodes should be populated. easier to maintain / comment out.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

Nice! I added it as an issue just a second after you.

I'll definitely give it a try, though I invite anyone else to send a pull request.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

This is fully implemented now. Woohoo :)

raingrove• 14 years ago

I like how the words generated are totally hipster!

rthprog14• 14 years ago

Thanks! It's actually kind of funny how small the dictionary is...

JohnnyFlash• 14 years ago

This would be so much more awesome if you could assign the class to a container div. Then on each page reload it would randomly add content - be it paragraphs, headers, imgs, lists, tables etc.

This would be a fantastic tool for testing templates against a wide variety of random content. When making a template for clients to use you can never be too sure what they are going to add so you do your best to style everything. Getting random content on each page load would really solidify this testing.

Adding a class to individual elements... I don't find this too useful.

rthprog14• 14 years ago

You can now assign the class to a container div - you must still provide some empty tags to specify what kind of content you want.

For example, if you need a couple paragraphs of text, you can use `<article class="fixie"></article>`. If you need exactly 1 header followed by 3 paragraphs, you can use ``` <article class="fixie"> <h1></h1> <p></p> <p></p> <p></p> </article> ```

nXqd• 14 years ago

I don't this is a good idea. Because even if you want quick design but later you will have to fix them all. And nowadays designers are familiar with html ( the most basic skill ). But it's nice btw

rthprog14• 14 years ago

The point isn't to write content for you - it's to automatically add temporary content so you can test out your design before writing copy.

juddlyon• 14 years ago

Great idea!

I'd use this on client projects if:

- I could pass a selector rather than adjusting my markup (maybe I can add 'fixie' via jQuery?)

- There's an easy way to swap out the word list - I've had Bacon Ipsum, Hipster Ipsum, and Gangster Ipsum all slip through before and it's embarrassing (depending on the client).

franciscoapinto• 14 years ago

Won't work with javascript disabled, obviously. This makes it unusable for me.

Fixie.js - Automatic filler content for HTML documents.

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