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Typing animation / typewriter effect for placeholder of homepage search bar

image avatar

Nico Bruning

Gepostet 02. Jan. 2024

What we wanted to achieve: When users land on our zendesk homepage the focus should lie on the search field. Sometimes you do not exactly know what you can search for. In our searchbar we wanted users to get suggestions for useful search questions. To make it extra fancy those suggestions should have a typewriter effect to appear as being typed out in real time.

What you need: a little bit of time and ideally dynamic content enabled, but you could also hardcode the placeholders if you don't use multi language support. 

 

How to do it: If you want to use dynamic content for the placeholders, you should create those  first (Admin Center -> Agent Tools -> Dynamic Content).

We created three different placeholders and named them search placeholder 1/2/3 so we can use them with the dynamic content helper like

{{dc 'search_placeholder_1')

 

If you are not using dynamic content you can skip step 1.

1.

In your document_head.hbs add the following lines after the first <meta> tag:

<meta name="search-placeholder-one" content="{{dc 'search_placeholder_1'}}" />
<meta name="search-placeholder-two" content="{{dc 'search_placeholder_2'}}" />
<meta name="search-placeholder-three" content="{{dc 'search_placeholder_3'}}" />

 

2.

Now for the cool stuff add the following lines at the end of your script.js file:

window.addEventListener("load", () => {
    const search = document.querySelector("input[type='search']");
    const searchForm = document.querySelector("form.search-full");
    const defaultPlaceholder = search.getAttribute('placeholder');
    const placeholderElements = [
        document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-one"]'),
        document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-two"]'),
        document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-three"]')
    ];
    const placeholders= placeholderElements
        .map(element => element ? element.getAttribute('content') : null)
        .filter(content => content !== null);

    let currentPlaceholderIndex = 0;
    let currentPlaceholderCharacter = 0;
    let interval;
    const delayBetweenPlaceholders = 1000;

    if (searchForm) {
        search.focus();
        search.setAttribute('placeholder', '');

        let typeIt = function() {
            currentPlaceholderCharacter++;
            let typedOut = placeholders[currentPlaceholderIndex].substring(0, currentPlaceholderCharacter);
            search.setAttribute('placeholder', typedOut);

            if (currentPlaceholderCharacter === placeholders[currentPlaceholderIndex].length) {
                currentPlaceholderCharacter = 0;
                currentPlaceholderIndex++;

                if (currentPlaceholderIndex >= placeholders.length) {
                    setTimeout(function() {
                        search.setAttribute('placeholder', defaultPlaceholder);
                    }, delayBetweenPlaceholders);

                    clearInterval(interval);
                } else {
                    // If not last placeholder, stop the current interval and set a new one after a delay.
                    clearInterval(interval);
                    setTimeout(function() {
                        interval = setInterval(typeIt, 100);
                    }, delayBetweenPlaceholders);
                }
            }
        };
        // Start typing the placeholders.
        interval = setInterval(typeIt, 100);
    }
});

 Again, if you do not use dynamic content you can delete this part

const placeholderElements = [
document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-one"]'),
document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-two"]'),
document.querySelector('meta[name="search-placeholder-three"]')
];
const placeholders= placeholderElements
.map(element => element ? element.getAttribute('content') : null)
.filter(content => content !== null);

and just use hardcoded strings as placeholders instead:

const placeholders = [
 "This will be typed out first",
 "This placeholder will be typed second",
 "And this at last",
];
 And that's it. Check your live preview and see the magic happen :)     
     

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4 Kommentare

Datum
    image avatar

    Brett Bowser

    Zendesk Community Manager

    Amazing tip Nico! Thanks for sharing this with everyone :)  

    0

    image avatar

    Matt Farrington Smith

    This is very cool - thank you for sharing Nico Bruning!

    I presume it's based on the TypeIt functionality? I can't work out a way to control the speed though, any pointers?

    1

    image avatar

    Nico Bruning

    Matt Farrington Smith cool that you like it.
    The basic idea came from this: https://codepen.io/leetech/pen/dOOgBx 

    If you want to change the speed, look for the 

    setInterval(typeIt, 100)

    function. The second parameter is the time in Milliseconds.

    You could introduce a const for the typing speed like

    const typingSpeed = 100 //change this number to your liking

     just at the top, where the other consts are introduced and then change the function to

    setInterval(typeIt, typingSpeed)

    This way you can change the speed from a central place and you and your colleagues can improve the readability. 

    Hope this helps.

    0

    image avatar

    Matt Farrington Smith

    Amazing! Thank you so much Nico :-) That did exactly what I wanted it too.

    0

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