crossword
Crossword Mangling
After complains from a certain someone about all those Java-based crossword puzzle applets, I decided to see if I could implement a DHTML version in 24-hours.
It seems to work fairly well, with all the features I'd expect to exist. Of course, more features shall be added as time/motivation arises.
To see it in action, go here.
The Code
To get a crossword puzzle in a suitable format, I had to write a converter from a supplied AcrossLite file. Using some sample puzzles from the Houston Chronicle and the Converter::AcrossLite Perl module, I reformatted the PUZ file to a XML file.
The crossword page is simple XHTML and JavaScript, dynamically generating all the contents from the supplied XML file. The code gets progressively kludgy as it increased in size, but it should still be pretty understandable. The crossword data is saved in a cookie so progress will be saved across sessions.