Are you sure!?

Most confirmation boxes nowadays are presented to the visitor in a modal fashion. This means that once the visitor performs the action which requires confirmation, the confirmation is presented, and the visitor must either accept or cancel in order to continue using the site. I was recently tasked with finding a different method that would allow the visitor to be presented with a confirmation box, but not be limited in continuing to use the site's functions while deciding (perhaps they want to check something before they decide).

My eventual solution to the challenge was to create a jQuery class which embeds a confirmation dialog box into a specified container. I call this plugin jEmbedConfirm.

jEmbedConfirm is available for your use on GitHub.

Here is a  working jsFiddle.

jEmbedConfirm Options

(function( $ ){
    $.fn.embedConfirm = function( options ) {  
        var settings = {
            'promptText' : 'Are you sure?',
            'confirmButtonText' : 'Confirm',
            'cancelButtonText' : 'Cancel',
            'confirmButtonClick' : function(){},
            'cancelButtonClick' : function(){},
            'dialogClass' : ''
        };
        return this.each(function() {        
            if ( options ) $.extend( settings, options );
            var item=$(this);
            var html = '<div id="consoleModalConfirm" class="hide addedConfirmDiv '+settings['dialogClass']+'">' + 
                       '<strong>'+settings['promptText']+'</strong>' + 
                       '<br /><br />' + 
                       '<div class="button yes" id="confYes">'+settings['confirmButtonText']+'</div>' +
                       '<div class="button no" id="confNo">'+settings['cancelButtonText']+'</div>' + 
                       '</div>';  
            item.find('.addedConfirmDiv').remove();
            item.prepend(html);
            item.find('#confYes').click(function(e){
                item.find('.addedConfirmDiv').slideUp('fast');
                settings['confirmButtonClick']();
            });
            item.find('#confNo').click(function(e){
                item.find('.addedConfirmDiv').slideUp('fast');
                settings['cancelButtonClick']();
            });    
            item.find('.addedConfirmDiv').slideDown('fast');
        });

    };
})( jQuery );

Sample CSS

/* Styles for the Plugin. These are not required, but suggested highly */

.confirmBox{ /* This is the main class name passed to embedConfirm() */
    -moz-border-radius: 5px; 
    -webkit-border-radius: 5px; 
    background:#333;
    background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#666666), to(#000000));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#666666, #000000);
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#666666, #000000);
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#666666, #000000);
    border-radius: 5px;
    border:3px solid #000; 
    color:#fff;          
    margin:10px 0px;
    padding:10px;

}
.confirmBox .button{ /* This applies to all buttons */
    cursor:pointer;
    border:2px solid #fff; 
    border-radius: 5px; 
    display:inline-block;
    padding:6px;
    margin:8px;
    -moz-border-radius: 5px; 
    -webkit-border-radius: 5px;    
}
.confirmBox .button:hover{ /* This applies to all buttons */
    border-color:#ff0; 
    color:#ff0;
}
.confirmBox .no{ /* This applies to the cancel (no) button */
    background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#990000), to(#330000));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#990000, #330000);
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#990000, #330000);
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#990000, #330000);  
    color:#fff; 
}
.confirmBox .yes{ /* This applies to the confirm (yes) button */
    background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, 0% 0%, 0% 100%, from(#009900), to(#003300));
    background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(#009900, #003300);
    background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(#009900, #003300);
    background-image: -o-linear-gradient(#009900, #003300);  
    color:#fff; 
}

AP Photo

I woke up this morning and, as I usually do when I first wake up, went outside to have a morning cigarette. During this time each morning I like to catch up on what I missed while I was asleep. I check my email, Facebook, the news, and even try to catch up on my WordFeud games. This particular morning, Facebook was my first stop and as I was browsing my "recent" feed, I began seeing some talk of Kim Jong Il. Apparently he died overnight. Well, surely this is great news for the North Koreans, and based on the trends on my Facebook Feed you'd think my friends all won some time of "When will Kim Jong Il Die" office pool.

I would like to think that the removal of this dictator from the planet will bring some sort of good to the North Korean people, but I find it very hard to believe. Have you seen the photos online of the vast swarms of people crying for their fallen leader? It's really confusing when you stop to think about it. Kim Jong Il, for the past 17 years, has isolated his country into poverty. North Korea is literally cut off from the rest of the planet, unless you count the various foreign imports of cars, fine liquors, and gourmet  food the leader was known for importing. He has gotten plump with the fruits of life (and based on the photos of his sone, we know he has too) while his people starve, and die from treatable medical conditions.

I recently watched a documentary called Inside North Korea. It is available on NetFlix and I highly suggest it. This is one of the very few documentaries that takes place in North Korea since foreigners with cameras are not allowed into the country. In the case of this documentary, an eye doctor from Nepal has volunteered to enter the country to perform a marathon of eye surgeries for some lucky North Koreans suffering from blindness. A reporter happens to tag along posing as the doctor's medical staff, documenting the procedures. They allow the camera, but keep them under 24 hour police escort. What did I take away from this documentary?

North Koreans live a lifestyle of suffering, brainwashing, and blind faith in their Great Leader.

• A North Korean house may not adorn their walls with pictures of anything but the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il.
• When asked "Can the Great Leader do anything wrong?" the interviewed North Korean family literally did not understand the question. That is to say, their are no such words in their language to express such a thought - in fact the concept doesn't even exist.
• The hospitals in North Korea are full of state-of-the-art medical equipment, donated from many foreign countries - yet they sit in a corner, unused and falling apart - because no one can get into the country to train the doctors how to use the stuff.
• There is nothing good that happens in North Korea that is not attributed directly to Kim Jong Il.
• When the blind patients unmasked their eyes and could see for the first time, they immediately praised the 10' tall photo of Kim Jong Il that hung in the recovery room, not the Doctor who flew in from Nepal to help them. They praised the photo and one man even pledged to use his new eye-sight to kill as many Americans as possible!
• At the Korean Border, South Korea has a host of their biggest, tallest armed guards standing in a line facing North Korea to ensure no attacks take place. In North Korea, there are three guards in total. Two of them stand at the border facing each other each one ensuring that the other doesn't defect to South Korea. The third guard stands with his back to South Korea, facing his home country. The reason he stands there is to ensure no one from inside the country tries to defect to South Korea.

Does anyone out there really hold out any hope that this maniac's son, Kim Jong Un, will do any better for his people than his father did? I mean, look at this guy. His people are this as toothpicks, yet he is practically oozing butter and Cognac from his pours. The people of his country are so brainwashed, they will actually look to him for leadership. I hope I am wrong, but I do not see any silver lining to this story.

"I am going to blow up the Earth with my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator"

Marvin the Martian would be proud, I think. His "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator" never quite got off the ground the way we would have liked to see. Blowing up the Earth for an unobstructed view of Venus was just a task to great for the little guy. Luckily, the Europeans are taking his concept to an entirely new level and have announced plans to create a laser beam so powerful, they believe it is capable of tearing a hole in Space-time itself, revealing the matter and antimatter underneath. It is thought that the laser will help in understanding the nature of dark matter, the "missing" mass that is thought to pervade the entire observable Universe.

That seems like a noble enough. Build a laser and discover how the Universe works. Let's take a closer look at what this baby is capable of.

At peak power, the fourth laser in Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure project (or ELI) will combine ten beams into a single pulse measuring 200 petawatts. 200 petawatts is significantly more power that our entire race generates at any given moment, and in fact more total power than Earth receives from the sun.

The 200 petawatt pulses will only last 1.5 x 10^-14 second, which is about the same amount of time that it takes for light to travel from one side of a human hair to the other, if you shave the hair down by 90%.

That's quite a laser! I wonder what their monthly electric bill is going to look like. Let's not forget that European economy is collapsing before our eyes. Have a look at the 3 facilities being used to achieve this. We're talking budgets of hundreds and hundred of millions of Euros.

Forgetting the financial side of it all, I am left with one question. What happens if we really do tear a hole in space-time? Will it quickly patch itself back up, or will the tear spread, swallowing our planet and every other bit of mass in our Universe? I feel very much like one of the the handful of Manhattan Project scientists that worried that the detonation of the A-Bomb could have caused the atmosphere to ignite. Granted, these scientists were proven wrong, but their concerns were valid at that time. If the Atmosphere did ignite, there would be no one left to say "I told you so," so I guess it wasn't a concern - just as it isn't now.

Does answering the questions of the Universe benefit mankind enough to offset the risks inherent in creating (and actually using) such a device?