News from jsdevtools.com

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: YUI Theater — Douglas Crockford: “Crockford on JavaScript — Episode IV: The Metamorphosis of Ajax” (93 min.)

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:40:38 -0000

Last week, Yahoo! JavaScript architect Douglas Crockford delivered the fourth installment of his Crockford on JavaScript series: Volume One: The Early Years Chapter 2: And Then There Was JavaScript Act III: Function the Ultimate Episode IV: The Metamorphosis of Ajax Part V: The End of All Things (March 31 — RSVP) In this session, Douglas tackles the DOM. On the [...]

Ext JS Blog: Announcing Ext JS 3.2 beta – Multisort, Transitions and Composite Fields

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:01:38 -0000

We are pleased to announce that a beta version of Ext JS 3.2 is now publicly available. 3.2 introduces a number of exciting new components and adds great new capabilities to your existing applications.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-03-08 - NEW EXAMPLE: Get Tree from Page

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Get Tree from Page example demonstrates how the Uize.Node.Tree.getTreeFromPage static method of the Uize.Node.Tree module can be used to build a tree data object respresenting the structure of the document, by analyzing the occurrence of different CSS classes for section headings at different depths of the document (in this case, the CSS classes level1Header, level2Header, and level3Header). A tree data object like this can be supplied to a tree menu widget, or can otherwise be used to build UI for navigating to different sections of the document (a contents tree, for example).

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-03-08 - MODULE CHANGES: Uize.Widget.Tree

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:00 -0000

A number of instance and static methods of the Uize.Widget.Tree module have been deprecated and migrated into the new Uize.Node.Tree module. The getTreeFromList and getTreeFromPage instance methods, along with the Uize.Widget.Tree.getTreeFromList and Uize.Widget.Tree.getTreeFromPage static methods, have been deprecated and migrated into the Uize.Node.Tree module as Uize.Node.Tree.getTreeFromList and Uize.Node.Tree.getTreeFromPage. For backwards compatibility, the deprecated instance and static methods of the Uize.Widget.Tree class are all still supported, and will be supported for some time. All existing code using the deprecated methods should continue to work as normal. It would be wise to progressively migrate code over to using the static methods in the new Uize.Node.Tree module. In order to achieve backwards compatibility, the Uize.Widget.Tree base class now requires the new Uize.Node.Tree module. Other than that, the static methods in the new Uize.Node.Tree module have the same signature and behavior as the deprecated methods of the Uize.Node.Tree module.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-03-08 - NEW MODULE: Uize.Node.Tree

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Uize.Node.Tree module provides convenience methods for generating a tree data object by analyzing HTML on a page. A tree data object is an array, where each element of the array is a Tree Item. Because a Tree Item may itself contain a child Tree Data Object, specified by its items property, a Tree Data Object can be used to represent an arbitrarily complex, hierarchical structure for information. A Tree Data Object can be used in any number of ways, but is commonly used for building tree-based user interface elements such as contents lists, structured dropdown menus, etc. A number of widget class support data in the Tree Data Object format, such as the Uize.Widget.Tree.List, Uize.Widget.Tree.Menu, and Uize.Widget.Tree.Select classes. Outside of widgets, tree data objects can be used to drive the generation of HTML, in build scripts or Web applications, using JavaScript Templates.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-03-08 - NEW EXAMPLE: Get Tree from List

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Get Tree from List example demonstrates how the Uize.Node.Tree.getTreeFromList static method of the Uize.Node.Tree module can be used to build a tree data object by analyzing the structure of a nested list defined by an HTML ul tag. A tree data object like this can be supplied to a tree menu widget, or can otherwise be used to build UI for navigating to different sections of the document (a contents tree, for example).

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: YUI 3 Gallery Contest 2010 — Win a Ticket to JSConf 2010

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:12:41 -0000

We’re pleased to announce the YUI 3 Gallery Contest 2010. Thanks to our friends at the Yahoo! Developer Network, we have a conference pass to the sold-out JSConf 2010 to offer. We’re pairing that with a $500 gift certificate to Expedia.com to help the prize winner get back and forth to Virginia for [...]

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 14 – Phil Haack

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:46:08 -0000

This week Elijah and Ralph sit down and talk with Microsoft’s Phil Haack, Senior Program Manager on the ASP.NET team, currently working on the new ASP.NET MVC Framework. We discuss their recent decisions to include jQuery into several of their products what ASP.NET MVC is and how jQuery is integrated into the project. [...]

qooxdoo News: The week in qooxdoo (2010-03-05)

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:47:17 -0000

Howdy, all! Still bent on performance improvements and support for internal projects, this is what we have this week. Performance Optimizations One of the major goals for qooxdoo 1.1 is improving the overall performance of the framework. You can't optimize what you can't measure. That's why we started by writing a little benchmark application called PerformanceRunner. It [...]

MooTools: More Than Meets the Eye: Form.Request

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:06:11 -0000

MooTools More features a diverse, powerful collection of Classes (60 plugins!!) and some are my favorite tools that I use over and over again. I thought I’d take some time to dig into some of the plugins in MooTools More that I think are interesting and really useful that maybe you haven’t had time to [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: Happy First Birthday, JSMag

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:27:49 -0000

Tom Hughes-Croucher is an evangelist for the Yahoo! Developer Network. Our friends over at JSMag are celebrating their first birthday. If you haven’t read JSMag it’s a monthly PDF magazine that covers news on hot JavaScript topics and provides practical tutorials. JSMag are giving away a free issue from their first year. Simply log into your JSMag [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: In the YUI 3 Gallery: Stephen Woods’ TimePicker Module

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:30:22 -0000

Stephen Woods works on frontend platforms at Yahoo! and has been working closely with YUI 3 and technologies related to the Yahoo! Home Page during the past year. You can find him at @ysaw and at stephenwoods.net I was working on an internal product here at Yahoo! that required users to input time-of-day in [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: Tickets Remaining for Wednesday’s Crockford on JavaScript

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:04:16 -0000

Continuing the Crockford on JavaScript lecture series (Videos: Part One, Part Two, Part Three), Douglas will be presenting Wednesday at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. Attendance is free, but seating is limited (a few tickets remain for each of the final shows) — a full schedule including links to RSVP is available on the [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: Using YUI at EtreProprio.com

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:18:37 -0000

About the Author: Philippe Bernou is the founder and CEO of the French startup EtreProprio.com, a real estate website for individuals. After working for four years in Luxemburg on IBM technologies, he launched EtreProprio.com in 2008 with Aurélie Eav. EtreProprio.com aims to provide high quality classifieds for free (see an example of a listing here). There [...]

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8rc3

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:33:43 -0000

The third release candidate for jQuery UI 1.8 is out and live on jqueryui.com. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8rc3.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8rc3/ Changelog See the 1.8rc3 Changelog for what’s been fixed since 1.8rc2. For a list of all issues fixed since 1.7.2, see previous 1.8 changelogs. Upgrade Guide A full Upgrade Guide for easing the transition between [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: In the YUI 3 Gallery: Checkbox Group Behaviors

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:31:09 -0000

John Lindal (@jafl5272 on twitter) is one of the lead engineers working on the foundation on which Yahoo! APT is built. Previously, he worked on the Yahoo! Publisher Network. Checkboxes and radio buttons are well known patterns for choosing from a small set of items. The former lets you choose any subset of items [...]

qooxdoo News: qooxdoo @ Open Source Days 2010

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:57:04 -0000

Open Source Days is one of the largest open source conferences, held in Copenhagen, Denmark on March 5-6, 2010. The website says: "It's your opportunity to meet, share, and learn from professional open source experts." Well, for you as a qooxdoo user it is not just about any open source experts. As Tobi Oetiker, of OSS [...]

qooxdoo News: The week in qooxdoo (2010-02-26)

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:16:19 -0000

Welcome back to another weekly status update. All good things come in threes Part 3 of the tutorial series is here, this time integrating communication features while utilizing qooxdoo's data binding layer. If you haven't, check out this tutorial. Part Loading For the last two weeks we've been working on the part loader. The part loader is used to [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: In the Wild for February 26, 2010

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:48:48 -0000

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks in the YUI community with some great new gallery modules (Storage Lite, Simple Menu, and more good ones coming). Here’s some other recent news, featuring two nice YUI demos from the prolific Christian Heilmann (who was recently on YUI Theater talking about how to be prolific about [...]

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 13 – David Walsh

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:02:33 -0000

In this episode we sat down and talked with David Walsh, a developer for the MooTools JavaScript framework. We spent time comparing jQuery with MooTools and talked about how each community can help each other. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or via the raw RSS feed or you can download the MP3. Here are [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: YUI Theater — Philippe Le Hégaret: “The Next Open Web Platform” (52 min.)

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:28:03 -0000

Philippe Le Hégaret, who heads the W3C Interaction Domain, stopped by Yahoo! recently to give a talk about HTML5. While the HTML5 specification itself does actually not contain many new features, the new Web platform, often labeled as HTML5, does come with many new features. These range from HTML video to SVG to [...]

Yahoo! User Interface Blog: Frontend Engineering Job on the YUI Team

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:11:34 -0000

If working alongside people like Douglas Crockford and on the team that created YUI (Matt Sweeney, Adam Moore, Dav Glass, Jenny Donnelly, Luke Smith, Tripp Bridges, Allen Rabinovich, Satyen Desai, and others) sounds like a good way to spend your time, read on: We’re hiring. We’re looking for a great engineer to help us with every [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-24 - MIGRATED MODULE: Uize.Population

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.Population module has been migrated to under the Uize.Widget namespace as Uize.Widget.Population. For the most part, the interface is entirely the same and compatible with the old interface, with some very minor differences. As a widget class now, instances of the Uize.Widget.Population class must be wired (by calling the wireUi instance method) before changing the value of the items set-get property will result in an update of the contents of the instance's DOM node. Also, as a true widget class, instances of the Uize.Widget.Population class can be added as child widgets of other widget instances. Finally, the DOM node into which generated HTML is injeted can now be specified with either of the idPrefix, node, or container set-get properties. This change, which is not backwards compatible, has the benefit of further cleaning up the Uize root namespace. The two examples that were previously using the now defunct Uize.Population class, Populating Photo Details and Structured Record Population, have been updated to use the new Uize.Widget.Population class. If you were previously using the Uize.Population class, then you can use these two example pages as a reference when updating your own code.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-23 - IMPROVED MODULE: Uize.Url

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.Url module has been improved with the introduction of the Uize.Url.from static method (actually, it's existed in the code for a while, but has never been officially documented or fully tested). The Uize.Url.from static method returns an object, containing properties for the various logical segments of the specified URL string. This method provides a convenient way to get at very precise portions of a URL string, such as the file name without the extension, the file type without the "." (period) character, the query params string without the "?" (question mark) character, the anchor without the "#" (pound / hash) character, etc. The Uize.Url.from method is comprehensively documented and fully tested. Additionally, all static methods of the Uize.Url module are now fully unit tested by the module Uize.Test.Uize.Url.

Ext JS Blog: Implementation Spotlight: cara3 from Generis

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:26:46 -0000

cara3, built on Ext GWT, is an ergonomically designed, fast, single browser window that connects individually or simultaneously to different document repositories, like Documentum and Sharepoint.

Official jQuery Blog: jQuery 1.4.2 Released

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:09:56 -0000

jQuery 1.4.2 is now out! This is the second minor release on top of jQuery 1.4, fixing some outstanding bugs from the 1.4 release and landing some nice improvements. I would like to thank the following people that provided patches for this release: Ben Alman, Justin Meyer, Neeraj Singh, and Noah Sloan. Downloading As usual, we provide two [...]

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 12 – Rey Bomb 1

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:16:06 -0000

This week Elijah Manor is attending the MVP Summit at Microsoft so Ralph Whitbeck sits down with fellow Developer Relation members Rey Bango, Cody Lindley and Karl Swedberg. Additionally, we had Doug Neiner of Fuel Your Coding on to talk about everything jQuery. We discuss the reactions to 14 Days of jQuery, Pros and Cons of [...]

qooxdoo News: The week in qooxdoo (2010-02-19)

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:43:58 -0000

Greetings all, for another round-up of the most recent news bits in qooxdoo land. We are currently particularly focusing on performance topics, mostly concerning application start-up and run time behaviour, but also over the whole life cycle of an application. This will show in some of today's entries. To that end, we are also working [...]

qooxdoo News: Tutorial Part 3: Time for Communication

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:13:50 -0000

After we created the application and the main window in the first tutorial part and finished the UI in the second, we will build the communication layer today. With that part the application should be ready to use. Pre-Evaluation First, we need to specify what's the data we need to transfer. For that, we need to take [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-19 - NEW MODULE: Uize.String.Lines

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Uize.String.Lines module provides methods for working with multi-line strings, supporting indenting, changing linebreaks, modifying lines, etc. The Uize.String.Lines module lets you easily... 1) iterate across lines using the Uize.String.Lines.forEach method, 2) modify the contents of lines using the Uize.String.Lines.modify method, 3) filter lines using the Uize.String.Lines.retainMatching, Uize.String.Lines.removeMatching, and Uize.String.Lines.removeBlanks methods, 4) trim whitespace on all lines using the Uize.String.Lines.trim, Uize.String.Lines.trimLeft, and Uize.String.Lines.trimRight methods, 5) analyze and modify indentation on all lines using the Uize.String.Lines.getIndentRange, Uize.String.Lines.indent, Uize.String.Lines.switchIndentType, and Uize.String.Lines.normalizeIndent methods, 6) analyze and modify linebreak type using the Uize.String.Lines.getLinebreakType and Uize.String.Lines.switchLinebreakType methods, and 7) split a multi-line string into a lines array using the Uize.String.Lines.split method.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-19 - IMPROVED MODULE: Uize.String

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.String module has been improved with the addition of a number of new methods, and has been modified with the migration of some methods into the new Uize.String.Lines module. The new Uize.String.contains methods tests to see if a specified substring is contained anywhere within a specified source string. The new Uize.String.trimLeft and Uize.String.trimRight static methods perform whitespace trimming on only one side of a source string, rather than on both sides as with the already existing Uize.String.trim method. The Uize.String.indent and Uize.String.splitLines static methods have been migrated out of the Uize.String module and into the new Uize.String.Lines module, as Uize.String.Lines.indent and Uize.String.Lines.split, respectively. The new Uize.String.Lines module provides a rich set of functionality geared specifically towards working with multi-line strings. The methods migrated out of the Uize.String module were considered too esoteric to be in such a fundamental code module. This change is not backwards compatible. If you had code that was relying on the Uize.String.indent and Uize.String.splitLines methods, then you will have to modify that code to require the new Uize.String.Lines module and to call the methods by their new names.

qooxdoo News: Tutorial Part 2: Finishing the UI

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:51:04 -0000

In the first part of the tutorial, we built a basic window for our target application, a twitter client. In the second part of the tutorial, we want to finish the UI of the application. So lets get started, we got a lot to do! I hope you remember the layout of the application we are [...]

qooxdoo News: Generator Verbose Logging

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:20:42 -0000

The generator since long supports the -v command line switch. Turning this switch on will make the generator print out lots of messages and internal data while going through configurations and running jobs. This is one of the first and easiest means to inspect the workings of the generator as it proceeds, and has been [...]

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8rc2

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:16:55 -0000

The second release candidate for jQuery UI 1.8 is out and ready for testing. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8rc2.zip Svn svn checkout http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8rc2/ Browse source code: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-ui/source/browse/#svn/tags/1.8rc2 Changelog See the 1.8rc2 Changelog for what’s been fixed since 1.8rc1. For a list of all issues fixed since 1.7.2, see previous 1.8 changelogs. Upgrade Guide A full Upgrade Guide for [...]

MooTools: MooTools at FOSDEM: Video

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:59:28 -0000

Hello everyone, I’m really excited and pleased to announce that my presentation “MooTools as a General Purpose Application Framework” which I delivered at the FOSDEM is now available on YouTube. If you are not able to watch the HD-Version you can download the slides here. Thanks again to the FOSDEM team for inviting me and for giving us [...]

MooTools: MooTools Roundup January 2010

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:56:14 -0000

The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins and tutorials that have been released recently. MooTools Driver for Rails 3 Helpers Rails 3 has been recently been released [...]

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 11 – Yehuda Katz

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:35:39 -0000

In our final episode from the 14 Days of jQuery recordings in Washington, DC, Ralph and Elijah sat down with Yehuda Katz, core team member of the Rails and jQuery teams. We discuss the new hooks that are coming in Ruby on Rails that allow it to use jQuery natively. Note: Since we’ve recorded this [...]

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 10 – appendTo, LLC

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:22:36 -0000

During the 14 Days of jQuery recordings, Elijah and Ralph sat down with appendTo cofounders Mike Hostetler and Jonathan Sharp. We discuss the company’s mission, services and client experiences. appendTo, provides training, support and consulting services to programmers and end-user enterprises who adapt jQuery into their front-end web development strategies. We provide world-class service and [...]

Ext JS Blog: Ext JS is Migrating to Git

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:49:42 -0000

With many of our developers moving to Git for smaller internal projects, and with Ext JS 3.1.1 just released, we decided to take the opportunity to move development of Ext to Git.

qooxdoo News: The week in qooxdoo (2010-02-12)

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:33:16 -0000

This week we were rather busy with updating some of our hard/software infrastructure, refining the various responsibilities within the team (also in anticipation of Fabian's leave), and identifying and addressing topics of the upcoming releases. So if you haven't already, make yourself familiar with the new series of tutorials that started this week, take comfort in [...]

qooxdoo News: Saying Farewell

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:46:24 -0000

After more than three years as full time qooxdoo developer I (Fabian) am going to leave 1&1 at the end of March. Looking back it is amazing how much qooxdoo has evolved. When I came to 1&1, the qooxdoo core team consisted only of Alex, Andreas, Sebastian and me. Today the qooxdoo team has eight [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-11 - SOTU (State of the UIZE)

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

As an aid to developers of the UIZE JavaScript Framework, the new SOTU (State of the UIZE) page provides an overview of the state of all the modules that make up the framework. Developers of UIZE modules can use this document as a guide on where work is needed. The table below provides information on various aspects of UIZE modules: things such as estimated code completeness, estimated documentation completeness, unit test completeness, scrunched file size, etc. The table's columns are sortable, so if you want to sort the modules by documentation completeness, you can do so clicking on the "DOC" heading. Or, if you want to see all modules of a certain type, sort by the "MODULE TYPE" column and then scroll to the module type you're interested in - they'll all be clumped together. The "IMPORT." column is a high level assessment of the importance of modules in the grand scheme of things, so this can also inform where effort is invested in writing documentation and tests.

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI Download Builder/ThemeRoller Status

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:31:23 -0000

NOTICE: The Download Builder and ThemeRoller have been restored to working order again. Thank you all for your patience. We are aware of the problems with the Download Builder and ThemeRoller and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. We have disabled those components on our web site until the problems with these components can [...]

MooTools: MooTools More 1.2.4.3, 1.2.4.4

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:10:29 -0000

UPDATE: 1.2.4.4 is also released; there was a new bug in Tips introduced in 1.2.4.3 that was immediately patched. This is mostly a bug fix release. Nearly 50 bug fixes (see the milestone for 1.2.4.3 in Lighthouse). Keyboard: Added some support for just pressing ‘shift’, ‘control’, or ‘alt’ Added a bunch of keycodes for Mac compatibility Keyboard.Extras: Support for “shortcuts” which are [...]

qooxdoo News: Tutorial Part 1: The Beginning of a twitter App

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:21:22 -0000

The Missing Manual We have heard it a couple of times: Users are missing a tutorial a bit more complex than the simple "Hello World" tutorial we already have. Today, we want to close that gap between the first tutorial and the demo applications included in the framework like the Feedreader. As you sure have read in [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-05 - IMPROVED MODULE: Uize.Widget.CollectionItem.Zooming

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The implementation of the Uize.Widget.CollectionItem.Zooming module has been improved to provide a smoother experience in Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and other browsers based on the WebKit project. With the previous implementation approach, the zoom in effect would be jerky in some browsers the very first time that the zoom in effect was triggered for an instance. In worst case scenarios, there would be no zoom in effect visible at all, and the larger, pannable version of the image would appear abruptly when it had completed loading in. Even in such cases, though, on subsequent triggering the effect would be smooth. The new implementation approach addresses this problem and produces a zoom in effect that is smooth - from the first triggering of the effect for an instance - in Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and other browsers based on the WebKit project, while still remaining smooth in all other browsers.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-02-05 - NEW EXAMPLE: Zooming Collection Item with Image Switching

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Zooming Collection Item with Image Switching examples demonstrates how the Uize.Widget.CollectionItem.Zooming widget class handles dynamically switching the image that it displays. In this example, the Uize.Widget.CollectionItem.Zooming widget class is being used to add a JavaScript animation zoom in effect to an image. In contrast to the Zooming Collection Items example, which simply demonstrates this widget applied across multiple images in a grid, this example demonstrates how the value of a single instance's previewUrl set-get property can be changed dynamically, and how the zoom and pan behavior still works as expected after the image URL has been updated.

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 9 – David Artz, Aol.

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:34:13 -0000

In this prerecorded episode from Washington DC, we sit down with David Artz, Director of Website Optimization at Aol. David talks to us about the conviences and challenges of using jQuery at the enterprise level. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes or via the raw RSS feed or you can download the MP3. Here are [...]

Official jQuery Blog: 14 Days of jQuery Summary: Days 8-14, jQuery 1.4.1 Released

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:13:37 -0000

In case you’re not following along with the 14 days of jQuery, here’s a summary of what has been released for days 8-14. Highlights On Day 12, the jQuery team released jQuery 1.4.1, the first bug release to jQuery 1.4. jQuery 1.4.1 is now the latest release of jQuery; take a moment to review the 1.4.1 [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-28 - NEW MODULE: Uize.String.Builder

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Uize.String.Builder module implements an object to facilitate the building of very large strings, in a way that minimizes performance costs. Building strings using a traditional incremental concatenation approach using the += (incrementing assignment) operator can be slow in certain JavaScript interpreters when very large strings are being built. One way around this performance issue is to use an array to accumulate all the segments of a large string, and then concatenate all the elements of that array at the end of the string building process using the Array object's join instance method. The Uize.String.Builder object wraps this pattern up neatly into an object that also provides the benefit of String object parity that wouldn't otherwise be available in a manual array building process. In doing so, the Uize.String.Builder object can provide a substantial performance benefit in certain applications. This new module is comprehensively documented and unit tested.

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8rc1

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:01:23 -0000

The first release candidate for jQuery UI 1.8 is out and is live on http://jqueryui.com/demos/. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8rc1.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8rc1/ Changelog See the 1.8rc1 Changelog for full details on what’s included in this release. Barring any catastrophic problems this code will become jQuery UI 1.8. How to report issues If you find any issues in [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-25 - DEPRECATED METHODS KILLED

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.Data.indexIn and Uize.Data.isIn static methods of the Uize.Data module, that were both deprecated way back in December of 2008, have finally been killed. The identical functionality provided by the old methods is available in the Uize.indexIn and Uize.isIn static methods of the Uize base class.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-25 - Scruncher Gets Major Performance Upgrade

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.Scruncher JavaScript scruncher module has been significantly optimized in order to dramatically speed up the scruncher build script, along with all other processes utilizing this module. The scruncher's algorithm for parsing and compacting JavaScript code has been optimized for speed using a variety of different optimization strategies. The end result is that scrunching a JavaScript file is now many times faster. As an illustration of this improvement, scrunching all the JavaScript modules in the uize.com Web site project (over 180 of them) previously took about 45 seconds on one machine. The exact same process now takes about 11 seconds on that same machine! The benefits of this performance optimization will be keenly felt in larger Web site projects that have lots of additional proprietary JavaScript modules. And, because the build script for building reference documentation from comments inside JavaScript modules also utilizes the Uize.Scruncher module for extracting SimpleDoc comment, the documentation build script will also run much faster.

Official jQuery Blog: The Official jQuery Podcast – Episode 8 – api.jquery.com

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:25:17 -0000

In this episode we are at the Aol. headquarters in Washington DC filming video and releasing jQuery 1.4 for the 14 Days of jQuery. In this episode we talk with Karl Swedberg and Paul Irish about the new api.jquery.com documentation site. You can subscribe to the show in iTunes via the raw RSS feed or [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-22 - MIGRATED MODULES

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

Various modules have been migrated out of the root of the Uize namespace. The Uize.SimpleDoc and Uize.DocSucker modules have been migrated into the new Uize.Doc namespace, as the modules Uize.Doc.Simple and Uize.Doc.Sucker, respectively. The Uize.Coupler and Uize.Cycle modules have been migrated into the new Uize.Util namespace, as the modules Uize.Util.Coupler and Uize.Util.Cycle, respectively. All modules, build scripts, examples, and documentation in the UIZE JavaScript Framework have been updated accordingly. The decision was made to not make this change backwards compatible, since the migrated modules were considered sufficiently esoteric. If you have any code that used these modules, you will have to update your code to use the modules by their new names. Other than the name change, the functionality of the modules has not changed.

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8b1

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:48:29 -0000

The first beta release for jQuery UI 1.8 is out. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8b1.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8b1/ Changelog See the 1.8b1 Changelog for full details on what’s included in this release. Please help us test this and beat it up. The plan is to have one more beta release, and then an rc1 before final. Thanks A [...]

Official jQuery Blog: 14 Days of jQuery Summary: Days 1 – 7

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:08:47 -0000

In case you’re not following along with the 14 days of jQuery, here’s a summary of what has been released thus far. Pre Release Day 1 New jQuery API Site Pre Release Day 2 jQuery 1.4rc1 Day 1 jQuery 1.4 Released jQuery 1.4 Live Q&A Day 2 HD version of jQuery 1.4 Q&A Media Temple Giveaway jQuery Podcast episode 7 with John Resig Day 3 Internal Changes in [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-20 - NEW DOCUMENTATION: Data Module

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

A section has been added to the JavaScript Modules explainer discussing ways to use JavaScript modules to package data in a special type of module called a data module. Data modules are modules that only define data structures, and are a convenient means of representing data that is to be used by JavaScript code. As modules, data modules can be required by other types of modules, and can therefore be loaded by the module loader mechanism, which can obviate the need to load data through XMLHttpRequest requests, providing one way of delivering data for cross-site scripting (XSS) while also allowing data to be loaded from local files by Web pages that are run locally. As modules, data modules can require other data modules, allowing more complex data structures to be built up using shared subsets of data that are defined in other data modules (see Composite Data Module). Furthermore, data modules can use other modules for programmatic generation of data, or for the expanding of compressed data. Data modules can be generated dynamically by server side code (see Dynamically Generated Data Module), allowing the module loader mechanism to be used as an alternative to traditional approaches to XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) data requests. The newly added documentation discusses various aspects of data modules, including one suggested implementation approach, a few other possible implementation approaches, the benefits of deferred construction of data objects, dynamically generated data modules, and composite data modules. To read this new documentation in full, consult the JavaScript Modules explainer and browse to the Data Module subsection under the section Types of Modules.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-19 - NEW EXAMPLE: Drag-to-move

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Drag-to-move example demonstrates how to wire up a bunch of image thumbnails so they can be dragged around a workspace. In this example, the Uize.Widget.Drag.Move widget class is being used to wire up a bunch of image thumbnails so that they can be dragged around a "workspace". This is a very basic example of drag-and-drop - there are no drop targets to speak of. Instances of the Uize.Widget.Drag.Move class are wired up for all the thumbnails in a single statement, thanks to the Uize.Widget.Drag.Move.spawn static method. The Uize.Widget.Drag.Move class doesn't deal with managing z-index - just coordinates. It does, however, support coordinates specified in units of px (pixels) as well as % (percent).

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-17 - NEW REFERENCE DOCUMENTATION: Uize.Templates.*

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

Basic reference documentation has been added for various JavaScript template modules under the Uize.Templates namespace. This update adds documentation for the following JavaScript template modules: Uize.Templates.Calculator, Uize.Templates.Calendar, Uize.Templates.Collection, Uize.Templates.CollectionItem, Uize.Templates.ColorInfo, Uize.Templates.HashTable, Uize.Templates.JstModule, and Uize.Templates.List.

Ext JS Blog: HTML5, Video, Canvas, and Ext JS

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 08:53:08 -0000

HTML5 is coming. All of us at Ext are excited to embrace the new standard as it gains acceptance. This post will examine two notable HTML5 developments - Video and Canvas. The video tag allows for native video rendering, removing the current need for third-party plugins like Flash. Likewise, the canvas tag has a clean yet very powerful API allowing you to draw complex graphics at the pixel level.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-10 - NEW EXAMPLE: Color Gradient Tool

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Color Gradient Tool provides a UI for visualizing and experimenting with color gradients. By applying different curve functions to different color components, color gradients can range from basic color transitions to sophisticated spectral patterns. Using this tool, you can select a color gradient from a "PRESETS" tab. Upon selecting a color gradient preset, the color gradient will be previewed in a display area. The parameters for a color gradient can be tweaked inside a "PARAMS" tab, and those changes can then be previewed. Moving the mouse over the gradient preview will display a tooltip that contains information about the color being moused over, and clicking will provide the hex value of that color in a prompt dialog so it can be copied to the clipboard. So, this tool also provides a novel approach to a color picker UI, since it lets you choose a color from unique color spreads.

MooTools: MooTools Roundup December 2009

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:21:23 -0000

With the release of the Forge in December the way people contribute to MooTools has changed. The quality, amount, and the variety of plugins has amazed all of us. There are already more than 100 plugins available. In addition to that, Jacob Gube (SixRevisions) and MooTools contributor Garrick Cheung (@garrickcheung) have co-authored a new MooTools [...]

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-06 - NEW MODULE: Uize.Node.VirtualEvent.Edge

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The Uize.Node.VirtualEvent.Edge module implements virtual DOM events that can be used to detect when the mouse enters / exits nodes at specific edges. The virtual DOM events provided in the Uize.Node.VirtualEvent.Edge module make it easy to wire up DOM nodes so that different things occur depending on at which edge the user enters a DOM node. So, for example, you could perform a different action when the user mouses over a node from the left side than when the user mouses over the same node from the right side. Edge virtual DOM events are implemented for a node by comparing the coordinates of the mouse - at the time that a mouseover or mouseout real DOM event occurs for a node - to the coordinates of the node itself.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-06 - NEW EXAMPLE: Edge Virtual DOM Events

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Edge Virtual DOM Events example demonstrates the edge virtual DOM events - such as mouseEnterLeft, mouseEnterBottom, mouseExitTop, mouseExitRight, etc. - that are available in the Uize.Node.VirtualEvent.Edge module. In this demo, a grid of squares is presented. Each of the squares is wired up with handlers for enter and exit events for all of their edges. The enter events are wired to fade the color of the border at which the mouse enters a square from orange to black. The exit events are wired to fade the color of the border at which the mouse exits a square from cyan to black. The animation of the border color is done using the Uize.Fx.fadeStyle method of the Uize.Fx module. Moving the mouse around the squares will cause the various edges to light up in response to executing the handlers for the edge virtual DOM events that are wired up.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-06 - NEW METHOD: Uize.pairUp

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Uize.pairUp static method, implemented in the Uize base class, returns an object that is the specified key and value, paired up together in the same object. For example, the statement Uize.pairUp ('foo','bar') would produce the object {foo:'bar'}. The Uize.pairUp method is useful when an object needs to be created from a key/value pair, where the key name is either dynamically generated in an expression or is supplied via a parameter. Using the Uize.pairUp method, you can collapse what would normally be three statements into just one.

Ext JS Blog: Implementation Spotlight: Spiral Universe

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:50:50 -0000

Spiral 2.0 is a browser-based desktop used by schools to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve their management and administration. Built on Ext GWT, Spiral Universe has become the fastest growing School Information System available.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-05 - Powerful New Virtual DOM Events Feature

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The UIZE JavaScript Framework has introduced a powerful new construct called a Virtual DOM Event (implemented in the new Uize.Node.VirtualEvent module), which allows more sophisticated user interactions with DOM nodes to be expressed using the event paradigm. Put quite simply, a Virtual DOM Event is an event for a DOM node that is not part of the standard set of DOM events, but that is implemented in supplemental JavaScript code. At the highest level, the new Uize.Node.VirtualEvent module provides the following: 1) a foundation and features (including static methods) to facilitate the creation of virtual DOM events, 2) a sizable selection of virtual DOM event implementations (eg. ctrlClick, shiftClick, mouseRest, mouseRemainDown, remainFocused, etc.), and 3) a namespace, under which further sets of virtual DOM event implementations can be organized into modules. As part of the process of creating a generalized system for virtual DOM events, the old mouserest virtual DOM event that was previously supported in the Uize.Node module has been migrated into the new Uize.Node.VirtualEvent module.

UIZE JavaScript Framework | Latest News: 2010-01-05 - NEW EXAMPLE: Virtual DOM Events

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:00:00 -0000

The new Virtual DOM Events example demonstrates virtual DOM events - such as mouseRest, mouseRemainDown, remainFocused, ctrlClick, etc. - that are available in the Uize.Node.VirtualEvent package. In this example, a series of ten test pods is provided for demostrating different virtual DOM events. Each of the pods below is a test for a type of virtual DOM event. Each pod has a colorful test node, with handlers registered for various virtual DOM events, and with instructions on how to interact with the test node in order to trigger the virtual events. Below each test node is a mini log console, which will fill up with log entries as the virtual DOM events are fired (a clear link lets you clear a log).

MooTools: MooTools 1.1 Upgrade Helper (beta)

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:03:50 -0000

Users wishing to upgrade any large site from MooTools 1.1 to 1.2 can sometimes find it difficult. The API for 1.2 changed quite a bit, so without help upgrading your code can be fraught with danger. Our solution is an upgrade helper that will allow you to replace your old MooTools 1.1 code with 1.2 code [...]

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8a2

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:06:25 -0000

The second preview release for jQuery UI 1.8 is out. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8a2.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8a2/ Changelog See the 1.8a2 Changelog for full details on what’s included in this release. Please help us test this and beat it up. The plan is to have two beta releases. New plugins may be added still before [...]

Ext JS Blog: Ext JS 3.1: Massive memory improvements, TreeGrid, and more

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:53:45 -0000

On behalf of the Ext Team, I am extremely excited to announce the final release of Ext JS 3.1. With this release we rededicate ourselves to making Ext JS the best it can be, in both features and performance.

MooTools: The Official MooTools Plugins Repository Is Here!

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:33:01 -0000

If I was to highlight the single most important thing for MooTools in 2009, I would say without a doubt it’s been its community. This year has seen the involvement of many individuals from all over the world that have contributed their time, expertise, talent and charm. Our San Francisco & London hackathons are clear [...]

MooTools: London Hackathon 2009

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:28:46 -0000

Anyone that follows any MooTools Core Developer or Contributor on Twitter may have seen us talking about a ‘hackathon’. Last weekend a large number of the dev team met up in London to work on various parts of the framework. We thought we’d share with you what we got up to, some pictures, and give [...]

Ext JS Blog: Creating a Custom Ext GWT Component

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:08:52 -0000

Creating custom Web components can prove challenging without a good foundation. Fortunately, the Ext GWT framework contains a Component API that provides the ability to quickly and easily create custom components while using Java. This post will walk you through the steps needed to create our ContentScroller - an Ext GWT UX component.

Ext JS Blog: Advanced Plugin Development with Ext JS

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:32:40 -0000

When creating a cross browser RIA, choosing a framework with a plethora of components is where most of us look first. Selecting a framework that enables you the flexibility to enhance and expand its offering becomes very important. Fortunately, Ext JS has all the rich UI functionality that most applications require coupled with a vibrant community creating impressive extensions. Ext's elegant design allows us to explore our creativity by adding new features to existing widgets.

MooTools: MooTools Depender - A Build Tool for MooTools JavaScript Libraries

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:10:13 -0000

As mentioned in the new features in MooTools More in 1.2.4.1, there’s a new plugin called Depender which uses MooTools dependency mappings to allow you to lazy load additional scripts on the fly based on what you need. Rather than list every single file you depend on, you just list the features you want to [...]

MooTools: MooTools Roundup - October 2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:51:48 -0000

The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins and tutorials that have been released recently. MooShell MooShell, created by Piotr Zalewa (zalun), is the best code pasting tool [...]

MooTools: Call to Upgrade: MooTools 1.1.2 and MooTools 1.2.4

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:43:18 -0000

You’ve probably noticed a flurry of MooTools 1.2 updates recently, including updates to both MooTools Core and More. We’re happy to give them to you and hope you continue to upgrade your existing MooTools 1.2.x builds. We would like to bring to you attention an upgrade to the MooTools 1.1.2 build and MooTools 1.2.4 [...]

MooTools: MooTools More 1.2.4.2

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:50:23 -0000

There’s nothing like releasing code to uncover glitches. Since last week’s release of MooTools Core 1.2.4 and MooTools More 1.2.4.1, there have been a few bugs reported and we wanted to get the fixes out to you as quickly as possible. Most of these are minor. We have unit tests for all the classes we [...]

MooTools: MooTools 1.2.4

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:41:18 -0000

It’s been three months to the day since the last point release of MooTools and we’re excited about all the goodness packed into this release. At this point, the 1.2 codebase has a very stable API, and our current plan is to release these point releases every three months or so until the 2.0 codebase [...]

MooTools: Enhanced MooTools Search Launched

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:28:01 -0000

The MooTools team would like to announce the launch of an enhanced MooTools web search: MooTools Search Beta: http://mootools.net/search This enhanced search has been integrated with the MooTools documentation and will help you easily navigate and identify information in the documentation better than the previous documentation search. The new search system also searches multiple [...]

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: scriptaculous V1.8.3: Prototype 1.6.1, service release/bug fixes

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:32:00 -0000

This is a bugfix release that bumps script.aculo.us to version 1.8.3.

Most importantly, the included Prototype 1.6.1 provides performance and compatibility improvements with the latest browsers.

Other fixes:

Effect.toggle to return effect (to be able to do Effect.toggle(element, 'appear', {sync: true});) [RStankov]
Use element.identify() for fetching element.id in Sortable.create [RStankov]
Fix deprecated usage of Position.cumulativeOffset. [#182 state:resolved] [James Wheare]
Make loader work for application/xhtml+xml served documents. Closes #95. [Pavel Sedek]
Check for Windows Media plugin and RealPlayer plugin in Firefox on Windows to allow sound playback. Closes #36, #86. [Alexander Gavazov et al.]
Remove dead code in effects.js. Closes #125. [Confusioner]

Download at http://script.aculo.us/, or grab/fork the source at http://github.com/madrobby/scriptaculous.

Ext JS Blog: Ext JS Designer Preview

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:29:32 -0000

We are very excited to share our latest version of the Ext JS Designer. This new version adds many new features to improve your efficiency creating application designs. Once you get accustomed to these features its difficult to live without them. For those of you that don't have the time or ability to download and play around with the Designer, we have created a Preview screencast in which we mock up some interfaces. We have tried to show off as much features and functionality as possible.

MooTools: MooTools Roundup - September 2009

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:03:11 -0000

The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins and tutorials that have been released recently. MilkChart MilkChart is an outstanding set of MooTools classes that create robust charts [...]

Ext JS Blog: Ext JS on Rails: A ComprehensiveTutorial

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:12:07 -0000

I've had my eyes on Ruby-based ExtJS code-generation tools for a few years now. Back in Ext-1.0 days, I even took a shot at creating a large Rails wrapper framework, mapping Ext UI widgets to plain-old Ruby-objects which could be stored in YAML files and rendered into views. However, with Ext-2.0+ came new ideas which brought many changes to the framework (great new component-model, plugins, xtype, normalized component configuration-objects) and the Rails wrapper framework was rendered immediately obsolete. Until recently, I gave up on auto-generating ExtJS code and concentrated upon writing good Ext plugins and base-classes.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: script.aculo.us 2.0 alpha preview

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:30:00 -0000

scripty2 is now out in a preview alpha release, with cool demos and some of the nicest documentation any open source project has (we do know that's a bold statement!).

In this release, the focus has been on the effects engine, with the UI parts still pending a rewrite (there will be a lot of really cool stuff coming for the UI part, but more about that later).

As a bonus, the minified and gzipped version of scripty2 is a mere 5k in size. That’s a lot of animation features in a very, very small package.

Hop over to http://scripty2.com to see the demos and documentation, and learn more about the background story on Thomas' blog post.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Documentation: not just new, but also improved

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:20:00 -0000

When we officially released 1.6.1 last week, we also published new documentation, the first official docs generated with PDoc.

Tobie, ear to the ground, brought to my attention what many of you were saying (on the blog and on Twitter): the new docs were harder to navigate and, therefore, harder to browse. Though I had eventual plans to re-do the navigation, the instant feedback showed it was a more critical issue than I’d guessed. So I spent the last week making some changes to the template we use to generate the docs.

You can see the results at api.prototypejs.org. The biggest change is obvious: a fixed, always-visible sidebar that makes it easier to move from section to section. Typing in the search box replaces the hierarchical navigation with a list of matching results. Clearing the search box (use the ESC key as a shortcut) switches back to the ordinary navigation. The sidebar will preserve state from page to page — it’ll remember your search term and the scrollbar position.

The docs aren’t perfect yet, but they’re good enough to use. I’ve tested them on Firefox 3.5, Safari 4.0, and IE 7–8. If there are glitches in these browsers or others, please open issues on the GitHub project. (If you, as a JavaScript developer, are still using IE 6; I’d like to take you out for a beer and ask you why.)

We intend for this to be default template included with PDoc, albeit without the Prototype branding. And now that we’ve accomplished the most pressing goal — getting PDoc to generate comprehensive and canonical docs for Prototype — we can focus on the big ideas we’ve got for the next version of our inline documentation tool.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Core Team update: Andrew & Tobie take the reins

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:20:00 -0000

In addition to releasing Prototype 1.6.1, I’m pleased to announce that Andrew Dupont and Tobie Langel now officially head up the Prototype Core Team. They’ll be in charge of maintaining Prototype, deciding what makes the cut for new releases, and handling day-to-day operations.

This change in responsibility will let me focus on some infrastructural projects we need for the next-generation version of Prototype. It’ll also help us fix bugs faster and release new versions more frequently. And I’ll remain on the Core Team, contributing code and offering input on API design.

Andrew and Tobie have proved themselves to be worthy keepers of the code, so I’m certain Prototype is in good hands. Congratulations, guys, and thanks for all your hard work!

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Prototype 1.6.1 released

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:15:00 -0000

We’re pleased to announce the release of Prototype 1.6.1 today. This version features improved performance, an element metadata storage system, new mouse events, and compatibility with the latest browsers. It’s also the first release of Prototype built with Sprockets, our JavaScript packaging tool, and PDoc, our inline documentation tool.

Highlights

Full compatibility with new browsers. This version of Prototype fully supports versions 1.0 and higher of Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8 in both compatibility mode and super-standards mode.
Element metadata storage. Easily associate JavaScript key/value pairs with a DOM element. See the blog post that started it off.
New mouse events. Internet Explorer’s proprietary “mouseenter” and “mouseleave” events are now available in all browsers.
Improved performance and housekeeping. The frequently used Function#bind, String#escapeHTML, and Element#down methods are faster, and Prototype is better at cleaning up after itself.
Built with Sprockets. You can now include the Prototype source code repository in your application and use Sprockets for dependency management and distribution.
Inline documentation with PDoc. Our API documentation is now stored in the source code with PDoc so it’s easy to send patches or view documentation for a specific version.

See the RC2 blog post, RC3 blog post, and CHANGELOG for more details.

Download, report bugs, and get help

Download Prototype 1.6.1
View the API documentation
Check out the Prototype source code on GitHub
Submit bug reports to Lighthouse
Get Prototype help on the mailing list or #prototype IRC channel
Interact with the Core Team on the protoype-core mailing list

We hope you enjoy the new version!

UPDATE

We’re aware of the usability issues with the current PDoc-generated API documentation. We’re working hard to fix those.

In the meantime, we’ve reverted our changes and you can again access the old Prototype documentation. For those of you courageous enough, the new documentation is still available.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.8a1

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:40:58 -0000

The first preview release for jQuery UI 1.8 is out. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.8a1.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.8a1/ Changelog See the 1.8a1 Changelog for full details on what’s included in this release. New Plugins In addition to a number of bug fixes, this release adds three new plugins: Position Stackfix (update: later removed, changed back to bgigframe) zIndex Please help us [...]

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Prototype 1.6.1 RC3: Chrome support and PDoc

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:21:00 -0000

Today we’re announcing Release Candidate 3 of Prototype 1.6.1. Among the highlights of this release are official Chrome support, improved IE8 compatibility, faster generation of API documentation with PDoc, and lots of bug fixes.

Chrome support

Since Google Chrome is a close sibling of Safari, Prototype has had excellent Chrome compatibility ever since the browser was first released. Now we’re making it official: Prototype supports Chrome 1.0 and greater.

If you have Chrome installed on your system (Windows only for now, even though early alphas exist for Mac), invoking rake test will run the unit tests in all locally-installed browsers, including Chrome. To run the unit tests in Chrome alone, try rake test BROWSERS=chrome.

Generate your own docs with PDoc

It’s been a long, strange trip for PDoc, the inline-doc tool that will soon be for Prototype and script.aculo.us what RDoc is for Rails. It started as Tobie’s brainchild over a year ago, but key contributions from James Coglan and Samuel Lebeau have helped to carry it across the finish line.

PDoc was a part of RC2, but has since been updated to make doc generation much, much faster. On my machine, a process that used to take 20 minutes now takes only 60 seconds. Furthermore, we’ve solved a couple of minor issues that made it hard to build the docs on Windows.

Ever since Prototype 1.5, we’ve kept our documentation in Mephisto, the same engine that powers the rest of the site (and this blog). It’s served us well, but it meant that updating the docs became a chore that could only be started once we’d released a particular version. PDoc will make it far easier to maintain our documentation — and far easier to keep archival copies of the docs for older versions of Prototype.

Upon final release of 1.6.1, we’ll put the generated docs on this site, just like Rails hosts its most recent stable documentation. Until then, you can generate your own local docs by checking out the full source and running rake doc from the command line.

Other improvements

There have also been a number of bugs fixed since RC2 — including a heinous bug relating to Event#observe — and a number of key optimizations. We’ve further improved IE8 compatibility, solving some edge-case issues that popped up since RC2. Credit goes to Juriy (kangax), our newest team member, for working tirelessly these last few months to make 1.6.1 faster and less reliant on browser sniffs.

Download, report bugs, and get help

Download Prototype 1.6.1 RC3
Submit bug reports to Lighthouse
Get Prototype help on the mailing list or #prototype IRC channel
Interact with the Core Team on the protoype-core mailing list

Thanks to the many contributors who made this release possible!

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.7.2

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:36:26 -0000

The second maintenance release for jQuery UI 1.7 is out. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-1.7.2.zip Themes Package: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery-ui-themes-1.7.2.0.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.7.2/ Themes: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.7.2/themes/ Google Ajax Libraries API Uncompressed: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.js Compressed: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js Themes: base, black-tie, blitzer, cupertino, dark-hive, dot-luv, eggplant, excite-bike, flick, hot-sneaks, humanity, le-frog, mint-choc, overcast, pepper-grinder, redmond, smoothness, south-street, start, sunny, swanky-purse, trontastic, ui-darkness, ui-lightness, and vader. Custom Download Builder Changelog See [...]

jQuery UI Blog: This Week in jQuery UI vol. 7

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:11:29 -0000

A couple days late to press this week. Friday and Saturday were filled with the first ever JavaScript Conference, JSConf 2009. What a weekend! jQuery UI was represented by Scott González and myself (Richard Worth). Scott gave a presentation on creating a widget using the jQuery UI widget factory. I did an introduction to jQuery [...]

jQuery UI Blog: jQuery UI 1.6

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:35:41 -0000

The legacy compatibility update release, jQuery UI 1.6 is out. You can download it here: Download File Downloads Development Bundle: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/files/jquery.ui-1.6.zip Svn Tag: http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.6/ Google Ajax Libraries API Uncompressed: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.6/jquery-ui.js Compressed: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.6/jquery-ui.min.js Custom Download Builder Changelog See the 1.6 Changelog for full details on what’s included in this release. Reminder This is a legacy update release for 1.5. It is intended for anyone still using jQuery 1.2.6. [...]

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Prototype 1.6.1 RC2: IE8 compatibility, Element storage, and bug fixes

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:33:00 -0000

Today we tagged the first public release candidate of Prototype 1.6.1. (What happened to RC1? Long story.) While there are more minor fixes we’d like to get into this release, we decided an interim release was necessary because of the final release of Internet Explorer 8 last week.

This is the first public release of Prototype that is fully compatible — and fully optimized for — Internet Explorer 8’s “super-standards” mode. In particular, Prototype now takes advantage of IE8’s support of the Selectors API and its ability to extend the prototypes of DOM elements.

What’s new?

Full compatibility with Internet Explorer 8. Juriy has spearheaded the effort to replace most of our IE “sniffs” into outright capability checks — making it far easier to support IE8 in both “super-standards” mode and compatibility mode.
Element storage, a feature announced previously. Safely associate complex metadata with individual elements.
mouseenter and mouseleave events — simulating the IE-proprietary events that tend to be far more useful than mouseover and mouseout.
An Element#clone method for cloning DOM nodes in a way that lets you perform “cleanup” on the new copies.

What’s been improved?

Better housekeeping on event handlers in order to prevent memory leaks.
Better performance in Function#bind, Element#down, and a number of other often-used methods.
A number of bug fixes.

Consult the CHANGELOG for more details.

In addition to the code itself, the 1.6.1 release features Prototype’s embrace of two other excellent projects we’ve been working on: Sprockets (JavaScript concatenation) and PDoc (inline documentation). Sprockets is now used to “build” Prototype into a single file for distribution. PDoc will be the way we document the framework from now on. The official API docs aren’t quite ready yet, but they’ll be ready for the final release of 1.6.1.

Download, Report Bugs, and Get Help

Download Prototype 1.6.1_rc2
Submit bug reports to Lighthouse
Get Prototype help on the rails-spinoffs mailing list or #prototype IRC channel
Interact with the Core Team on the prototype-core mailing list

Thanks to the many contributors who made this release possible!

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Sprockets: Beautiful and angular

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:59:00 -0000

Over at SvN, Sam announced the 1.0 release of Sprockets, the new dependency management and concatenation tool that makes it easy to modularize your JavaScript. Sprockets is Prototype’s new build system, but it’s also been extracted into a Ruby library so you can use it anywhere you write JavaScript.

There are many great ways to use Sprockets in your own projects. You can use it the way Prototype does — split up your JavaScript into small, maintainable files, then create “meta-files” that include the smaller files in a logical order. Prototype had previously been doing this with plain ERB; now we integrate Sprockets as a Git submodule and use it to build our distributable file.

Sprockets can also be used to write JavaScript “plugins”: bundles of files that can easily be integrated into existing code. With Sprockets, you can formally declare that foo.js depends on thud.js; when your files are concatenated into one output file, thud.js will be included first.

In addition, Sprockets lets JavaScript files provide other assets — HTML, CSS, images, and the like. At build time, those assets will be copied into the document root of your server (in a way that preserves the sub-structure of directories within). This allows the plugin to refer to those assets via absolute URLs, instead of having to ask you where they’re located.

A few facts are worth special mention.

Sprockets does not require Prototype. Sprockets directives can be inserted into any arbitrary JavaScript file. You can use Sprockets in your build system no matter which JavaScript framework you prefer.
Sprockets does not require Rails. Sam has also written an excellent sprockets-rails plugin, one which deftly applies the conventions of Rails plugins to JavaScript. But he has also written a generic CGI wrapper around Sprockets that is framework-agnostic. Or, instead, you can integrate Sprockets into your build cycle without bothering your server stack with the details. If you use Rake, you can do this with Ruby, as Prototype does; otherwise you can use the sprocketize binary from the command line.
Sprockets-enabled JavaScript files can work just fine without Sprockets. If your plugin has its own “build stage,” then the distributable JavaScript will include no Sprockets directives. On the other hand, if your plugin is small enough not to require this overhead, your distributable can be a short JS file that declares its external dependencies at the top. Because require directives are an extension of comment syntax, they won’t confuse a JS interpreter.

In short, we’re excited about what Sprockets means for the Prototype ecosystem. If you maintain a Prototype add-on library, the prototype-core mailing list would love to help you make it Sprockets-aware.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Pimp My Code #1: Element.Storage

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:41:00 -0000

Man, it's quiet around here. Interested in doing some pimpin'?

WAIT! COME BACK.

Code pimping. You know? The thing I'd discussed before? Forgive my earlier informality. I see now how my words could have been confusing.

The very first edition of Pimp My Code is special because the code we’ll be looking at will be included in Prototype 1.6.1. (It's a bit like if we were to Pimp [someone's] Ride™, then decide to keep the car for ourselves.) So this is more than just an academic exercise for us — the “pimped” result is now part of the Prototype source code.

The Original

The code in question, from Sébastien Grosjean (a.k.a. ZenCocoon), implements element “storage” — attaching of arbitrary data to DOM nodes in a safe and leak-free manner. Other frameworks have had this for a while; jQuery’s $.fn.data, for instance, is used heavily by jQuery plugin authors to great effect. But Seb’s is based on the similar Mootools API, which I’ve admired since it debuted in Mootools 1.2.

Here’s Seb’s code. It’s a long code block, since he’s been thoughtful enough to comment the hell out of it:

The idea is this: instead of storing arbitrary objects as properties on DOM nodes, create one custom property on the DOM node: an index to a global hashtable. The value of that key in the table will itself be a collection of custom key/value pairs. On top of avoiding nasty IE memory leaks (circular references between DOM objects and JS objects), this has the benefit of encapsulating all of an element’s custom metadata into one place.

Let’s make a first pass at this, line-by-line.

The Critique

Object.extend(Prototype, {UID: 1});

Already we’ve gotten to something I’d change. Seb is using the Prototype namespace correctly here, in that he’s storing something that’s of concern only to the framework and should feel “private.” But my own preference is to move this property into the Element.Storage namespace. I am fickle and my mind is hard to read.

Element.Storage = {
  get: function(uid) {
    return (this[uid] || (this[uid] = {}));
  },

  init: function(item) {
    return (item.uid || (item.uid = Prototype.UID++));
  }
}

OK, another change jumps out at me. The Element.Storage.init method gets called in both Element#store and Element#retrieve; it handles the case where an element doesn’t have any existing metadata. It creates our custom property on the node and increments the counter.

In other words, store and retrieve are the only two places where this method is needed, so I balk at making it public. My first instinct was to make it a private method inside a closure:

(function() {
  function _init(item) {
    return (item.uid || (item.uid = Prototype.UID++));
  }

  // ... rest of storage code
})();

I started down this path but quickly stopped. Instead, we’re going to refactor this part so that the init case is handled without the need for a separate method. Let’s move on for now.

Element.Methods.retrieve = function(element, property, dflt) {
  if (!(element = $(element))) return;
  if (element.uid == undefined) Element.Storage.init(element);
  var storage = Element.Storage.get(element.uid);
  var prop = storage[property];
  if (dflt != undefined && prop == undefined)
    prop = storage[property] = dflt;
  return prop;
};

A few things to mention here.

Variable naming is important. The ideal name for the third parameter of this function would be default, but that’s off-limits; default is a reserved word in JavaScript. Seb’s opted for dflt here, which is clear enough. I’d change it to defaultValue because I like vowels.

As an aside: my first instinct was to remove the defaultValue thing altogether, because I was surprised by the way it behaved. I didn’t find it very intuitive to give Element#retrieve the capability to store properties as well. So I took it out.

I changed my mind several minutes later, when I wrote some code that leveraged element metadata. I had assumed I wouldn’t need the “store a default value” feature often enough to warrant the surprising behavior, but I was spectacularly wrong. I put it back in. Consider that a lesson on how your API design needs to be grounded in use cases.
The idiom in the first line is used throughout Prototype and script.aculo.us (and, in fact, should be used more consistently). It runs the argument through $, but also checks the return value to ensure we got back a DOM node and not null (as would happen if you passed a non-existent ID). An empty return is equivalent to return undefined, which (IMO) is an acceptable failure case. Bonus points, Seb!
The custom property Seb’s been using is called uid. I’m going to change this to something that’s both (a) clearly private; (b) less likely to cause a naming collision. In keeping with existing Prototype convention, we’re going to call it _prototypeUID.
Here’s a nitpick: if (element.uid == undefined). The comparison operator (==) isn’t very precise, so if you’re testing for undefined, you should use the identity operator (===). You could also use Prototype’s Object.isUndefined. In fact, I will.

I have a prejudice against the == operator. Most of the time the semantics of === are closer to what you mean. But this has special significance with undefined, which one encounters often in JavaScript. As an example: when you’re trying to figure out if an optional parameter was passed into a function, you’re looking for undefined. Any other value, no matter how “falsy” it is, means the parameter was given; undefined means it was not.

(Oh, by the way: I am aware of the code screenshot on our homepage that violates the advice I just gave.)
There are other checks against undefined in this function. For consistency I’m going to change these to use Object.isUndefined as well. Also, the check for dflt != undefined is unnecessary: if that compound conditional passes, it means retrieve is going to return undefined anyway, so it doesn’t matter which of the two undefined values we return.

Man, I’m a bastard, aren’t I? Luckily, Element#store is similar enough that there’s no new feedback to be given here, so I’m done kvetching.

Before we rewrite this code to reflect the changes I’ve suggested, we’re going to make a couple design decisions.

Feature Design

While I was deciding how to replace Element.Storage.init, I had an idea: rather than use ordinary Objects to store the data, we should be using Prototype’s Hash. In other words, we’ll create a global table of Hash objects, each one representing the custom key-value pairs for a specific element.

This isn’t just a plumbing change; it’s quite useful to be able to deal with the custom properties in a group rather than just one-by-one. And since Hash mixes in Enumerable, interesting use cases emerge: e.g., looping through all properties and acting on those that begin with a certain “namespace.”

So let’s envision a new method: Element#getStorage. Given an element, it will return the Hash object associated with that element. If there isn’t one, it can “initialize” the storage on that element, thus making Element.Storage.init unnecessary.

This new method also establishes some elegant parallels: the store and retrieve methods are really just aliases for set and get on the hash itself. Actually, retrieve will be a bit more complicated because of the “default value” feature, but we’ll be able to condense store down to two lines.

The Rewrite

Enough blathering. Here’s the rewrite:

Element.Storage = {
  UID: 1
};

As promised, I’ve moved the UID counter. The Element.Storage object also acts as our global hashtable, but all its keys will be numeric, so the UID property won’t get in anyone’s way.

Element#getStorage assumes the duties of Element.Storage.get and Element.Storage.init, thereby making them obsolete. We’ve removed them.

Element.addMethods({
  getStorage: function(element) {
    if (!(element = $(element))) return;

    if (Object.isUndefined(element._prototypeUID))
      element._prototypeUID = Element.Storage.UID++;

    var uid = element._prototypeUID;

    if (!Element.Storage[uid])
      Element.Storage[uid] = $H();

    return Element.Storage[uid];
  },

The new getStorage method checks for the presence of _prototypeUID. If it’s not there, it gets defined on the node.

It then looks for the corresponding Hash object in Element.Storage, creating an empty Hash if there’s nothing there.

As I said before, Element#store is much simpler now:

  store: function(element, key, value) {
    if (!(element = $(element))) return;
    element.getStorage().set(key, value);
    return element;
  },

I thought about returning the stored value, to make it behave exactly like Hash#set, but some feedback from others suggested it was better to return the element itself for chaining purposes (as we do with many methods on Element).

And Element#retrieve is nearly as simple:

  retrieve: function(element, key, defaultValue) {
    if (!(element = $(element))) return;

    var hash = element.getStorage(), value = hash.get(key);

    if (Object.isUndefined(value)) {
      hash.set(key, defaultValue);
      value = defaultValue;
    }

    return value;
  }
});

And we’re done.

Further refinements

In fact, we’re not done. This is roughly what the code looked like when I first checked in this feature, but some further improvements have been made.

Since we’d been using a system similar to this to associate event handlers with nodes, we had to rewrite that code to use the new storage API. In doing so, we found that we needed to include window in our storage system, since it has events of its own. Rather than define a _prototypeUID property on the global object, we give window a UID of 0 and check for it specifically in Element#getStorage.

Also, based on an excellent suggestion, we changed Element#store so that it could accept an object full of key/value pairs, much like Hash#update.

In Summation

I was happy to come across Sébastien's submission. It was the perfect length for a drive-by refactoring; it made sense as a standalone piece of code, without need for an accompanying screenshot or block of HTML; and it implemented a feature we'd already had on the 1.6.1 roadmap.

You can get the bleeding-edge Prototype if you want to try out the code we wrote. Or you can grab this gist if you want to drop the new functionality in alongside 1.6.0.3.

We're further grateful to Mootools for the API we're stealing. And to Wil Shipley for the recurring blog article series we're stealing.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: JavaScript performance ebook: special discount for script.aculo.us users

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:30:00 -0000

Dear script.aculo.us user!

Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs have been busy on writing the JavaScript Rocks! Performance ebook, which is now available in beta!

The package consists of a 100+ pages ebook PDF, the DOM Monster, a tool that analyzes your websites and gives tips and hints, and free updates (including the final version, once the book is out of beta).

Topics covered in the book (applicable to all frameworks, not just Prototype and script.aculo.us):

how to know if you’ve got a problem
how to track down bottlenecks
how to create custom profiling tools
how to minimize your load & render time
how to optimize your hosting environment
how not to optimize your JavaScript files
how to write faster DOM code
how to write faster pure JavaScript
how to improve perceived performance
key performance differences between browsers
tips & tricks for JavaScripty iPhone apps

With the following discount code, you get $5 off the listed price.

Discount code: goscripty2. Either go to the JavaScript Rocks! Performance ebook page, and locate the 'have a discount code? click here' link under the big 'Buy Now!' button at the end of the page, or follow this link to enter the code directly.

Thanks for supporting our free materials and open source work on scriptaculous 2.0!

Grab your JavaScript Rocks! Performance ebook!

P.S. Once we're out of beta, this discount code will no longer work, so be sure to grab yours soon!

amok project updates - Google Code: GettingStarted (A getting started guide for new amok users.) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:29:18 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: GettingStarted (A getting started guide for new amok users.) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:03:32 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: amok-0.3.tar.gz (Added support for mocking all instances of a class) file uploaded by chrisincambo

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:06:46 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: GettingStarted (A getting started guide for new amok users.) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:04:27 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: r27 (added mock_all_with method to allow all class instances to b...) committed by chrisincambo

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:57:15 -0000

added mock_all_with method to allow all class instances to be a mock

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.8.2: Prototype 1.6.0.3, service release/bug fixes

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:42:00 -0000

This is a bugfix release that bumps script.aculo.us to version 1.8.1.

This version is recommended for all users.

Update to Prototype 1.6.0.3
Make sure InPlaceEditor converts HTML entities to text. [Sean Kirby]
Fix that Builder.node did not return extended elements on IE. Closes #71 and #77.
Fix a bug in Sortable.destroy to make sure it's called on the referenced Sortable only, which allows for the correct intialization of nested Sortables. Closes Trac #8615. [Leon Chevalier]
Change Effect.Base#render not to use eval(), so certain JavaScript runtime environments (like Adobe AIR) that do not support eval() work. [King Maxemilian, John-David Dalton]
Fixed a calculation error in Effect.Transitions.pulse that could lead to flickering, add easing and change it to be a normal 0 to 1 transition that can be used with any effects; Effect.Pulsate now uses its own implementation. [Thomas Fuchs]
Fixed Effect.ScrollTo. Changeset 8686 had a typo, document.viewport.getScrollOffsets[0] is always undefined. Removed the max check as it is not a cross-browser way to get scroll height and breaks the effect. Depending on scrollTo to do the right thing. Closes #11306. [Nick Stakenburg]
Update version check so all Prototype versions can be required, not just x.x.x. Closes #10966. [Nick Stakenburg]
Using $$ in the loader instead of getElementsByTagName to prevent limitations. Closes #9032. [Nick Stakenburg]
Fix some missing semicolons. [jdalton]
Fix an issue with Effect.ScrollTo that caused Firefox to scroll to the wrong offset in some situations. Closes #10245. [nik.wakelin]
Fixes an issue with IE ghosting on non-absolute elements. Closes #10423. [Tanrikut, tdd]

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Prototype Linkedin Group

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:32:00 -0000

When we first launched the Linkedin Prototype Group, we weren’t necessarily expecting it to be such a success–it’s over 800 members strong and counting.

Also, at the time, there wasn’t much you could do after having joined the group. This has changed with the recent introduction of discussions.

One of the first posts spurred some thoughts about the usefulness and goals of this Linkedin group especially given the high quality of our new mailing list. (And let me take the opportunity to sincerely thank T.J. Crowder for all the effort he’s put into it.)

My initial reaction, based on an early August thread was to suggest keeping the development-orientated discussions in the mailing list, while expecting more career-orientated ones to take place in the Linkedin group.

Of course, there’s no way we can nor should be controlling this, and in the end, you will be deciding what will happen where. So I suppose the only real raison d’être of this post is to advise you of this new feature and open up the debate.

Thoughts ?

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Want your code "pimped"?

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:23:00 -0000

We decided it’s finally time to implement an idea we had long ago.

I’m an avid reader of the blog of Wil Shipley, a man in the business of writing great apps for OS X. His running code improvment series, Pimp My Code, takes submissions from readers who think their code needs refactoring. Then Shipley refactors them, explaining the whys and hows along the way. The submissions are small (never more than 75-100 lines), but in rewriting them Shipley always happens upon specific, useful programming tips. I don’t know the first thing about Objective-C, but I find the series fascinating and instructive.

So we’re going to do something similar on this blog. Do you have a piece of JavaScript you want refactored? Does it use Prototype? Do this:

Sign up for a GitHub account if you don’t have one. It’s free and quick.
Go to Gist, GitHub’s pastebin app, and paste the code you want us to refactor. Mark it as “private” if you like.
Message me on GitHub with the URL to your code snippet. If necessary, explain a bit about what the code does (or should do), but don’t write an epistle or anything.

I’ll share the submissions with the rest of the team and we’ll pick a few that we like. Then we’ll dedicate a post to each one, refactoring out loud along the way. We won’t be mean or snarky; this is not a DailyWTF-style exercise.

To pre-empt the obvious rebuttal: we do not consider this to be an act of charity, or code manna from computer heaven, or a gift from the light-bearers to the huddled masses. Whether we actually “improve” your code is not for us to say. It will, however, illustrate our coding style.

If that sounds useful to you, then step up! Give us code and ask that it be pimped!

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Growing the community

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:39:00 -0000

Now that 1.6.0.3 is out, let’s talk about the Prototype community.

A lot of people have been commenting on how quiet it’s been around here over the last few months. There are several reasons:

We were quite busy with behind-the-scenes stuff. Moving to GitHub and Lighthouse was quite the task. As part of that migration we went through all the bugs on the old Rails Trac and were therefore left with a large backlog of bugs that we’d waited too long to address.
We were quite busy with our day jobs. Only a couple of us are freelancers; the rest work full-time for software companies. And usually there are several people working on Prototype at any one time, but over the summer it’s rarely been more than one or two.
In an effort to “catch up” with the accumulated tickets, we tried to stuff too much into a single bugfix release. We need to keep releases small and focused; trying to change too much at once tends to disorient us and our users. Once we realized we needed to scale back this release, it took a while to figure out which changes needed to stay and which needed to be reverted.

These aren’t excuses; they’re just explanations. As a team, we agree that we’ve got to prevent such a long release gap from happening again, and to keep an eye out for warning signs like the ones listed above.

This means, among other things, that we’re planning to move away from a “when it’s ready” release schedule. Instead, we’ll move toward one in which there are several releases per year; whatever is ready in time for a given release will go in, and whatever is not will have to wait. That applies to bug fixes and features alike. Eight months between releases just won’t work.

What you can do

Community outreach was one of the major goals of Prototype Developer Day. Many people are frustrated with the state of the Prototype community and would like to see some changes made. We’re in complete agreement.

Ideally, as an open-source community grows, those who want to help out gravitate toward specific roles. Those who can grok the source code write patches; those who are good at diagnosing problems file bug reports; those who can write clearly contribute documentation; and so on. We’d love to grow that “halo” around Prototype Core so that things can get done more quickly.

To be more specific, we would love help in any of these areas:

Give support on the Prototype & scrip.aculous mailing list.
File bugs in Lighthouse when you encounter errors or surprising behavior in Prototype.
Write test cases or patches for existing bugs in Lighthouse.
Discuss the direction of the library and its future on the Prototype Core mailing list.
Propose new features and implement them.
Write documentation wherever you feel we need more; submit it to Lighthouse as an enhancement.
Suggest blog posts. (Or even write them!) Post to the Prototype Core list if you’re interested in doing this.

There are, of course, many other things one can do to help us out. But if you’re looking for a way to contribute and don’t have something specific in mind, we’d suggest doing one of these seven things.

What we can do

We know we need more help, but we also know we need to be better community curators. So here are some things we pledge to do better:

We’ll beef up the Prototype web site so that it’s easier to get started with the framework, easier to find great resources like Scripteka and Prototype UI, and easier to find answers to common questions.
We’ll give special attention to documentation tickets on Lighthouse so that our API docs don’t stay stale and thin.
We’ll release on a more consistent schedule, as explained above.
We’ll resume work on PDoc (inline documentation) and Sprockets (JS dependency management), spin-off projects that make Prototype more of a “platform.” They’ll be a boon to the Prototype ecosystem when they’re completed.

Finally: if you consider yourself to be good at planning and organizing an open-source project, then we’d love your input on how to grow our community. Our highest priority, however, is not to launch a new initiative or process; it’s to get more people doing the seven things listed above.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Prototype 1.6.0.3: A long-awaited bugfix release

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:48:00 -0000

Yesterday we released Prototype 1.6.0.3, the result of some much-needed bug fixes, and a stopgap release on the road to 1.6.1.

It’s a backwards-compatible, drop-in replacement recommended for all users of Prototype 1.6. We’ve fixed 30 bugs and made 25 other improvements to our already-rock-solid library.

Developers who follow along in Git might’ve noticed that the repository has seen a lot of disruptive activity in the last few days as we reassessed many of the commits that had gone into the library since April. Rather than try to fit too many fixes into one release, we decided to scale back and release 1.6.0.3 with the set of improvements we were in complete agreement on.

Because of the way we handled this overhaul, those who try to update their Git working copies to the latest trunk will encounter conflicts, even if they hadn’t made local changes.

Here’s how we recommend bringing your working copy up to date:

First, if you’ve made any local changes, please create a new branch so that those changes aren’t lost.
On your local master branch, run:
```
git fetch origin master
git reset --hard 34ee207
```
The first line fetches the new commits without trying to apply them to your local copy. The second line resets your master branch to be in sync with the latest revision.
From there, you can cherry-pick from your branch any local commits you made (though you may have to do some manual merging).

Download, report bugs, and get help

Download Prototype 1.6.0.3
Submit bug reports to Lighthouse
Get Prototype help on the Prototype & script.aculo.us mailing list or #prototype IRC channel
Interact with the Core Team on the prototype-core mailing list

As always, thanks to the core team and the many users who contributed bug reports and well-tested patches for this release.

amok project updates - Google Code: r26 (Added ability to pass message to callback in and_callback) committed by chrisincambo

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:06:34 -0000

Added ability to pass message to callback in and_callback

amok project updates - Google Code: r25 (Added latest version of amok which supports mocking callback...) committed by chrisincambo

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:40:15 -0000

Added latest version of amok which supports mocking callbacks

amok project updates - Google Code: r24 (Added and_callback to the amok.DSL) committed by chrisincambo

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:38:52 -0000

Added and_callback to the amok.DSL

amok project updates - Google Code: r23 (Added and_callback method) committed by chrisincambo

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:28:31 -0000

Added and_callback method

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:48:00 -0000

We’re very happy to announce a new addition to the Prototype bookshelf: core committer Andrew Dupont’s Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us published by Apress.

Obviously, Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us covers all you need to know about the latest versions of Prototype and script.aculo.us. But it goes well beyond that. Andrew does an awesome job at setting the context and giving appropriate background information, so much so that you’ll end up knowing not only the how but also the why. In the ruthless world of client-side development, that’s a serious asset!

Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us is a pleasure to read – the style is both straightforward and witty – and should appeal to beginners and seasoned developers alike.

If you want to try before you buy, you can always download a sample chapter or the table of contents from the Apress website. Or you can grab a hard copy and/or a pdf from the Apress website or from Amazon.

As always, happy Prototyping!

amok project updates - Google Code: r22 (First commit) committed by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:39:50 -0000

First commit

amok project updates - Google Code: r21 (First commit) committed by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:39:17 -0000

First commit

amok project updates - Google Code: r20 (Added license block) committed by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:30:19 -0000

Added license block

amok project updates - Google Code: r19 (Changed comment) committed by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:07:09 -0000

Changed comment

amok project updates - Google Code: Default_DSL_documentation (Documentation for the default domain specific language (DSL)) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:03:56 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: Default_DSL_documentation Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:02:00 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: Default_DSL_documentation Wiki page added by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:00:23 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: GettingStarted (A getting started guide for new amok users.) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:39:52 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: GettingStarted (A getting started guide for new amok users.) Wiki page added by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:38:54 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: using_amok Wiki page deleted by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:38:01 -0000

amok project updates - Google Code: using_amok (A quick how to guide for new amok users.) Wiki page edited by chrisincambo

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:34:37 -0000

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: First Prototype Developer Day: Monday September 29, 2008!

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:29:00 -0000

Prototype Core is happy to announce the first Prototype Developer Day! The Prototype Developer Day is going to be a recurring event bringing together Prototype Core members and users from the Prototype community to share experiences, offer insight into what’s coming up, and discuss topics like contribution, support, and the Prototype ecosystem. If you’re big on Prototype, you cannot miss this!

This fall, the Prototype Developer Day is being held in conjunction with The Ajax Experience, held in Boston from Monday, September 29 to Wednesday, October 1 2008. The Prototype Developer Day itself will happen on Monday.

Admission to the Developer Day is free. If you’re interested in attending the full three days of The Ajax Experience, you can save $100 with the code Prototype. Register before August 22nd and save an additional $100.

The provisional agenda for this Prototype Developer Day is as follows (more details coming up on the full agenda):

Start time	End time	Session	Speaker
8:00am	8:30am	Intro/Welcome	Prototype Core
8:30am	9:30am	Contributing docs	Christophe Porteneuve
9:30am	9:45am	Break
9:45am	9:50am	Greeting	Framework Summit Sponsor
9:50am	10:30am	Contributing code	Andrew Dupont
10:30am	11:15am	The Prototype ecosystem	TBD
11:15am	11:30am	Break
11:30am	1:00pm	Extended Q&A	Prototype Core

You will get a chance to hook up with members of Prototype Core and “close core”, and we all look forward to meeting you guys. Here’s the current rundown:

Sam Stephenson (to be confirmed)
Andrew Dupont (confirmed)
Juriy “kangax” Zaytsev (confirmed)
Mislav Marohnić (to be confirmed)
Tobie Langel (to be confirmed)
Christophe Porteneuve (confirmed)

For more information on coming with a group, contact Tracey West. You can view the agenda for The Ajax Experience, and then proceed to one or both of the following:

Want to register for PDD? You must use our special quick form. Registering for TAE doesn’t automatically sign you up for PDD, and the number of seats is pretty limited. (But, hey, there’s a free lunch!)
Register for The Ajax Experience.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: Announcing new Prototype support mailing list

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:51:00 -0000

Subscribers to the Rails Spinoffs mailing list should switch to our new, better-named list: Prototype & script.aculo.us.

While these two venerable libraries are, in truth, spinoffs of the Rails project, we’ve come to realize it’s far more user-friendly to have the libraries’ names in the name of the mailing list. This should help guide users to the right spot and reduce the amount of support traffic on the Prototype Core mailing list — which is for discussion of Prototype’s development process, not support.

Because list spam is a sad reality, your first post to the list will be held for moderation. Once it’s approved, though, you’ll be able to post with impunity.

Prototype JavaScript framework - blog: An Interview with Ryan Johnson

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:58:00 -0000

Today’s interviewee is Ryan Johnson of Control Suite fame.

Ryan just launched PersonalGrid, a new file sharing and publishing web application, along with a complete overhaul of Control Suite, now renamed LivePipe UI.

Hi, Ryan. Could you please introduce yourself.

Ryan Johnson: I’ve been writing web pages since 1993, but I’ve only felt comfortable calling myself a programmer for the last 5 years. I drank the Prototype kool-aid about 2 and a half years ago, and I’d say today nearly 75% of all the code I write is JavaScript. I enjoy writing Ruby just as much, but fewer and fewer people are asking me to do any work in Ruby at all.

The language itself hasn’t evolved all that much, but watching our collective knowledge and understanding of it grow has been a surprise and delight.

You just released a new web application: PersonalGrid. Can you tell us about it?

RJ: PersonalGrid is a file-sharing and publishing application that I’ve written. You can use it to upload files and publish single files or whole folders with one click. It’s also easy to share with friends or whole groups of users.

We have a dev team of one (me), and this is our first beta release, so hopefully any bugs you encounter won’t be too catastrophic.

How are you using Prototype in PersonalGrid? And script.aculo.us?

RJ: On the Rails side, 95% of the actions use a REST interface and spit back JSON, so the app is very client-heavy. Almost all of the HTML is generated with the Prototype Template class, with a little usage of the new Element syntax thrown in where appropriate. I used the Draggables and Droppables from script.aculo.us, but little else. I also ended up making many modifications (which I will release on GitHub sometime soon) to both of those classes to support some extra functionality.

Both Object.Event and LivePipe UI are discussed below, but those libraries are integral to the application. So our JavaScript stack looks like Prototype → LivePipe UI → PersonalGrid Application. The actual PersonalGrid JavaScript code is a number of classes that represent the major UI components (File, Folder, Friend, Group, etc), and a number of controller classes that initiate Ajax requests and process the JSON responses.

In the process of building the application layer I kept seeing inklings of a JavaScript MVC framework, but I just don’t see where the reusability would come from. Prototype is ever more awesome, and I’m releasing components that others will hopefully find useful.

What were the biggest challenges you faced when building it?

RJ: Internet Explorer. The only debate about the IE debacle that should be going on is whether the product is a result of incompetence or was designed deliberately to sabotage the development of complex web applications. They got XHR and the mouseenter/mouseleave events right, but that is about it.

Any technical advice, tips, or tricks you’d like to share?

RJ: Start using a broadcast/subscription based event model for everything in your app, not just Element objects! Of course I am going to plug my own solution Object.Event — but whether or not you use that, having a system where you can trigger your own events that do not relate to the DOM is critical for the maintainability of your code base. The new custom events in Prototype 1.6 are great (and I used a few in PersonalGrid), but it’s still geared towards the DOM.

For example, we have a trash can feature in PersonalGrid. Each user’s root directory has a .Trash folder, which mostly acts like any other folder, but we need to specialize its behavior. The two biggest differences are that we want to take the .Trash folder out of the normal directory listing, and give it a special place in the UI. We also want .Trash to behave differently when you are in it. We have a Location class that is responsible for changing folders, rending the directory listing, etc. Instead of putting these specializations for the Trash inside the Location class, we have the Location class fire an onChangeLocation event, which the Trash class observes.

It’s not only a conceptually elegant way to solve the problem, but you get the added benefit of having all of the code that relates to the Trash in one place. As I was developing the app, we ended up wanting all of these little specializations for friendship folders, group folders, etc, so the broadcast/subscription model has really ended up paying huge dividends as the project progresses.

You’re using a Java applet for file upload. Why did you choose to use that technology? What are the advantages over using flash?

RJ: There are some problems with the delay in loading the JVM, and the whole certificate/trust issues that all applets have, so I don’t want to sound too triumphant about the choice just yet. The main reason I choose Java instead of Flash is that you can drag and drop files onto the applet, which Flash does not support. Leopard supports dragging files directly onto file inputs, but users do not universally expect that behavior yet.

One of the areas I’d like to explore more is deep interaction between Java/Flash and JavaScript. The Java applet is one of the few parts of PersonalGrid that I didn’t write, but I worked closely with our Java coder to create a large series of JavaScript callbacks inside the applet so I could build a UI with Prototype.

There are a lot of fairly hairy undocumented bugs with LiveConnect (the Java/JS bridge), but until we get richer native functionality this is the only way to get around some of the security constrains browsers place on accessing the local machine.

You’re well known within the Prototype community for Control Suite. Can you tell us a bit more about it? Are you using any of it in PersonalGrid?

RJ: Well I’d like to apologize to the users of Control Suite for neglecting it for the past 8 months! PersonalGrid and some other obligations really destroyed my schedule. Control Suite has just received a major update, and is now called LivePipe UI and is compatible with Prototype 1.6. Most of the complex UI elements you see in PersonalGrid (windows, context menus, selection, etc) are available in the new LivePipe UI release.

LivePipe UI tries to provide a set of reusable core UI components that has a similar API design philosophy to Prototype. So far only components I have needed are part of the kit, but I am hoping that it grows with time. Now that it is on GitHub I’m hoping that it will be easier for users to contribute. The biggest news to existing users is that the Control.Modal class has been completely rewritten, and it is now a subclass of Control.Window. There are also proper Lightbox and Tooltip classes. The new class system in Prototype 1.6 made that far more elegant than it would have been before.

PersonalGrid has a distinct Mac feel. What made you aim for a desktop-like application?

RJ: Since an application of this nature is all about finding and organizing files and folders, why not recreate an interface people are already completely familiar with? We have a ways to go to catch up feature wise to Box.net, but when I first used their service I noticed they used some desktop metaphors (like drag and drop), but overall the application still felt too much like a website. Plenty of web services should feel like websites, but I don’t think file management apps should (except for Drop.io, which is wonderfully simple).

With regards to the Mac feel… besides borrowing some of the icons (still wondering if we will hear from Apple legal), there are a lot of very particular things that I like about the Finder. One of the hidden features of the PersonalGrid UI is that if you pick up an item and hover over any folder, breadcrumb, group or friendship, you will navigate to that location, and you will still be able to drop the item in any sub folder at the new location. The Finder does this, but I rarely use it because you can have multiple Finder windows open, or use the column view. In a two paned interface it’s the only way to elegantly get an item from A to C without moving it to B first.

Rich web development is still in its infancy, but Apple (and others) have had many complex UI problems elegantly solved for years on the desktop, so when I would run into a brick wall like the A-to-C problem, I would see how it was solved in the Finder, or even read the documentation in the Human Interface Guidelines.

It was also an amazingly fun challenge to deconstruct and recreate something as basic as the selection for the new Control.Selection library, which is also one of the core components of the PersonalGrid UI. When building something that complex yet fundamental one realizes all of the tweaks that coders and designers before you have thought obsessively about.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: script.aculo.us development setup changed to github and Lighthouse

Fri, 09 May 2008 18:15:00 -0000

script.aculo.us is from now on developed using Git (hosted at github) for source code management and revision control, and Lighthouse for bug tracking.

Why git instead of Subversion? Well, it simply rules supreme, and makes working with many distributed developers with lots of branches a snap. You can find a good intro book on Git on Peepcode.

script.aculo.us 1.xx development will focus on bug fixes only, while I’m working on the next version of scripty (post on that coming up soon!).

Bug tracker http://prototype.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8887-script-aculo-us

Repository for script.aculo.us 1.xx http://github.com/madrobby/scriptaculous

Note that if you’re just using the library, this change won’t really affect you.

If you have open bugs on the old Trac please port them over to lighthouse yourself!

I’m also working on a replacement for the documentation wiki (which, quite honestly, sucks); so stay tuned for some updates in the near future. If you want to help out with the documentation effort, please contact me. :)

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.8.1: Prototype 1.6.0.1, bug fixes

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:15:00 -0000

This is a bugfix release that bumps script.aculo.us to version 1.8.1.

Mainly, this release contains some important bug fixes and optimizations in Prototype, fixes cursor keys in autocompleting text fields for IE and Safari plus fixes an issue with Effect.Morph on IE.

Download at http://script.aculo.us/downloads!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.8.0: Prototype 1.6, Sound, tweaks and tricks

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:05:00 -0000

This is the final version of script.aculo.us 1.8, which comes with Prototype 1.6.0 final.

The included final 1.6.0 version of Prototype brings the latest and greatest awesome new features -- be sure to check it out on the Prototype site.

See the announcement for more information and a download link!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.7.1 beta 3: Prototype 1.5.1, more optimizations and fixes

Fri, 25 May 2007 16:30:00 -0000

This is third beta of script.aculo.us 1.7.1, which provides Prototype 1.5.1 final compatibility and Sortable speed improvements.

The included final 1.5.1 version of Prototype brings the latest and greatest in new cool features and performance gains, so be sure not miss this one. :)

Beta warning: Things might not work as you might expect, though they really should—if you hit any problems, please use the bug tracker and give reports. The same that applies to Prototype applies for script.aculo.us too, so read the how to contribute page to see how you can help out!

See announcement for more information and a download link!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.7.1 beta 1: 'Performance!'.times(3) + Sound

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:00:00 -0000

On the heels of the recent Prototype 1.5.1 release candidate, here’s the latest and greatest version of script.aculo.us: 1.7.1 beta 1.

The most important change is the update to Prototype 1.5.1 which yields major performance improvements, slick new JSON support and various fixes all around. Note that the version of Prototype that comes with script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta 1 is actually a few steps ahead of the 1.5.1_rc1 release and already incorporates a few additional fixes, so please use the version that comes with the script.aculo.us download.

The other important feature is experimental sound support for those little .mp3-based sound effects, which works natively in IE, and relies on whatever mp3 plugins are available on other browsers (for Macs, this means quicktime). It’s thought as an alternative to flash-based mp3 playback for sounds effects (not music!). Kudos to Jules Gravinese for coming up with the initial implementation of this!

The effects engine has seen some performance overhaul, and together with the new Prototype performance goodnees is screaming fast. Also, a memory leak in the morph code was found and fixed on Firefox. More changes and features added include a new “failure” option to Draggables, and onDropped callback, more customization for in-place editing, and nesting single nodes in the DOM builder.

See the complete announcement for more information and a download link!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.7.0: Morphing effects, Prototype 1.5.0 final

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:30:00 -0000

You've seen the demos-- now it's prime time!


* Update to Prototype 1.5.0 final

* Change the default setting for effects to support up to 60fps, if renderable by the browser. Add performance info to effects unit test.

* Add hash and CSS className support to Effect.Morph, fixes #6674 [Tobie]
    Examples:
      $(element).morph('myClass')
      // will morph to all the properties specified
      // in .className (in your external stylesheet).
      // All properties which cannot be morphed (such as font-style)
      // will be applied AfterFinish
      $(element).morph('font-size: 10px')  // or
      $(element).morph({fontSize: '10px'}) // will morph the font-size to 10px
      
* Add Element.morph() and Element.Methods.morph() as a shortcut to Effect.Morph
    Example:
      // basic Effect.Morph
      $('error_message').morph('color:#f00;font-size:17px');
      // fade out after a while
      $('error_message').show().morph('font-size:17px').morph('opacity:0',{delay:4});

* Add Effect.Transform that generates parallel executing Effect.Morph sets
    Example:
      // set up transformation
      var transformation = new Effect.Transform([
        { 'div.morphing': 'font-size:20px;padding-left:40em' },
        { 'blah'        : 'width:480px;border-width:10px;border-right-width:20px;margin:200px;margin-bottom:-20px;font-size:30px' }
      ],{ duration: 0.5 });
      // play transformation (can be called more than once)
      transformation.play();

* Add Effect.Morph core effect that morphs to a given CSS style rule. Effect.Morph does take orginal styles given by CSS style rules or the style attribute into consideration when calculating the transforms. It works with all length and color based CSS properties, including margins, paddings, borders, opacity and text/background colors.
    Example:
      new Effect.Morph('mydiv',{
        style: 'font-size:3em;color:#f00;border-width:2em',
        duration: 2.0
      });
      
* New option keepBackgroundImage: true for Effect.Highlight, fixes #5037 [docwhat, tomg]

* Minor tweaks for issues with application/xhtml+xml documents on Firefox, fixes #6836 [sjinks]

* Fix a possible exception with Sortables, fixes #6828 [craiggwilson]
      
* Add a paramName option to the inplace editor for overriding the default parameter name of "value"

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.7.0 beta 2: morphing with CSS classes, Prototype update

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:30:00 -0000

The second beta of script.aculo.us 1.7.0 is out now, and adds a cool new CSS classnames based morphing feature, alongside Prototype updates.

Bugs in beta 1 where also addressed, especially Opera compatibility.

Head over to mir.aculo.us to learn what this is about and grab the beta version!

Note: Obviously, the beta version is not recommended for production sites, and syntax might change before it gets stable (but it's pretty much final, so don't be too afraid).

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.7.0 beta 1: Morphing?!

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 09:50:00 -0000

The first beta of script.aculo.us 1.7.0 is out now, and brings you (tada!) morphing!

Head over to mir.aculo.us to learn what this is about and grab the beta version!

Note: Obviously, the beta version is not recommended for production sites, and syntax might change before it gets stable (but it's pretty much final, so don't be too afraid).

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.6.5: Effect.Event, latest Prototype, Builder updates

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:34:00 -0000

I’ve just pushed script.aculo.us 1.6.5 for your download pleasure. It’s a maintenance release that adds a few tweaks here and there—read on!

Update to Prototype 1.5.0_rc1 revision [5462]

Support the HTML ‘for’ attribute in Builder by using ‘htmlFor’, fixes #6472 [gjones, tdd]

var node = Builder.node('label', { htmlFor: 'myinput' });

Add support to run a specific failing unit test by clicking on the corresponding test result, fixes #6290 [leeo]

Add modifier key support to Event.simulateMouse, fixes #6391 [savetheclocktower]

Add new ‘with-last’ queue position option to queue effects to occur in parallel with the last effect to start in the queue

Add new special core effect Effect.Event for one-shot events that follow timelines defined by effect queues

123	new Effect.Event({ afterFinish:function(){ // do some code here}, position: 'end' });

Fix an possible crash of IE on Effect.SlideUp, fixes #3192 [thx nel]

Add Builder.build() to create nodes from strings containing HTML, [DHH]

var node = Builder.build("<p>this is <b>neat!</b></p>");

Add a pulses parameter to Effect.Pulsate to control the amount of pulses, fixes #6245 [leeo]
For example, this will pulsate twice (if the option is not given, it defaults to five pulses):

Effect.Pulsate('d8', {pulses: 2});

Fix an issue with clicking on a slider span resulting in an exception, fixes #4707 [thx sergeykojin]

Fix an issue with Draggables when no options are supplied, fixes #6045 [thx tdd]

This should be the last release before Ruby on Rails 1.2 comes out—the next thing will be script.aculo.us 1.7! Lots of good and cool patches are waiting for their addition, and should make it into the 1.7 release.

As always, kudos to the community for supplying patches, bug reports and tests—keep it coming!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.6.4: New Prototype, drag and drop updates, BDD style testing! (UPDATED)

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 11:26:00 -0000

V1.6.4 (2006-09-06): New Prototype, drag and drop updates, BDD style testing! (UPDATED)

script.aculo.us 1.6.4, which marks the inclusion of the new release candidate of Prototype 1.5, is out now.

(For those of you missing the 1.6.3 version: that version was out yesterday but had a issue with IE that is now fixed in 1.6.4)

This release comes with the brand-new Prototype V1.5.0_rc1 version, adds several new features and options to drag and drop, features a whole new (experimental) way of doing testing, and adds some other goodies here and there. Also, thanks to the contributors for identifying and squishing bugs!

So—what’s new & cool?

Update Prototype to V1.5.0_rc1 (read more on Justin Palmer’s blog)

Add experimental alternate syntax for unit tests (Behaviour Driven Development-style)

Merge assertElementsMatch and assertElementMatches from Prototype’s [4986] unittest.js [Sam Stephenson]

Add assertRespondsTo and shouldRespondTo assertions


                  // object
                  var testObj = {
                    isNice: function() { }
                  }

                  // test
                  assertRespondsTo('isNice', testObj);

Make Sortable.serialize handle DOM IDs like “some_element_1” correctly, fixes #5324

Add support for onStart, onDrag and onEnd events directly on Draggables (invoked from the Draggables.notify), fixes #4747 [thx scriptkitchen]


                  new Draggable('some_id',{
                    onStart:function(){ /* ... */ },
                    onDrag:function(){ /* ... */ },
                    onEnd:function(){ /* ... */ }
                  });

Add autoSelect option to Autocompleters to auto select an entry if only one is returned, fixes #5183 [thx cassiano dandrea]

Added delay option to Draggables and Sortables, see test/functional/dragdrop_delay_test.html for usage, implements #3325 [thx lsimon, tomg]

Add version and timestamp to indvidual library files for easier identification (the files are preprocessed by the Rake fresh_scriptaculous task), fixes #3015 [thx Tobie]

Add assertIndentical and assertNotIdentical unit test assertions, which test for equality and common type, fixes #5822 [thx glazedginger]

Add integration test for Ajax autocompleter for results with no linebreaks, #4149

Added a custom exception to all base effects when used on non- existing DOM elements, added a assertRaise method to unit tests

Add element shortcuts to Builder that can be activated by calling Builder.dump() (see the unit test), fixes #4260 [thx napalm]


                  Builder.dump();  
                  var element = DIV({id:'ghosttrain'},[
                     DIV({style:'font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold;'},[
                       H1('Ghost Train'),
                       "testtext", 2, 3, 4,
                       UL([
                         LI({onclick:'alert(\'test\')'},'click me')
                       ]),
                     ]),
                   ]);

Make Effect.Puff work correctly for floating elements, fixes #3777 [thx michael hartl]

Fix selection of correct option in SELECT element generated by InPlaceCollectionEditor for indexed option arrays, fixes #4789 [thx steve]

Fix an issue with redrawing ghosted draggables that are inside a scrolled container, fixes #3860 [thx gkupps, tsukue]

Fix autoscrolling inside scrollable containers when window is scrolled too, fixes #5200 [thx wseitz]

Fix autoscrolling when dragging an element unto a scrollable container, fixes #5017 [thx tomg]

Fix a condition where overriding the endeffect on Draggables without overriding the starteffect too leads to a Javascript error [thx Javier Martinez]

Fix a possible error with the drag/drop logic (affects the solution to #4706)

Fix various issues with IE detection and Opera, and setOpacity, fixes #3886, #5973

Remove revert cache code obsoleted by #4706, fixes #3436 (again) [thx tomg]

As always, the required 1.5.0_rc1 version of Prototype is included with the download.

Big thanks to the contributors!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.6.2: Bug fix galore!

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:32:00 -0000

V1.6.2 (2006-08-15): Bug fix galore!

This is a "serive" release and recommended for all users. While almost no new features where added, it includes several bug fixes, ranging from important (memory leak!) to cosmetic. List of updates:

Fix a problem in the drag and drop logic if an reverting/drag ending draggable was initialized for a new drag (for example by clicking repeatedly) for all cases where the default start/revert/end-effects are used, fixes #4706 [thx tecM0]
Fix possible memory leaks with Draggables, fixes #3436 [thx aal]
Throw nicer errors when requires script.aculo.us libraries are not loaded, fixes #5339
Make slider handles work when not displayed initially by using CSS width/height, fixes #4011 [thx foysavas]
Update sortable functional test with onUpdate counter
Make more Element extensions unit tests work on Safari
Add the assertMatch unit test assertion for asserts with RegExps [thx Ian Tyndall]
Fix a problem with Effect.Move causing "jumping" elements because of very low float numbers in some situations
Fix a missing semicolon in dragdrop.js, fixes #5569 [thx mackalicious]
Fix a slight inaccuracy with Effect.Scale that could lead the scaling to be one pixel off
Be more prototypish with Effect.Transitions.linear
Make Effect.Scale recognize font sizes that use the pt unit, fixes #4136 [thx aljoscha]
Fix IE hack in Effect.Opacity, fixes #5444 [thx nicholas]
Fix IFRAME layout fix for IE and Autocompleter, fixes #5192 [thx tommy skaue]
Fix only option in onEmptyHover, fiex #5348 [thx glenn nilsson]
Fix Effect.BlindDown and SwitchOff handling of supplied callbacks, fixes #5089 [thx martinstrom]
Fix a problem with field focus on Ajax.InPlaceEditor and loading external text, fixes #4988, #5244 [thx rob]
Do not attempt to scroll if scrollspeed is 0/0, fixes #5035 [thx tomg]
Fix a problem with Sortable Tree serialization, fixes #4939, #4688, #4767 [thx Sammi Williams]
Fix an endless loop with sliders, fixes #3226, #4051, #4765 [thx jeff]
Make autocompleter work with update DIVs that have scrollbars, fixes #4782 [thx Tommy Skaue]
Corrected options parsing on switchoff effect, fixes #4710 [thx haldini]

The required 1.5.0_rc0 final version of Prototype is included with the download.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: V1.6.1: Sortable Trees, Prototype 1.5.0_rc0 (fixes IE mem leaks)!

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:27:00 -0000

V1.6.1 (2006-04-06): Sortable Trees, Prototype 1.5.0_rc0 (fixes IE mem leaks)!

New features in V1.6.1 and V1.6.0:

Update to Prototype 1.5.0_rc0
Sortable trees [thx Sammi Williams, sammi@oriontransfer.co.nz]
See the functional test (test/functional/sortable_tree_test.html) and the CHANGELOG for more information!
Add Draggable object as third parameter to snap, fixes #4074 [thx mdaines]
Add parsing/setting of any currently set opacity CSS rule to default opacity effect on draggables, fixes #3682 [thx Mike A. Owens]
Added benchmark method to unittest.js; some cleaning up of unit tests
Major speedup for sortable with handles initialization [thx Jamis Buck]
Add passing through of scroll options from Sortable to Draggable [thx Gregory Hill]
Make it possible to scroll window on dragging, #3921 [thx rdmiller]
added visualEffect method for the Element Mixin, fixed so you can chain multiple calls. [Rick Olson]

Bug fixes:

Fix an IE flicker with SlideUp/SlideDown, fixes #3774, [thx sbbowers]
Fix a problem with window scrolling on draggables [thx Gregory Hill]
Fix a problem with id-based handle names and draggables
Fix shift-tab for autocompleter in Safari, fixes #4423 [thx matt]
Make Element.forceRerendering give up on any exception (this fixes various problems with IE)
Fix only option on Sortable.create to accept multiple class names, fixes #3427 [thx glenn nilsson]
Added workaround for a rendering bug in Safari when using floating elements with Effect.Appear

The required 1.5.0_rc0 final version of Prototype is included with the download.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: script.aculo.us training in Austria: "Ajax richtig verwenden"

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 18:45:00 -0000

Ajax training for a german speaking audience – here is the german press release:

In diesem eintägigen Seminar zeigt Ihnen Thomas Fuchs wie Sie die Benutzerfreundlichkeit und Interaktivität ihrer Websites verbessern. Das Seminar bietet einen Überblick über verbreitete Ajax-Entwicklungswerkzeuge und fokusiert auf die Verwendung der Prototype-Bibliothek und script.aculo.us. Weiters werden die Möglichkeiten der integrierten Ajax-Funktionalität von Ruby on Rails demonstriert.

Also, nichts wie anmelden, nur 20 Plätze verfügbar!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: Version 1.6.0: Switch to Prototype 1.5, draggable window scrolling, bug and performance fixes!

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:57:00 -0000

V1.6.0 (2006-03-28): Switch to Prototype 1.5, draggable window scrolling, bug and performance fixes!

New in V1.6.0:

Major speedup for sortable with handles initialization [thx Jamis Buck]
Update to latest Prototype 1.5.0_pre1 trunk
Fix shift-tab for autocompleter in Safari, fixes #4423 [thx matt]
Refactor effects.js to use the new Prototype 1.5 Element Methods syntax
Add passing through of scroll options from Sortable to Draggable [thx Gregory Hill]
Make it possible to scroll window on dragging, #3921 [thx rdmiller]
Make Element.forceRerendering give up on any exception (this fixes various problems with IE)
added visualEffect method for the Element Mixin, fixed so you can chain multiple calls. [Rick Olson]
Fix only option on Sortable.create to accept multiple class names, fixes #3427 [thx glenn nilsson]
Added workaround for a rendering bug in Safari when using floating elements with Effect.Appear

Note: The required 1.5.0_pre1 final version of Prototype is included with the download.

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: Version 1.5.3: Ajax.InPlaceCollectionEditor, Sortable.setSequence, bug fixes!

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:57:00 -0000

V1.5.3 (2005-02-22): Ajax.InPlaceCollectionEditor, Sortable.setSequence, bug fixes!

New in V1.5.3:

Added Ajax.InPlaceCollectionEditor which uses a SELECT element instead of a text field (see test/functional/ajax_inplacecollectioneditor_test.html for usage), #3491 [thx anna]
Added Sortable.setSequence to programmatically reorder a Sortable, #3711 [thx Mike A. Owens]
Enable in place editor to use RJS (implements a new evalScripts option for the in place editor), #3490 [thx Richard Livsey]
Make name option on Sortable.serialize work again, fixes #3873
Make dragging cancel only on ESC key, not on any key, fixes #3817
Fix span positioning for sliders with ranges not starting at 0, fixes #3731 [thx michal]
Remove unneeded height restoring in Effect.BlindDown as that is handled internally by the restoreAfterFinish option to Effect.Scale, fixes #3667 [thx Ross Lawley]
Added unit test for #3732 (currently fails due to Prototype #3877) [thx michal]

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: Version 1.5.2: Auto-scrolling option for Draggables and Sortables, Limit option for effect queues, Sortable.sequence, bug fixes!

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:20:00 -0000

V1.5.2 (2005-02-14): Auto-scrolling option for Draggables and Sortables, Limit option for effect queues, Sortable.sequence, bug fixes!

New in V1.5.2:

Added auto-scroll option to Draggables and Sortables, activate with scroll: 'id_of_scroll_container_element'. See test/functional/dragdrop3_test.html for usage/demo
Add limit option to effect queues to limit the maximum number of effects in a queue, new unit tests for scoped effect queues, fixes #3498 [thx Abdur-Rahman Advany]
Add Sortable.sequence method to extract the current sequence of a Sortable as an array, fixes #3675 [thx sphivo]
Added activate method to Autocompleter that allows you to trigger the suggestions through other means than user input [DHH]
Add assertEnumEqual for unit testing (from Prototype SVN trunk) [Sam Stephenson]
Element.collectTextNodesIgnoreClass to correctly filter child nodes, fixes #3380 [thx lam]
Fix a condition where OPTION elements could cause unwanted dragging on Draggables, fixes #3441 [thx tom]
Fix a crash because of an IE bug in Effect.SlideDown, fixes #3192 [thx Rob Mayhew]
Fix a wrong parameter in dragdrop.js, fixes #3555
Fix two typos in effects.js, fixes #3481 [thx jtolds]

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: script.aculo.us wiki relaunched, now hosted by Stikipad

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 17:00:00 -0000

The script.aculo.us documentation wiki is now hosted by the nice guys over at Stikipad, a hosted wiki solution currently in beta (and yes, it’s a Rails app, naturally).

That being said, we’re going to be launching soon and you’ll be able to try out us out free of charge – who knows, we might even throw in a perk for being a script.aculo.us fan!

Thanks for giving the script.aculo.us wiki a new home, guys!

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: Version 1.5.1: Effect.toggle, local effect queues, Effect.Move, bug fixes!

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 19:00:00 -0000

V1.5.1 (2005-12-27): Effect.toggle, local effect queues, Effect.Move, bug fixes!

New in V1.5.1:

Add select option to Autocompleter to optionally use textnodes from elements with a specific CSS class (see test/functional/ajax_autocompleter_test.html for usage)
In-place editor: add ok/cancel visibility options and onblur() submission, fixes #3233 [thx pulsation] (Note: currently, blur form submission breaks the cancel link functionality, if enabled)
Added Effect.toggle for slide, blind and appear/fade effects, fixes #2704 [thx Azad]
Added selective component loading to scriptaculous.js, see test/unit/loading_test.html for usage [thx David Zülke]
Added local/scoped effect queues [thx David Zülke]
New core effect Effect.Move that can do absolute/relative movement [thx David Zülke]
Make default effects options modifyable globally by setting Effect.DefaultOptions
Make Draggables recognize top/left CSS properties defined in an external stylesheet, fixes #3205 [thx ansonparker]
Fixed draggables starting to drag even if mouse button was released with no movement, [thx topfunky]

script.aculo.us web 2.0 javascript: Version 1.5.0 final!

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:46:00 -0000

V1.5.0 final Release: Celebrating Ruby on Rails 1.0!

After much hard work, script.aculo.us 1.5.0 is finally here!

A big thank you to all the contributors out there!

script.aculo.us 1.5.0 final is also a part of the Ruby on Rails 1.0 release, and comes with Prototype 1.4.0 final on board!