Edward Eliot and Stuart Colville released the source code to their CSS Sprite Generator. [ via Ajaxian ]

This image transition manager is a “javascript library based on scriptaculous and prototype. It supports several image transitions, such as fading, appearing, sliding, growing and shrinking.”

This jQuery Validation plugin looks like a handy item to take note of. Bookmarking because the author is continuing development and has a great roadmap planned out.

This is a bugger to figure out - basically I was using php to read a varchar value in a SQL database. Problem was, my returning value was cut off at around 255 or 256 characters. Even changing the mssql.textlimit and mssql.textsize values in the php.ini file didn’t help. The answer, it seems, is to preform a little conversation in your SQL SELECT statement:

select *, convert(text,bio) as bio from writers

So if “bio” is the field that is in the SQL database than contains more than 256 characters, the above should give you ALL those characters back.

VBScript Cheat Sheet

Chris Charlton has put together dreamweaver extensions that offer support for jQuery 1.2 and Prototype 1.6 development. Looks like Yahoo YUI and MooTools might be future options if there’s enough demand.

Short Javascript (.js) file available to produce “pretty dates”, or dates found on many web 2.0 sites.

Shadowbox.js Media Viewer is a “cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript”. So no MooTools or Prototype needed. Interesting, worth a look.

FancyUpload looks very cool. Basically a great graphical way to upload multiple files (there’s even a php script for the actual uploading and validation). Not sure if this is currently being maintained, but if you are looking for a decent uploader this might be the answer. Platform and server independent, just needs Flash 8+. Plus you can limit uploads by file count and/or file size.

This Prototype 1.6.0.2 Cheat Sheet might come in handy. Bookmarkable indeed!

CSSVista is a free (but in early beta apparently) Windows application for web developers “which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously”.

I’ve wanted to take a close look at ExpressionEngine (since it’s related to Code Igniter) so i’m bookmarking this Introduction to ExpressionEngine.

The SitePoint CSS Reference won’t be your only CSS reference link (and shouldn’t) but it’s especially critical for newbies and moderate CSS users and easily equals the value of a CSS reference book. [ via

Stumbled on these, and I wanted to get them in my bookmarks for my fellow coders. Parsing ITunes Library.xml with ActionScript 3.0 and plist parsing in PHP.

Paolo Severini, a Microsoft employee in Dublin, has build a JavaScript Memory Leak Detector that detects leaks with knowledge of the difference between IE 6 and IE 7. [ via Ajaxian ]

Dylan Verheul’s autocomplete plugin is worth bookmarking if you think you might need a solid autocomplete with caching options to limit server requests.

Easy to use and install jQuery UI Datepicker by Marc Grabanski and Keith Wood.

We’ve seen javascript date-pickers before, but this sliding date picker is kinda cool. It enables you to pick dates with a simple slider bar. By dragging the bar over the time-line, the dates change instantly. Uses prototype 1.6 and scriptaculous 1.8. [ via Ajaxian ]

Eric Meyer constructed a browser timeline built out of a table, and how he went about coding the html and css. Nice work.

The jQuery ScrollTo Plugin will scroll the matched elements to the chosen position. Here’s the Ajaxian ]

I’m beginning to like Nick Stakenburg. Starbox allows you to create a variety rating boxes (including “half stars”) using just one PNG image. The library is build on top of the Prototype javascript framework and extra effects via Scriptaculous

This release adds a lot of new features to the library:

* Rerating allows you to adjust your previous rating.
* You can easily save your rating with Ajax using the build in callback.
* Improvements to the CSS model, allowing you to style the Starbox based on status (hover, rated and locked).
* Better seperation of Javascript, CSS and images.
* A ghosting bar that tracks your average.
* Custom event ’starbox:rated’ is fired when your rate.
* Batched building of Starboxes based on cached overlay images.

Besides the simple CSS tooltips, Prototip is probably going to be a favorite. Looks like it’s easy to build simple and complex tooltips using the Prototype javascript framework and add effects with Scriptaculous.

Lightview is a new lightbox implementation (ok it might not be new, but it’s new to me and recently updated). Requires Prototype 1.6 and uses Scriptaculous. I love the rounded corners (without using PNGs apparently), especially when it’s used for a photo slideshow. Bookmarking because I haven’t seen this lightbox yet and want to give it a test-drive.

Leon Chevalier claims to have created a PHP class that can “Improve website load time by 500%”. Although someone in the comments is correcting that figure to 80%. Regardless, it takes 3 lines of code to include and use. Bookmarking to later try.

PhpDelicious is a library for accessing the del.icio.us API. Recently upgraded so it’s now PHP 5 only, has an improved (more robust) HTTP request method, etc.

According to Derek Allard, CodeIgniter 1.6.0 “beta” is available and he’s giving a hint for additional (and bigger) updates in the near future. I’m glad to hear this, since CodeIgniter is my favorite PHP framework. Can’t wait to take a crack at it.

COLOURlovers is offering the html code to get their Color Picker working on your site for free.

Ok, I bookmarked the short tip on how to create these according to Cameron, your iPhone or iTouch looks for a special link tag before trying to find the apple-touch-icon.png graphic in your root directory.

<link href="iphone.png" rel="apple-touch-icon" />

This is perfect if you want icons for subdirectories.

phpMyID is a “single user (though, if you were so inclined, you could easily turn it into a multi-user setup) IdP, or Identity Provider for the OpenID framework.” Just been updated to version 0.7. [ via full-speed ]

Dan Dickinson shows how to create a custom icon for your website that will show up in the Springboard when a user makes a “webclip”, using their iPhone or iPod Touch. Basically you use create a 57 × 57 px PNG with the name “apple-touch-icon.png” at the top level of your server. Otherwise your iPhone or iTouch uses a screenshot of your site as the default icon. [ via DaringFireball ]

Update: Some are recommending that you make the png 158×158.

One of those “cool tools that i’ll rarely use”: Chirag Mehta built an app “where you can create a color on the screen (or copy-paste CSS hex# color) and find out the name of the closest matching color.” [ via Andy Skelton ]

Although i’m a Codeignitor and CakePHP fan, i always like to bookmark interesting php frameworks. Simplicity uses EXT, seems to have a nice setup utility among other things…

Simplicity PHP Application Framework is an advanced, scalable and extensible PHP application framework to aid developers in creating high traffic, high availability Web 2.0 online applications. Integrating a solid MVC framework with some of the best Open Source projects around Simplicity aims to assist developers with any amount of experience in taking their applications to a new level.

[ via Ajaxian ]

I just stumbled on this, bookmarking for later review… but Dean Edwards has upgraded his IE7.js to version 2.0 (beta). Now available on googlecode. In a nutshell, IE7 is a JavaScript library to make Internet Explorer behave like a “standards-compliant browser”, fixing CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6. It appears to “fix up” IE6 close to how IE7 (an improvement) operates.

I don’t like the idea of relying on a javascript file (although an excellent idea) because if someone has turned off javascript, the magic dies. But I suppose this would be useful if you are in a pinch and you need a project to work in IE6 and you are pulling your hair out. Looking forward to using it (sparingly).

Dr Nic has written a tutorial on testing JavaScript in Rails using a new javascript_test plugin.

Found this on a link site, bookmarking for later. “Yet Another Multicolumn Layout” (YAML) is an (X)HTML/CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts.