The Lightbox Clones Matrix

Unless you are a newbie, you have heard and probably used swfobject, an easy-to-use and standards-friendly method to embed Flash content. Simply add one small JavaScript file and it takes the worries out of everything. Well, it’s hosted at swfobject, but I just noticed they have an AIR “wizard” that literally writes the html for you. Handy when you don’t have the time to learn the differences and new features in swfobject 2.0. I highly recommend this.

MooFilm is a Mootools-Based Tooltip Fader for Images. Nice addition to MooTools bookmarks I guess.

ProtoFlow is a coverflow effect written in Javascript. It uses Prototype and Scriptaculous to do bulk of the work and it uses Reflection.js to do all the image reflections.

This Mac OS X-style Dock In JavaScript seems a little “rough” or not smooth when the icons are small but it does work on the big browsers and it’s simple/easy to install if you need this sort of thing.

Saw this on Ajaxian - apparently Google has just come out with Javascript API for YouTube that will allow you to develop “the flexibility to customize the YouTube player with their own controls, player ‘chrome’, and even behaviors like custom playlists and menus.”. The YouTube Chromeless Player Reference is certainly interested and it looks like Christian Heilmann has written a video captioning system that lets you annotate as you pause. My spidey sense tells me this has BIG potential and some awesome stuff should be appearing over the next few weeks.

Just caught this nice code example from Eric Wendelin. Looks great, bookmarking for future reference.

Just linking to two scripts I found of use recently. Both involve pagination with Ajax and Javascript. One involves actually loading separate pages, and the other is a “virtual pagination script” where the elements are already on the page and you want to create pagination functionality based on that.

moo.rd is a “super lightweight javascript (object oriented) library based on the MooTools framework.” The effects are ok (though i don’t see any big demand for them) but the custom alert and custom boxes along with the table row features make this bookmarkable for any MooTools fan.

Spellify is “an automatic text field spell checker” that’s available for download, with the following requirements:

- PHP 4+ with CURL library installed (developed using PHP 4.4.6)
- script.aculo.us 1.8.0 (only effects.js and scriptaculous.js required)
- Prototype JavaScript Framework 1.6.0

I’ve seen similar effects, but FancyZoom 1.1 seems to pull off javascript image zooming rather well. Works in Safari and Opera. The link has examples, but i copied the list of nice features.

Focused on the smoothest, most polished zooming animation possible
Automatically scales images from any image link, with no HTML changes
Preloads full-size images in the background on link mouseover
No resource-heavy Javascript libraries — 100% coded from scratch to zoom
Draws a nice drop shadow under the full-size image to offset it from the page
Uses Safari 3’s “box-shadow” feature to draw the drop shadow natively, no images required
Requires only two new lines of code in your HTML
Tested and works with Safari, Firefox, IE7, and IE6. (Looks better in modern browsers.)

Apparently you can sniff browser history via Javascript for (hopefully) an “improved user experience”.

Scott Klarr has cheat sheets for Javascript, jQuery, Scriptaculous, MooTools, Prototype, Microsoft Ajax Library, Yahoo YUI, and Symfony. Quite a list, probably should grab these or bookmark.

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.

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.

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

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 ]

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

• The Friendly Clip is a javascript bookmarklet is a user-friendly way of overriding Web Clip icons.
• “Alex” has made a few WebApp icons.
• Pixelspread has some great looking ones too.
• Here’s another link, including a WebApp icon for flickr.
• Iclypso seems to be a site devoted to custom WebApp Icons, but only has a few so far.

Inventive Labs Gadgets has created Tabulate, a clever javascript bookmarklet that gives “open in new tab” behavior. Seems like the great thing to add to your iPhone (I’m adding it to my iTouch ASAP). [ via Daring ]

You can choose to open the link in the current tab, in a new tab, or save the link to open in a new tab later (you can close this box if you tapped on a link unintentionally).

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 ]

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.

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.

Smashing Magazine has another list post of software frameworks covering most of the popular frameworks of php, rails, javascript, etc. Most of these follow the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture.

It’s not a complete list by any means, as additional frameworks are mentioned in the comments. But it’s a nice readable list to skim, and worthy of bookmarking.

Bookmarking this nice article and code (although I admit it needs more testing) for a more accessible edit-in-place solution using Javascript and CSS. I like edit-in-place scripts and I want to download this later and test it on additional browsers, especially Safari.

Javascript and CSS magic… Apple has put up some sample code that shows off the new window.onorientationchange and window.orientation ability that lets you detect the orientation of the iPhone. devphone.com goes into it a bit more, with sample code.

This claims to “easily add useful functionality to your games and Web applications for the Wii’s Internet Channel“. I have a Wii, so I want to bookmark this to play later.

Dynamic Ajax Tabs in only 17 lines of code thanks to the Prototype Javascript framework.

Ajax IM uses Prototype, and appears to be a decent ajax-based instant messenger. Recently upgraded, everything (PHP and JS) is now object-oriented instead of procedural and has many functions modified to make better use of the Prototype library.

Yahoo UI libraries are great, but sometimes I wished I could improve performance by only loading the ones I needed. Bookmarking a possible way to do this, so I can review later. Found about this YUI technique here.