scripty2: for a more delicious web. Scripty appears to be a new version of Scriptaculous that incorporates support for more advanced CSS features and HTML 5. Now in beta, which is available for download. Has good documentation and a few interesting demos.

SproutCore is Apple's Flash, Silverlight-killer - Mac software - Macworld UK Sproutcore is a new Ajax/JavaScript framework being developed as an outgrowth of Apple's new MobileMe product. It's also part of the ongoing rapid development of the iPhone development platform and the WebKit browser engine that forms the basis for Safari. To call it a "Flash killer" is perhaps a bit overstating the case, but judging from the demos on the Sproutcore website, it appears to be on its way to being a robust rival to more mature frameworks such as Ext.js. I've installed Sproutcore and look forward to playing around with it soon.

riiv.net» Blog Archive » MindFrame - Demystifying Rich Internet Application I've admired Spry since it first began evolving a year ago, and if you want to deliver data to users through a small XML data file, it's one of the best ways to do it. Now MindFrame is designed to bring those benefits to the growing Prototype.js universe. It also relies on a new open source library called ZParse, which apparently lets you define your own JavaScript parsing language. How cool is that?

AppleInsider | Mac users' Web 2.0 affinity seen driving Apple share gains Here's a study that reinforces my intuitive sense that what we're calling Web 2.0--that evolution of web user interfaces to mimic the rich interactivity of desktop apps--is being adopted much more rapidly by Mac users than by their PC counterparts. Not only that, but it concludes that the other argument I've been making---that the user interfaces one sees in Web 2.0 applications---are derived predominantly from the Mac OS X Aqua interface, largely because there is a much higher percentage of Mac developers of such sites than Windows ones. This also reinforces a larger feeling many Mac users have that this community is more enthusiastic about computing generally and has much higher expectations for the way it works and the things you can do with it.

DEfusion.org.uk » JavaScript Image Cropper UI, using Prototype & script.aculo.us Amazing! The number and sophistication of widgets and libraries built with Prototype/Scriptaculous have mushroomed since the last time I looked around. Here's one that you can use to enable dynamic image cropping for a website. Gorgeous work... very flexible, and with numerous excellent examples.

gWidgets I do hope this developer continues with these... the four he's released so far all look quite useful and cover a pretty good range of the absolutely necessary list: Tabs, Expandable text, Tool tips, and Popup windows. All done so they can be mixed and matched together in different ways... a lot of good demos here, too.

script.aculo.us Slider Demos and Example Code Damn! I wish these demos had been available when I was building parts of Mars a year ago. But I could find nothing but the demos on the Script.aculo.us wiki site, which didn't cover things like: Scrollwheel activation, use as a scrollbar... the two things I most needed. Oh well... at least they're here now if I need them again!

ModalBox — An easy way to create popups and wizards Here's a very cool javascript library based on Prototype/Scriptaculous: ModalBox is kind of a Lightbox for longer user messages, like "wizards", and could be used for surveys, for example. I love the statement that "it's inspired by Mac OS X modal dialogs"... of course! Nearly all the whiz-bang Ajax visual candy that's come out in the last 2 years is derived from the Mac OS X interface. Definitely want to try this one out some time!

lightWindow Demo I think my title on this puppy says it all. If not, check out the LightWindow demos! As some readers have noticed, I had earlier hacked Lightbox to enable running videos, but this does so much more. And it's more than a hack as well! Thanks, Kevin!

EJSChart :: 100% Pure JavaScript Charting Solution Well, I guess this is the day for cool new graphics libraries for Web 2.0 applications! Unfortunately, EJS Charts isn't free or open source, but it does work great in Safari and WebKit, as well as any other modern browser that supports the Canvas tag. At least, I believe it's using Canvas... the library also works in IE 6, which doesn't support Canvas, so it must use some other mechanism for IE. The chart data can reside in XML format, and the library enables dynamic resizing, zooming, and data selection (among other niceties). The only problem I had with the demo on the site's home page is that I had to reload the page in both Safari and WebKit before the chart rendered correctly. EJS Charts is free for personal use, and is so early in its life that documentation and examples are mostly missing for now. But this looks very promising indeed for any application that needs to display charted data on the web!

Prototype Graphic Framework This is very cool... it's too bad the library doesn't fully support canvas, but I gather that'll bring up the rear. For now, it works great in an SVG-enabled browser (as well as whatever it is that Microsoft uses for IE). For Mac users, this means you can't use Safari until Apple updates it in Leopard. For now, if you want to use Safari, you need to install and run the WebKit nightly build. Note: This is the same developer who gaves us the marvelous windowing library for Prototype, which I've used extensively here on Mars.

Komodo Edit - A Free, feature-rich editor for JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl, on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Originally downloaded April 4, 2007. I think I'd looked at Komodo briefly last year, but didn't download it because it was so expensive. I've also become leery of some cross-platform software, because it's generally designed for Windows in Java and then has an Aqua interface tacked on. Not my idea of good Mac software. But today I realized that Komodo also has a freeware version of its developer IDE, which covers the same range of languages that I'm interested in. As long as it's free, I'm definitely game for a tryout! I'm also impressed by the fact that ActiveState, the company that makes Komodo, has an open beta program for the next point release (4.1) already available as well... for both the editor and the full $300 IDE.

Version as tested: 4.0.

Control.Modal : Unobtrusive CSS Modal Windows and Lightboxes for Prototype These are worth taking a closer look at... I do have solutions in place for such things, but I also would like my code to be more in the "nonobtrusive" mold. These are built for the Prototype Javascript library.

OpenLaszlo | the premier open-source platform for rich internet applications OpenLaszlo started out declaring that their framework could be used for both dhtml and Flash, but they started with Flash, and that's what got stuck in developer's brains. They had demoed some dhtml/ajax versions last year, but now they've offically released version 4.0, with full support for Javascript/CSS/HTML/Ajax applications (earlier known as DHTML). The demos on the site have to be seen to be believed! For each demo, there's a Flash and DHTML version, and I think most people will have trouble telling one from the other. I've got to take another serious look at this framework soon!

Dean Edwards: Yet Another JavaScript Library Without Documentation Dean Edwards is one of the, well, Deans, of the Javascript guru world. Obviously a brilliant programmer, he's released what he himself calls "yet another JavaScript library" for reasons that aren't perfectly clear. My impression is that it's Edwards conception of a perfect standards-compliant library, but without documentation and with so many other fine libraries floating around now, I wonder why he didn't devote his talents to one of the existing projects... ? Oh well, hopefully one of them will pick up some of Edwards' ideas, as they have in the past.

DED|Chain JavaScript Library Dustin Diaz has released version 0.1 of a new javascript library, somewhat awkwardly named DED|Chain. He says it's built on the Yahoo! UI Javascript library, but combines some features from jQuery. It also leverages Jack Slocum's awesome CSS query functions. There's only one small demo at the moment, but I'm sure more will emerge with time.

Tobie Langel - A Fistful of $$ As readers of Mars have no doubt noticed, I use an autoscroll function to make navigating to different sections of my somewhat lengthy articles easier and more, well, interesting. Programmer Tobie Langel has published a prototype implementation of auto-scrolling that he feels is superior to the one I'm using, which uses the Script.aculo.us "Effect.ScrollTo" function. Hey, I'm always interesting in learning something new and better... And was a little distressed at how the readers of the post on Ajaxian pounced on Langel, acting as if existing tools had this function all wrapped up, and he was an idiot and troublemaker for suggesting an alternative. Very un-Mars-like, guys. I noticed in a subsequent Ajaxian post that the Prototype guys feel they've cleaned up Prototype's $$ function's speed problems in the latest beta, so maybe it's time to take a closer look at solutions like Langel's. His page of autoscroll demos is here.

Ajaxian » Ext Being developed by this brilliant programmer Jack Slocum, who's starting from using the Yahoo Ajax toolkit, Ext is apparently a framework that will support more than just YUI. In fact, Slocum has already incorporated into Ext (which is still in alpha development) support for both jQuery and Prototype/Script.acul.ous. Amazing! The widgets on display at the Ext docs site are incredibly sweet... I've downloaded the latest alpha build myself and hope to play with it shortly. So far every widget I've tried has worked great in WebKit.

ColumNav Documentation Wow! This is damn cool! Another reason to take a second look at the YUI toolkit, I'd say. Great demos here, too, including source code. The widget builds a tree-like navigation widget that looks just like column view in the Mac OS X Finder.

YUI Version 2.2.0 Released: Browser History Manager, DataTable, and Button Components, New Versioning, and More » Yahoo! User Interface Blog This is great news... Yahoo has included a component to manage the browser's history that's supposed to work in all "A-grade" browsers, which of course includes Safari/WebKit. The new release also has a new data management tool and more besides.

OAT Framework OAT (OpenLink AJAX Toolkit) is a new open source reference Ajax library that's resulting from the combined efforts of members of the OpenAjax Alliance. I haven't tried it yet, but the site is chock-full of demo widgets that have gotten rave reviews on Ajaxian.com today. The source is downloadable at sourceforge, and I'm printing out the Alliance's white paper now... Very cool news indeed!

Omnidrive: The Universal Storage Platform - Home The uploader for Omnidrive got a mention on Ajaxian today, so I went to take a look. I can't say that I saw what they were writing about, since all I got was a clunky java app for browsing and uploading a test file. In any case, Omnidrive does have other virtues worth blogging about... such as 1 GB free storage, a free web API, decent bandwidth for sharing, and a generally nice interface that's friendly to Mac users (including Safari). A Mac desktop client is due any day now, which would integrate Omnidrive with the Finder... presumably in a way similar to Apple's own iDisk. If that develops---and if Omnidrive does get some wiki and/or blog extensions as they hope---this could be a worthy competitor to .Mac for ease of use. You can pay Omnidrive for large file storage, and it integrates natively with the excellent Zoho office suite.

Fork JavaScript Judging by the reaction to Fork at Ajaxian, where I saw the note about Fork, the programmer world either isn't interested or isn't impressed. No one bothered to leave a comment, but the story had a 2-star rating (very low) when I visited just now. Has the web developer world reached the point where new libraries are merely dissed on launch? Yes, we have too many already... but hey, maybe the guy's got a good idea or two. In any case, I'll be adding Fork to my list to test and update my Cross-Browser scorecard soon. A lot of updates are already in the queue, so why not one more Fork-ful?

Prototype Javascript Library: Easing the development of dynamic web applications Ah, now this is more like it! No more having to scrounge around the web for documentation, examples, and tutorials on Prototype.js, the Ajax-wise JavaScript library that's taken the web developer world by storm over the last year and a half. Now, thanks to a lot of dedicated developers working on the project, the library finally has its own website that's more than just a billboard page. Besides being able to download the library, the new site provides a blog, a section on tips and tutorials, and a full set of API documentation! Can't wait to step inside and look around.

Zirrus: A To Do List for The Rest of Us Zirrus (that's zirr.us, folks) is an amazing new Web 2.0 application that adds an innovation to to-do lists that I hope catches on. Certainly, I think it may make a difference for me. The idea behind Zirrus is to let users see their lists as a "cloud", where the priority you set is reflected in the size of the tasks. It also lets you automatically or interactively move tasks to a "Now" category, and it incorporates actual tags to help with categorizing your tasks. Of course, you can set due dates as well. The Ajax-based interface is a breeze to use, but if you need help, the 3-minute screencast is a good intro. I'm still amazed, and will be back to try my free account in real time to see if the amazement translates into actual improvement in getting things done.

CheckItOut, Personal Finance Manager CheckItOut is a new Web 2.0 application written for Ruby on Rails, which lets you manage your personal finances in a web browser. It's an open source project that you can install on your own server or have it hosted on a Ruby-friendly service. The online demo indicates it's a bit too bare-bones for my needs (for example, it doesn't appear to have any data-import tools at this point), but it's certainly an interesting project.

Mogopop: Make It To Go

This looks like a really cool Web 2.0-style application, designed specifically for the iPod. Mogopop provides a small application for Mac OS X and Windows users, which manages the installation of Mogopop content (and removal), which you can browse and download from the Mogopop website. Content appears to run the gamut of simple text to complex multimedia presentations with linked images, movies, and sound. In some ways, Mogopop is like some iPod notes creation tools, except that the content builder is part of the Mogopop website. Using the “Publish” part of the site, you can sign up for a 50MB space to create your multimedia masterpiece, which any user can then find and download to their iPod. To understand what’s really going on with Mogopop, I recommend checking out the excellent, short screencast. I’m looking forward to making some Mogopop content myself here soon!

Unsupported browser - Renkoo OK, so on the recommendation of Ajaxian.com, I signed up for an account with Renkoo. Now, they could tell what browser I was using at that point, but did they warn me ahead of time that I was wasting my time? Heck, no. I got my invite email and followed it back to Renkoo, but after logging in I got this page. Burns me up to think these silly people think Mac users should be left out of the party, or that we should have to wear what everyone else is wearing to the party. I hope their party crashes and burns!

Big WebOS roundup - 10 online operating systems This post lists 10 web-based operating systems with a screenshot and brief paragraph or two about each. It's useful to have this snapshot of the state of Web OS's at the end of 2006, as I suspect it'll look quite different a couple of years from now (as always), and looking back should be instructive.

DOM Scripting: Spryjax The author of the DOMscripting blog has some hard questions about Adobe's choices in developing its Spry Ajax framework.

Protopage News Blog » Protopage V3 released As the find print notes, the Protopage developers "we highly recommend [that Mac users] use either the Firefox or Opera browser for the best Protopage experience." Nevertheless, this is progress, and Safari users no longer get a "no welcome" sign when they try this Web 2.0 personalized home page service out.

Ajaxian » Prototype Event Extension: Event.wheel(e) I'm so glad this has finally appeared... As I noted on the Ajaxian website, this is critical for any web page that uses a custom scrollbar (guilty as charged). It's built into Apple's JavaScript for widgets, but was never available in Prototype until now. Can't wait to try it out!

Mootools Primer/Tutorial » Clientside CNET has this very cool Clientside website for its developers who manage the "client" aspects of CNET.com. They apparently have settled on Mootools as their Ajax library, and in fact have done a lot of extensions for it. Here, they provide a tutorial on Mootools and also information on all the CNET extensions! The rest of the blog looks very interesting as well. Of course, I love the fact that the lead developer appears to be a Mac user.

PRADO PHP Framework Here's a powerful-looking new framework for PHP5 that has built-in support for Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Rico, and a few other Ajax components. Prado is a full web application development framework on the scale of CakePHP, another Ruby-on-Rails-inspired application framework for PHP. Prado has a template framework as well as a framework for components, modules, and services. The website has a screencast demoing a Hello World Prado app, and an excellent set of documentation that's available in HTML as well as PDF. Like the entire PHP world, Prado is an open source initiative, and juding from the screencast, a lot of the lead developers do their programming on a Mac. (Of course!)

script.aculo.us morph effects

Ah, it’s good to see Thomas Fuchs and his cohorts rise to the challenge of the numerous other Ajax effects libraries that have sprung up recently. Apparently, the next version of Script.aculo.us will add tools for animated “morphs” between two objects. It’s cool that he acknowledges inspiration from some of the other prototype-based animation frameworks, even as he adds new features like Morph.

qooxdoo 0.6.2 released Great news... This is the second post tonight that celebrates an Ajax toolkit's upgrade to add Safari/WebKit support! In addition to Google, Safari/WebKit is now on the qooxdoo developers' radar screen, even if they're avoiding full support for Safari 2.0. Safari 3.0 isn't that far away, and most Mac developers are using WebKit by now anyway. I'll be adding qooxdoo to the list of Ajax frameworks to re-review the next time I update the Scorecard.

Lollygag - The AJAX Framework for .NET So, if you want to build your Ajax app using .NET, you now have a choice other than Microsoft's weak Atlas. In a quick run-through the demos here, I didn't see any cross-browser support issues (unlike with Atlas), but I'm adding it to the list of Atlas libraries to review the next time I update the scorecard.

Google Web Toolkit Blog: GWT 1.2 Released with Full Mac OS X Support This is good news for WebKit/Safari developers... GWT end-products worked on Safari, but apparently you couldn't actually do development on WebKit/Safari without Google telling you "that's not supported..." Now, it is, and good thing too! Of course, as a JavaScript developer I always found GWT a little odd as a tool for building Ajax web apps. (GWT is designed for Java developers who don't want to learn JavaScript.) I'll be interested to see if GWT 1.2 is a little more robust in its embrace of and support for JavaScript.

Streampad blog » Back button now in use! (Getting history working in Safari) Here's yet another attempt (and a success?) to get back-button functionality working in Safari for Ajax pages. The developer has a test page for this at http://www.streampad.com/test/historyMan.php as well as a good technical description. I do hope the WebKit guys wake up and realize this is a real pain for people trying to develop Ajax apps for Safari...

Run / Universal JavaScript Animation Framework / Start Seriously, why so many new JavaScript animation frameworks? Didn't we already have enough good ones? If I were Thomas Fuchs, I'd be wondering where Script.aculo.us went wrong, because since all of these are based on prototype.js, why did other developers feel the need to do Script.aculo.us one better? Frankly, unless one of them shows really unique promise, I'm going to continue counting on Fuchs and company to add more firepower to their genre-defining JavaScript animation library. That said, Run looks pretty darn cool!