IRC channel for Prototype and script.aculo.us

You asked for it, so the Prototype JavaScript framework and script.aculo.us now have their very own IRC channel on irc.freenode.net:

So, join the discussion on irc.freenode.net in the #prototype channel!

Need tooltips?

Need to add some tooltips or in-page popups to your web site or web app?

Check out Tooltip.js, built with Prototype and script.aculo.us!

script.aculo.us V1.5.1 out now

script.aculo.us V1.5.1 is available now. Besides fixing bugs, some new features have made it in.

Also, Edge Rails now features support for the new toggling effects, so you can do:

visual_effect :toggle_slide, 'element'
visual_effect :toggle_blind, 'element'
visual_effect :toggle_appear, 'element'

Have fun!

Btw, the new year will bring even more nice new features…

Unicode-escaping h() variant

Put this in application_helper.rb:

def u(html)
  h(html).gsub(/([^x00-x9f])/u) { |s|
    "&#x%x;" % $1.unpack('U')[0] }
end

This will automatically output 香-style HTML entities where needed.

I’m using it for escaping HTML inside of Edge Rails .rjs templates, to ensure compatibility across browsers (especially Safari seems to be a bit buggy here with support for UTF-8 in Ajax calls).

Keep your Rails app on the script.aculo.us edge

Want an easy way to stay on the latest script.aculo.us SVN trunk for your Ruby on Rails app?

Read the tip over at Rails Weenie.

IE Mac retiring

Finally, Microsoft retires Internet Explorer for Mac.

Next Step: Retire the Windows version, too.

Well, let’s hope IE 7 fixes at least some of the annoyances…

TextMate manual, 1.1 release coming

The nicest editor around now has a brand new manual, plus 1.1 is around the corner.

So, all of you who watched the videos in awe, now it’s a great time to get youself TextMate.

Upcoming features for script.aculo.us

With script.aculo.us 1.5 finally out, it’s now time to add great new features. The SVN trunk already has some brand-new stuff added:

• Effect.toggle allows silly easy implementation of toggling elements with Slide, Blind and Appear/Fade effects: Effect.toggle('element_id','slide')
• Effect defaults can now be set globally by manipulating the Effect.DefaultOptions hash
• Scoped effect queues for multiple parallel running effect queues: Effect.Appear('element_id', {queue:{scope:'myscope', position:'end'}})
• Dynamic loading of components allows you to tune your site per-page for including only the script.aculo.us components you need: <script src="scriptaculous.js?load=effects,dragdrop" type="text/javascript"></script>
• New Effect.Move that replaces the old Effect.MoveBy that also allows for absolute movement: new Effect.Move('element_id', {x:30, y:10, mode: 'absolute'})

Special thanks to David Zülke for coming up with the basis for the scoped effects queues and the dynamic loading!

This and more coming soon to a script.aculo.us near you. 🙂

script.aculo.us V1.5 final is here!

Along the release of Ruby on Rails 1.0 and Prototype 1.4.0, I’m proud to announce that script.aculo.us 1.5.0 final is also out-of-the-release-candidate phase and is finally available!

Many, many thanks to all you contributors, bug hunters and users of script.aculo.us out there!

For detailed information about what’s new in this release, please refer to the CHANGELOG.

There also are some cool new features in the queue, so stay tuned. 🙂

Ruby on Rails 1.0 released!

Start the party!

Update: Read all about on the official Rails weblog!