Thomas Fuchs
Hi, I'm Thomas Fuchs. I'm the author of the script.aculo.us user interface JavaScript library, a member of the Prototype core team and a Ruby on Rails core alumnus. You're using my work every day, even if you're not aware of it (sounds creepy, I know!). Need JS foo? Hire me.

script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta!

March 12th, 2007 by Thomas Fuchs, 19 comments »

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.

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 here!

So, what’s new?

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! Here’s a little example of how to use this (be sure to include sounds.js or use the script.aculo.us loader, scriptaculous.js):



Sound.play('blah.mp3');

Of course, there’s some heated discussion about this—we’ll see where this will take us.

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.

As always, I heavily encourage you to study the CHANGELOG to get the full details on all of this.

So, what are you waiting for? Download here!
(other archive types available too).

Lastly, thanks to all the contributors and the community! :)

P.S. I’ll be in London this week for Qcon, so if you want to discuss this or other stuff and you’re in the area, you should be able to find me around.

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19 comments »

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19 Comments on “script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta!”

  1. 1 ahFeel said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Nice improvments ! Looking forward to final release =) And why the hell are INTERESTINGS conference so expensive :( Students cannot afford that :(

  2. 2 Ko Kwang Jin said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Im Korean WebProgramer
    but I can’t English… :)

    I saw your program~ WOW! it’s great!!!
    so i wand need study…
    so… ^^ i need your source~

  3. 3 Ran Baron said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    You’re Da Best!

  4. 4 /dev/urandom said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    What kind of JSON support are we talking about here? I’ve overloaded respondToReadState for my own purposes in the JSON area, but perhaps I can make use of this new feature (if there’s any documentation for it somewhere)

  5. 5 Rainbow.Park said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Always thank for your source (script.aculo.us)

  6. 6 Steve said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Sorry for the delay, but I did finally put up a compressed version of this beta (looks like about 36K with gzip). (I’ve been a little sick this week)

    I’ll be creating more variations soon (i.e. Today) (the compressed combo of prototype/builder/effects is popular)

    Rather than linking to blog entries, I have a page up on my wiki now:
    http://www.stevekallestad.com/wiki/Compressed_Javascript_Libraries

    That way, people can bookmark it rather than trying to find the relevant entry in my blog when a new version comes out.

    The link is still too long… but what’s a guy to do. :)

    I really am impressed with this from what I’ve played with so far. Impressed is an understatement. Thanks for all your hard work!!!

  7. 7 Steve said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Sorry for the delay, but I did finally put up a compressed version of this beta (looks like about 36K with gzip). (I’ve been a little sick this week)

    I’ll be creating more variations soon (i.e. Today) (the compressed combo of prototype/builder/effects is popular)

    Rather than linking to blog entries, I have a page up on my wiki now:
    http://www.stevekallestad.com/wiki/Compressed_Javascript_Libraries

    That way, people can bookmark it rather than trying to find the relevant entry in my blog when a new version comes out.

    The link is still too long… but what’s a guy to do. :)

    I really am impressed with this from what I’ve played with so far. Impressed is an understatement. Thanks for all your hard work!!!

  8. 8 Ken said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Now that Prototype 1.5.1 rc2 is out, should I use that instead of the hacked rc1 included in the download file?

  9. 9 Diane said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    @Ken Good question…
    Yesterday I got the version 1.5.1_rc2 – without realising it… until yet and your post. Shame on me :-) In my case everything seems to work fine with the rc2, so I will use this version…

  10. 10 Dave said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Hey guys, can you drop a .htaccess into your /dist/ directory with:

    IndexOptions NameWidth=*

    That would make the names on the links a lot easier to read.

  11. 11 PK said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Thanks for new script.aculo.us 1.7.1 beta! Keep up the good work. Greetings

  12. 12 Thomas Fuchs said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Dave: Thanks for the tip! The links should now be easier to read! :)

  13. 13 Ygor Lemos said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Hi!

    Great news!!! scriptaculous is the most fantastic js lib over there for web apps… I’m very glad to see that it keeps improving over and over.

    Here I come with some suggestions which IMHO should incorporate the core of scriptaculous to make it more complete.

    1. Native support for cryptography and hashing ( I think this should reside inside prototype. )
    This cryptographic API should at least have the basic hashing and encode/decode functions for those algorythms: MD5,SHA1,SHA256,AES Rijndael (128-512-1024 bits), DES, TDES, Blowfish and Twofish.

    2. Native support for rounded borders, something like implementing the Nifty Corners Cube (http://www.html.it/articoli/niftycube/index.html) system on the scriptaculous core as it uses no images and is 100% js.

    3. Implement something like behaviour.

    ( http://www.bennolan.com/behaviour/ ) in the Prototype core. ( I didn’t know anything that do what behaviour does inside Prototype core ). As behaviour keeps the code simpler and smarter. There are already on the net some optimizations over the original 2005 Ben Nolan code and I think it will be easy to include this code on Prototype’s core.

    4. Native Litboxes.

    Many web-apps are using it. I think it be a hand-over-wheel to implement a native, fully css/js customizable Litbox on scriptaculous core, as many people requires litboxes.

    5. Charts and Vectors…

    I already did… some charts with motion and even realtime charts using ajax… natively it will be astonishing…. imagine draw a 3d animated graph/chart native from inside scriptaculous… It can be done… and will be a must!

    6. Accordions… everybody loves it…

    7. Let’s talk about time and dates… :)

    Well, what about start to think about time and date functions inside Prototype core and a nice js calendar/date-time picker inside scriptaculous ?

    That’s all for now folks!… keep me informed if I can do anything… and thanks for keepin’ the good work!

  14. 14 jimheng said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Found this fantasy site! love it and proud it.

  15. 15 Samuel Williams said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Have you fixed the bugs in the sortable tree yet?

  16. 16 Kari Pätilä said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    It would be nice if the scriptaculous site had a non-js link for downloading the packages. For some reason js is disabled by default where I work.

  17. 17 Christian Raquel said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Wow! Really great! :)

  18. 18 Luuk said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    @Ygor:
    2. Nifty Corners has some drawbacks, as its behavior is different in IE and FF.

    For example when I put an image in a div container (width:300px, padding: 20px) and add nifty corners on page load, the lower-border is 3px wider than the other borders. This problem seems to be present in Firefox (1.5). IE(6) shows the correct border width.

    Thus, I don’t think it wise to add rounded corners.

  19. 19 Capripot said at 1:55 pm on March 12th, 2007:

    Hello
    Can you update the wiki with this new version ? I would like to make exemples of Morph effect in the wiki. Thanks a lot for your very good job !