Google-served JavaScript libraries

Thanks to Dion Almaer and Google, you can now use served-off-googles-infrastructure versions of your favourite JavaScript libraries, including Prototype and script.aculo.us.

The files are served with proper caching headers and fully compressed (GZIP), so you don’t have to do it yourself.

In Dion’s words:

• Developers won’t have to worry about getting caching setup correctly, as we will do that for you
• If another application uses the same library (much more likely), they there is a much better chance that it will be already caching on the users machine
• The network and bandwidth of the users systems will not be taxed.

You can either use Google’s API loader (see link to docs below), or just use direct URLs. For example the following code block will load in Protoype and script.aculo.us’ effects (ignore the linebreaks!):

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.0.2/prototype.js"></script>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.1/effects.js"></script>

You can read up on this at the documentation site.

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script.aculo.us switches to git(hub) and Lighthouse

script.aculo.us is from now on developed using Git (hosted at github) for source code management and revision control, and Lighthouse for bug tracking.

Why git instead of Subversion? Well, it simply rules supreme, and makes working with many distributed developers with lots of branches a snap. You can find a good intro book on Git on Peepcode.

script.aculo.us 1.xx development will focus on bug fixes only, while I’m working on the next version of scripty (post on that coming up soon!).

Bug tracker
http://prototype.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8887-script-aculo-us

Repository for script.aculo.us 1.xx
http://github.com/madrobby/scriptaculous

Note that if you’re just using the library, this change won’t really affect you.

If you have open bugs on the old Trac please port them over to lighthouse yourself!

I’m also working on a replacement for the documentation wiki (which, quite honestly, sucks); so stay tuned for some updates in the near future. If you want to help out with the documentation effort, please contact me.

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