scripty2: for a more delicious web

June 26th, 2009 by Thomas Fuchs, 23 comments »

The script.aculo.us 2 alpha is out! Check it out now at scripty2.com. As you would expect, it brings a lot of change and new features.

scripty2: for a more delicious web

As the effects framework forms the base for all the eye candy in any UI elements, it’s the logical first step towards a complete scripty2. But what’s in that, and how will the complete thing look like?

scripty2 will consist of three parts:

scripty2 fx: the framework for DOM/CSS-based visual effects
scripty2 ui: user interface behaviours (not in right now)
scripty2 core: helpers for a more delicious developer experience

Alpha!

In this release, the focus has been on the effects engine, with the UI parts still pending a rewrite (there will be a lot of really cool stuff coming for the UI part, but more about that later).

Even in alpha, the effects engine can now do so much more, with less code to write. Check out the source code to the cards demo to see what a mere screenful or two of code can do now!

And we’re actually using it in our own live projects, like twistori and freckle time tracking, so it’s pretty damn stable already.

Docs, Docs, Docs

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of maintaining an open source software project, than it’s that Wikis just don’t work (except if you’ve millions of users). It’s too much of a hassle to keep the spam out, not synchronized to the software version cycle, full of comments by well-meaning people that sadly don’t understand open source communities or the spirit behind free software, and numerous other problems.

That’s why scripty2’s documentation is made with PDoc, a system where the documentation is written directly in the source code using specially formatted comments, augmented by interactive examples– why not use the web what it’s good for and look beyond just descriptions? After all, this is a JavaScript effects framework!

As a bonus, there’s up-to-date offline documentation always at your fingertips, so regardless if you’re on a plane or train you can always browse the docs.

A rewrite?!

Yes, it’s all new. The old code was just to crufted and packed with workarounds for browsers no one uses any more, so I’ve decided to start anew and write the effects engine from scratch. With all the knowledge gained from years of using the effects
on various projects, it’s now ready for the future (and it looks bright!).

Also applied are the results of Amy and my research for our ebook on JavaScript performance (please buy it to support scripty2 development, get $5 off the beta release with the “GOSCRIPTY2″ discount code, but hurry as we’re pushing the final version soon!).

As a bonus, the minified and gzipped version of scripty2 is a mere 5k in size. That’s a lot of animation features in a very, very small package.

The scripty2 download comes with minified versions of Prototype and itself.

Here’s the reasoning behind the rewrite:

Start from a clean base: remove cruft and have a smaller codebase.
Features and extensibility: have a more open and flexible code model to allow for some real interesting features (for example, you can swap the whole timing engine with your own).
It’s fun to do something new: maybe the main reason is that I like to hack. So.

Keep in mind that the old code still works great on thousands of sites all across the web, including some of the biggest and most frequented.

Rename to scripty2

I like the script.aculo.us name and will use it in the future too, but it was time to update the name to make it easier to spell it and lead to less confusion about the domain name (others agree). I’d love to hear feedback on the new name!

Development resources

scripty2’s development is proudly hosted on Github, there’s a bugtracker at Lighthouse and last but not least, a developer mailing list on Google Groups.

I’d like to invite everyone that’s interested in joining the development efforts by reporting bugs, submitting patches, maintainig tests and writing documentation and demos (if you come up with a really cool demo, I’d like to include it on the scripty2 demo pages).

Have fun building a more delicious web!

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23 comments »

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23 Comments on “scripty2: for a more delicious web”

1 Scripty2 “for a more delicious web” released | Syntactic sugar said at 3:23 pm on June 26th, 2009:
[...] sure to check out the demo’s here. Read more about the API over here and on this blog Share this [...]
2 Eloy Duran said at 3:32 pm on June 26th, 2009:
Congratulations!!

And yes, I love the gained spell-ability of Scripty2!
3 Rohan said at 4:22 pm on June 26th, 2009:
Awesome.
4 Wallace said at 4:46 pm on June 26th, 2009:
what a beautiful ui, you did a great job Thomas.
5 Delicious JavaScript UI Framework – Scripty2 - Blog Reign said at 4:53 pm on June 26th, 2009:
[...] Thomas Fuchs just today announced that script.aculo.us 2 is out of alpha, and now have a new domain named Scripty2 with complete rewrite code and new features. It’s a powerful and flexible JavaScript framework to help you create next-generation HTML-based visual effects and user-interface. You can check out the awesome cards and puzzle working demo accordingly. [...]
6 rrd said at 8:50 am on June 27th, 2009:
What about upgrading sites useing script.aculo.us? Should we rewrite our code depend on script.aculo.us?
7 Noor said at 4:43 pm on June 27th, 2009:
Deliciously delicious!
8 Fredrik W said at 3:56 pm on June 28th, 2009:
Looking great. I loved script.aculo.us and this looks even sweeter.

However, I’m getting some really bad performance on my macbook in both Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4
9 Thomas Fuchs said at 5:08 pm on June 28th, 2009:
@Fredrik W: hmm, performance is really good for me on those browsers. Can you specify in detail what doesn’t work?
10 @dworni said at 9:43 pm on June 28th, 2009:
Very very great! Also like the new name. Easyer to speak about than the old…
11 Fredrik W said at 11:16 pm on June 28th, 2009:
@Thomas: most animations are have a really low fps. The first animations on scripty2.com are like like 4-5 fps / second, and in firefox 3.5 I can’t even see the smooth transition between the regular and the “hover” state on the buttons .

I have a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo and 4 GB of RAM running on OSX 10.5.7, btw.

Is there any other info I can provide you with?
12 Jeff said at 8:14 am on June 30th, 2009:
This looks great and I think it is about time that we get something fresh from you! *exicted!*

It would be great, though, if you could write up a post about migration between script.aculo.us and scripty2. Will we need to completely rewrite all our old JS to implement the new framework?

Thanks!
13 Scripty2: Lo más nuevo de Prototype y Scriptaculous | Front-End Zen said at 3:52 pm on June 30th, 2009:
[...] se te ocurra en la web frontal y jugar con los elementos DOM. La grandísima noticia que leí en el blog de uno de los autores directos de Scriptaculous, Thomas Fuchs, es que está de camino una nueva [...]
14 Thomas Fuchs said at 8:25 am on July 3rd, 2009:
@Frederik: do you have firebug enabled? try to disable it completely, I’ve had reports that some versions of firebug interfere with the animation performance.
15 Fredrik W said at 10:42 am on July 3rd, 2009:
@Thomas yeah disabling firebug seems to improve the performance by a *lot*. Thanks for the heads up. Hope the author of firebug can fix the crippling performance since it’s a plugin I just can’t live without.
16 Samo said at 11:17 am on July 3rd, 2009:
@Fredrik: I actually switched to Safari for development work completely, since the developers tools are enough for my needs and they aren’t as buggy. Plus, JS console autocompletion is sweet.
17 Fredrik said at 1:47 pm on July 3rd, 2009:
@Samo you actually have auto-completion in Firebug as well, just press tab

My biggest gripe with Safari is that the developer tools are more tedious to access than in Firebug is. Otherwise they are awesome.
18 dude said at 2:26 pm on July 9th, 2009:
Interesting, but unfortunately we’ve all moved to jQuery already and there’s nothing it can’t do better than Prototype… Ah well, maybe I’ll check back in a few years.
19 BLR said at 4:50 pm on August 21st, 2009:
Hi,

very Great!

What ’s a roadmap ?
20 EyeDentify said at 12:51 pm on August 24th, 2009:
@dude

Sadly you seem to miss the point. And you do not speak for everyone. I get the feeling your one of thoose who must be “using” particular framework cause it´s so hyped atm.

But i say , let´s use whatever we like and are used to. Both frameworks have there uniqueness and strong points and weak points aswell.

When i started to look into JS frameworks it seemed a little scary at first. But Prototype got me started with AJAX and then i wanted to do some cool effects and Found Scriptaculous and that just got me going doing really nice stuff i never thought a novice like me could.

And im looking forward to see how scripty2 will evolve.

Good luck in all your projects.
21 Sepelka said at 11:05 am on September 21st, 2009:
Hey!!, ..Great news!!. Script.aculo.us is the perfect couple for Prototype in a Javascript Frameworks wedding

I am glad Thomas keeps working on it. Which is the roadmap??. I am using script.aculo.us in a big project I am in my little free time (my job takes me so much time huuhhh!!) and nights, and it is always good to know in what I am relying and trusting on.

By the way, I posted this great new at my blog (www.freakzion.com)
22 Émile: il nuovo framework di animazione in Javascript di Thomas Fuchs said at 3:20 pm on November 9th, 2009:
[...] in giugno Fuchs annunciato il lancio della release alpha della seconda versione di script.aculo.us: Scripty2, che promette [...]
23 džen said at 6:27 pm on November 11th, 2009:
Thanks for working on such a great project, as well as prototypejs!
I noticed that some effects from script.aculo.us are missing in scripty2 (or am I wrong?). Hope they’ll be added in future

Concerning the new name scripty2: I really liked “script.aculo.us” and it’s kinda sad you changed it. I don’t really understand why people got confused with the name script.aculo.us