Ruby on Rails 3 makes huge use of custom attributes using the data-* from the HTML 5 spec. This is a miniature class that will grab all anchor tags with “data-confirm”, pull that attributes value and stop the default event from firing till after they click “Ok”. If they click “Cancel” nothing happens.

John Resig has great post on these custom attributes. You can find it on his blog here.

Usage

JavaScript

var confirmations = new Confirmootion({
     attribute: 'data-confirm'
});

HTML

Google

Demo and Download

View Online Here
Download Here

Enter Safari Developer Tools

Why did no one tell me about this soon? Everyone needs to know safari comes with a beautiful inspector (just like chromes – webkit) and some handy disabling tools. The thing is they aren’t on by default. To turn them on all you need to do is go to :

Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Show develop menu in menu bar

You get some nice things like User-Agent changing, Snippet Editors, Console Logging, Inspector, and much more.

Goodbye Firefox. It was good while it lasted, but we both know this relationship has been over for a long time.

WTFramework is a dead simple, and well designed way to detect which framework a site is using as well as version. Being primarily a JavaScript developer I was always looking through the source to find which framework a certain site was using. Or to see if the developer had done something particularly cool with my favorite framework MooTools.

It was developed by Oskar Krawczyk and is implemented as a bookmark for any A grade browser. You simply drag it into your bookmarks bar and its installed. You can now use it on any site you visit. The notifications are “Growl” like and are very well designed.

Kudos to Oskar on this one, a dead simple, but time saving tool.

Installation

1. Visit The Site
2. Drag the big red icon into your bookmarks.
3. It is now installed.

Fortunately For Us

Oskar has a public Git Hub repository for this. So if needs be you can change it to suit your needs.

Gallery

Usage

JavaScript

var ajax_request = new Request(
{
	onSuccess: function(responseText, responseXML)
	{
		$('message').set('html', responseText);
	}
});

$$('.ajax').each(function(item){
	var url = item.get('href');
	item.addEvent('click', function(event){
		ajax_request.options.url = url;
		ajax_request.send();
		return false;
	});
});

HTML

Sent Via AJAX
Also Sent Via AJAX
I am filled with the results of our AJAX requests.

Its incredibly simple so no demo for this. The important concept here is that we are using the same request and pulling the href attribute base on a class selection. So changing something from AJAX to regular is as easy as adding or removing the class “ajax”. Pretty cool eh?

MooTools Complaints

Poor Documentation

While its true MooTools is poorly documented compared to other frameworks it is still worth learning and with people like Aaron Newton or David Walsh. The information to learn it is there its just not necessarily on the MooTools site.

Poor Demos

Not much I can say about this but the demo library on MooTools.net was narrow at best. Hopefully they plan to improve this officially in the future. For now though the web community is really pitching in.

No Official Plugin Library

MooTools admits this is a lacking feature in the community of the framework and is setting out to release the Forge with MooTools 2

The Learning Curve

It’s true MooTools is a bit tougher to learn then jQuery but you will be a better programmer for it. It is a very robust framework with a huge potential and plenty of power as it is now.

Backwards Compatibility

A bunch of developers I had converted to MooTools was during 1.11. And when MooTools release 1.2. It broke a lot of their code even things they had copied straight from the MooTools demos. MooTools has learned from this mistake and has promised all future releases will be backwards compatible.

No UI Library

I’ve never really been to hurt about this myself as I feel things like jQuery’s UI library are complete overkill when all you need is progress bar. Either way MooTools is developing a UI library called MooTools ART

Plugins

This is a large misconception. I’ve been hard pressed to find a plugin that someone hasn’t written or translated to MooTools.

The Point

The point of this is not to trash MooTools but to let people know the MooTools team is hard at work fixing a lot of these complaints. I’ve seen jQuery gaining serious ground since its release for its community and small learning curve. I’m a huge fan of MooTools and its object oriented approach. I wanted to clear things up on what MooTools is doing about them. Learn MooTools. It’s an incredible framework.

Let it be known. This class doesn’t have a lot of options but it is fairly dynamic. If people actually use this class I will make it more customizable to the options and not just the class itself.

While this is nothing special and there are plenty of great MooTools graphing systems out there I wanted to build one that animated up and down as well as side to side. I’m sure there are others that do this but I was curious to learn how and dove in. Any advice, tips, improvements, or feedback is greatly appreciated.

Usage

JavaScript

var myGraph = new Grapher('element_id',{
	json : 'json.php',
	total : '100'
});

JSON

The JSON productivity number in this case is based on 100 but this class will support any value. When you initiate your graph you set the total option to calculate the percentage. If you are just comparing to other employees you would take the top sells man and calculate the percentage on a bell curve.

{"graph": [ { "name" : "insert name", "key" : "1", "productivity" : "92" } ] }

CSS

The element container that you pass into the initiating function of this graph will be the total set width for the bars at 100%. Make sure you keep that in mind.

.graph{
	/* This contains everything in a particular object. The name, and the bar.*/
}

.graph_bar{
	/* This is the actual bar the width changes based on the JSON calculated percentage. You need a background image or color to show the bar as well as a height. */
}

.label{
        /* This is just the place the name is inserted. */
}

Demo and Download

Please wait at least 5 seconds to see the graph refresh and animate. These numbers are being dynamically created via PHP into a JSON file.

You can see it in action here.
Download a zip here.

Credits

Big thanks to these guys:

• Gabe Barrientos – Original Idea
• David Walsh – Converting percentage to pixels.

For Example: A company has a page full of images of employees that work for them with links to their Facebook accounts or personal websites. What if I’m not a member of Facebook? What if I prefer following them on Twitter? Or maybe I want all of those options. Well this is where my idea came into play. It works like a right-click menu (sort of). When you click the image a styled menu appears with all of the links available. If you leave the menu fades out and lets you continue browsing as normal. This is completely customizable and style able so please feel free to make it blend with your site.

Usage

JavaScript

var myMultipleLink = new MultipleLinks('element_id',{
	'links' : [
			['url','target','title'],
			['url','target','title'],
			['url','target','title']
	]
});

CSS

.multiple_link{
	/* This is the ul */
}

.multiple_link_item{
	/* This is the actual  li item */
}

Obviously those are injected with the actual anchor tags and those can be selected using standard selectors.

Demo and Download

You can see it in action here.
Download a zip here.

Usage

new Fader(elements);

Parameters and Options

elements: Parameter. This is a CSS selector that will be used to select your items.
fadeTo: Option. This is the decimal value that your item will be faded to. E.G. 0.3
fadeFrom: Option. This is the decimal value that your item will be faded back to. E.G. 1
duration: Option. The speed of the animation in milliseconds. E.G. 250
transition: Option. The transition of the animation. E.G. Fx.Transitions.Sine.easeOut

Demo and Download

You can see it in action here.
Download a zip here.

1. David Walsh already did an excellent MooTools version.
2. Depending on its popularity I might make this into a Wordpress plugin. And since most themes and Wordpress are already using jQuery I figured that was the largest market.
3. Some of his commenters were requesting a jQuery version.

Demo and Download

You can see it in action here.
Download a zip here.

Usage

new ContentSlider(element, sliderTrack, sliderKnob, options);

Parameters

The element parameter needs to be an element that is wrapped within a viewport div. The viewport div’s width will be what is seen. While the element div’s width will be set using Javascript. In order for this to happen your item_list li element needs to have a set width. While the getSize() method of MooTools works dynamically in Firefox it only counts set properties in Safari and Internet Explorer. Dear MooTools Team, if it is possible please fix this.

The sliderTrack parameter is the background of the slider. The track if you will. It will wrap around the sliderKnob.

The sliderKnob parameter is the actual knob of the slider. The knob or controller needs to have a set width or else it won’t work in Safari or IE.

The option for itemList is very important as well. It takes an ID of an element and is absolutely necessary. By default it looks for a ul tag with and id of ‘item_list’.

Important thing about this class is it absolutely requires that your HTML markup is properly set up. While something with this many variants is difficult to write a blueprint for, I tried anyway. Reason for this is I have seen this done a lot, mostly in jQuery. I wanted to show that the same effect could be done in a reusable manner with minimal code. I hope someone out there is able to use this.

jQuery Users

For those of you who are looking to accomplish this effect in jQuery check this out.

Demo and Download

You can see it in action here.
Download a zip here.