Category: Development
Nov 72007
Pseudo-custom events in Prototype 1.6
I’m calling these pseudo-custom events because they serve the same purpose as standard browser events: they report on certain occurrences in the UI. Here we’re using custom events to act as uniform façades to inconsistently-implemented events. Together we’ll write some code to generate mouse:wheel events. At the end of this article, you’ll know enough to be able to write code to generate mouse:enter and mouse:leave events document-wide. 1
Aug 72007
The new version of iPhoto, announced not too long ago, features Web Gallery, a way to export your photo library to a .Mac web share. The sample gallery confirms that these Ajax-heavy galleries use Prototype and Scriptaculous under the hood. It could not make me happier that Apple seem to have adopted the two libraries company-wide.
Jul 82007
In case you’re not tired of iPhone musings: as I was playing with the two-finger zooming in Safari, I remembered Dave Hyatt’s April 2006 blog post on high-DPI web sites. Eerily prescient in hindsight, he argues that web developers should make sure their images can scale — in anticipation of high-res displays (like, say, 160 dpi) and browsers that let the user zoom in (like, say, Safari). The timing of the post makes me wonder just what Hyatt knew and when he knew it.
(4)Jul 12007
Joe Hewitt: Firebug for iPhone. Oh, hell yes. Joe: I owe you a keg of beer if we’re ever in the same place at the same time.
Jun 32007
Belated note: in case you missed my Refresh Austin talk about Prototype/Scriptaculous, you can experience the slides without having to listen to my stammering commentary.
(6)May 12007
Prototype 1.5.1 released! If you’re still running 1.5.0, you shouldn’t be. The $$ optimization alone is worth the upgrade.
Apr 162007
Mark Pilgrim deconstructs the recent comments DHH made about Twitter. Yes, DHH is arrogant, but he’s also correct. (Know anyone like that, Mark?)
(5)Apr 42007
Capabilities vs. Quirks: a look at browser sniffing
Two recent articles argue for an approach to writing JavaScript that relies on the individual capabilities and quirks of a browser, rather than one that relies on sniffing as a first option. This is a noble idea and one we’ve started to integrate into Prototype over the last six months. But, like everything else involving DOM scripting, it’s complicated.
Mar 272007
Here’s something I worked on for a few hours just to amuse myself. I’d develop it further, but I can’t see how this has any sort of practical use (also note the caveats at the top of the script). So here it is: a web page desaturator. Takes all colors in linked stylesheets and turns them into grayscale versions. Here’s a demo using a page from the Prototype site. Firefox only.
(4)Mar 92007
Prototype 1.5.1, release candidate 1. This one contains my complete $$ overhaul, so if you query by CSS selector at all then you need to download this right now. Once 1.5.1 gets a final release (and when I’m once again sober) I’ll write a lot more about this.
