The JavaScript Motion Tween library was based on the ActionScript tweening library... it's really nice; allows for easing, color morphing, opacity, text tweening...

At first sight, it's an amazing class. I still have to test it for performance... anyways, check out all these examples... they did a great job.

I've been using Flash/SWFObject lately for all my Flash project (a lot!)... SWFObject is an open source JavaScript to embed swfs in html pages... it helps with SEO because it overwrite a standard xhtml DIV, includes option for express install, and most importantly, gets around the new Microsoft facacta. It even loads your swfs when viewing locally in IE, where you usually would get an Active X Alert...

The new release includes the following small changes:

   1.  [updated] SWFObject.write() now returns true or false depending on whether the SWF content was written to the page or not (true if it is, false if it is not)
   2. [changed] The ‘com’ namespace has been removed, now everything lives in the ‘deconcept’ namespace only, instead of ‘com.deconcept’ namespace
   3. [updated] I made a couple of very small changes to get rid of warnings in the mozilla script debugger when the debugger was in strict mode
   4. added ‘the mark of the web’ to the examples pages to (hopefully) prevent the ActiveX bar from appearing at the top of the page when viewing these files locally in IE on Windows.
   5. [changed] And last, but certainly not least: FlashObject is now known as SWFObject because of legal reasons

So everyone that have met me, knows that JavaScript is less than pleasant :) but anything that we can do to make it suck less is welcome ... DOM is inhuman ... there's a reason why we write html pages using tags and not DOM ... but anyways, sometimes, especially when you're writing AJAX applications you may need to use some JS and DOM, and the DOM builder may come handy.

so I came across this link maybe a year ago, sIFR is rich typography for html pages... the idea is to write your regular xhtml compatible code and then run a JavaScript that will replace it with SWFs using nicer fonts is JS and Flash Player are available. It's a nice idea and I'm planning to play with it ... but how many of you are using it? Can you post links to check them out?

I'd like to integrate this with a CMS system ... so I'll write dynamic content pages with a bunch of dynamic classes, set the iSFR using a small back end admin, and then have it replace the headers of the entire site... doable? I hope so, cuz it looks really good.

I noticed that the install comes with two swfs files... why two? sorry, I haven't even read instructions (as a good tech guy), so I'm assuming it will be fully dynamic and I won't have to open Flash, ever. I should be able to embed a bunch of fonts in the flash files and just specify which one I want to use ... anyways, I'll post my experience using it in a few days... I just wanted to get some comments here.

Script.aculo.us is a low level dhtml effects library, mainly used by the Rails framework. Version 1.6 was just released, and among the main changes is depends now on Prototype 1.5, instead of 1.4.

A recent message in the ajaxCFC group asked about the DRWUtil.addRows() function; the truth is that I had never used it. I include the utils library because there are other elements that I find useful, but I had never given the addRows a try.

Enough said, since I include the file, I guess I need to support the built-in functionality, but the addRows out-of-the-box was accepting arrays and objects. I serialize the ColdFusion queries into a more complex object which was not recognized by the addRows function, so I modified it to add wddx support. When you pass a wddx object to addRows it will now automatically populate your table, even without the need to cell functions (like the array or object methods).

You can find an example here, and download the latest release (0.63) with the code changes, example, and updated documentation from the projects page.

I'd like to thank again Joe Walker for his great effort in putting DRW together, and I will email him the changes to add wddx support for his next release.

To illustrate the idea of my previous post, I just added an example that stores the JavaScript in the server side and leaves only core connectivity and UI functionality in the client side.

It uses a simple DHTML popup windows library and sends the instruction along with the content back to the callback function, which simply executes the server’s request.

This example is not a full application and is far from perfect. It has no validations, no even listeners, or any advanced functionality. It is only meant to show how to control your JavaScript code in the server instead of the client.

For those of you following script.aculo.us, there’s a new version out with a bunch of bug fixes and a couple of new features added, including dynamic loading of components which allows for optimizing and fine tuning your pages according to your needs… this will help a little with loading times for dial-up users.

Yahoo put up a page dedicated to JavaScript / AJAX developers: JavaScript™ Developer Center... it focuses on AJAX, XMLHttpRequest, JSON, Web Services, and some other gadgets. It is a little bias of course, it only focuses and includes in tools you need to integrate with Yahoo's AJAX API's, but it's still a nice resource with plenty of examples to expand your mind.

I’m pleased to inform that the second part of my AJAX article was release yesterday. Check is out at

http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/read/154244.htm

Comments are welcomed.

Cheers