CSS Type Set is an online application created to assist beginner CSS developers with the task of font styling. It features an AJAX-powered interface that automagically updates the preview pane in real time. The resulting CSS syntax can then be copied and pasted into a CSS file. Give it a try!
GlassBox is a JavaScript library that allows you to add Windows Vista-like transparent effects on your website. It runs on top of the the Prototype and Script.aculo.us library and comes complete with an API documentation and tons of examples. It is released under the MIT license.
I’ve seen at least three submissions over here at CSS Vault of sites that use the “Step Carousel” effect. I did not even know what it was called until I saw this article, which outlines the steps needed to accomplish the effect using the jQuery library.
The result looks very nice and the animation is very smooth. The only issue is that this tutorial takes so many steps and makes use of inline JavaScript, though I suppose they can easily be converted to DOM-based JQuery statements, separating the presentation layer from the backend.
Stumbled into this article which presents alternative Mootools code for styling scrollbars.
Personally though I prefer jScrollPane, but that’s because I’m a JQuery user.
iBegin has just released iBox, a “lightweight, fast, and flexible” lightbox script.
It supports the following content types:
Images
It supports image overlaying and will automatically scale down the window if the browser’s viewpane is too small.
Documents
Displays linked documents in a similar fashion as Images.
Inline Containers
iBox can also display containers (e.g. hidden DIVs) within the same page.
YouTube Videos (Flash Video)
iBox’s architecture supports plugins. Images, Documents, and Inline Containers are all plugins, and YouTube Videos is provided as an example for developers to make their own plugins.
One notable aspect of iBox is its support for non-JavaScript capable browsers. It supports a target attribute which specifies the target document to be loaded, so that you can specify a different value for the HREF attribute. Very nifty.
Links:
I have long shunned ASP.Net for the ugly and ancient HTML code that it uses for rendering controls. Enter the CSS Friendly Control Adapters kit (CFCA?) for ASP.Net 2.0, which “… provides pre-built control adapters that you can easily use to generate CSS-friendly markup from some of the more commonly used ASP.NET controls …”
Started late 2006 as a Microsoft project, it was released *gasp* open-source and required a lot of extra steps to incorporate into a project. Frustrated by this, an independent developer, Brian DeMarzo, repackaged the code so that it compiled into a single DLL, thus the present form of CFCA.
Although the website pretty much lacks updates, the project is still alive, with the latest release dated Jan 25.
You may download the code here.
jQuery happens to be my favorite JavaScript framework, so I was very happy when Noupe came up with a list of 50+ Amazing Jquery Examples. The article has “Part 1″ attached to it so expect to see more. The list ranges from useful to awesome to just cool, such as the following:
Shadowbox is a lightbox-style multimedia viewer inspired by LightWindow. This includes images, Flash videos, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, and even webpages.
From the website:
Shadowbox is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript. Using Shadowbox, website authors can display pictures and movies in all major browsers without navigating away from the linking page.
Aside from support for Firefox 1.5+, Safari 2+ and IE 6+, it comes with adapters for most widely adapted JavaScript frameworks, allowing for easy integration and optimized code execution.
Lightview is an AJAX image viewer similar to the ever so famous Lightbox JS. It features very nice, PNG-less, customizable rounded corners, a slideshow mode, pulsing captions, and a very clean and smooth blackout animation and slideshow transition.
One thing that I really like about Lightview is that the image remains stationary when scrolling unlike in Lightbox where the image scrolls with the content.
Still, the script was implemented on Scriptaculous and Prototype, which, given the size of these things may not be the way to go for sites optimized for speed. For those looking for a lighter lightbox alternative, Slimbox may be the better choice.
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