The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular open source JavaScript libraries. By using the Google AJAX API Loader’s google.load() method, your application has high speed, globaly available access to a growing list of the most popular JavaScript open source libraries including:

• jQuery
• prototype
• script.aculo.us
• MooTools
• dojo

Really nice parsing of things like

today           tomorrow    July 2008
next friday     last April  2004.08.07
6/4/2005        8:15 PM     22:30:45
+5years

(Via .)

Server Switcher is a navigational help tool for web developers. It allows you to easily switch between sites on your development and live servers, so that you can immediately see the differences…

Great tool for developing sites

(Via Koke.)

New versions of the JavaScript libraries that ship with Rails, Prototype 1.6.0 and script.aculo.us 1.8.0, have been released. You can find out about the numerous changes on the Prototype blog and on mir.aculo.us. If you’re running Edge Rails, just svn up and run rake rails:update:javascripts to install the latest versions into your application automatically.

Also of note: Christophe Porteneuve’s Prototype & script.aculo.us book is now out of beta and available for purchase from the Pragmatic Programmers. It’s up-to-date with all of the new features in both libraries, so be sure to check it out if you’re using Prototype and script.aculo.us in your applications.

(Via Riding Rails.)

p>PopBox! – A Javascript Image Magnifier: “

WebAppers has a nice post about a JavaScript image magnifier called PopBox!:

<blockquote><p>PopBox is an image magnification javascript solution for dynamically moving and resizing images on your web page. Javascript? Yes - I know it’s nothing new and that you’ve been able to move and resize things in Javascript for years, but only now is there a prepackaged solution that makes it as easy as 3 lines of HTML without knowing a lick about positioning!</p></blockquote>

nice simple for zooming up a little image to big,

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

p>New UI library for Prototype in the works: “

Sébastien Gruhier, author of the VERY cool Prototype Window class has started a new initiative to build a complimentary UI library for Prototype. Accompanied by Samuel Lebeau, Juriy Zaytsev and Vincent Le Moign, the team aims to build easy to implement UI components that will enhance the user experience in web applications.

<blockquote><p>At the beginning of the project, it was only a full rewrite of Prototype Window but it became quickly a UI library based on <a href="http://prototypejs.org/">Prototype 1.6</a> and <a href="http://script.aculo.us/">script.aculo.us 1.8</a> to include all my previous components like <a href="http://prototype-carousel.xilinus.com/">Prototype Carousel</a> ….</p></blockquote>
<p>The current version is still in early stages but already provides some nice components:</p>
<ul>
<li>window
<ul>
<li>skinnable</li>
<li>shadowing system independent from window and skinnable</li>
<li>div based</li>
<li>resizable from all borders and corners</li>
<li>custom buttons</li>
<li>Dialogs (like it’s done in <span class="caps">PWC</span>) are not yet implemented but will be done soon</li>
</ul>

• carousel: only HTML content (no Ajax content)
• dock (experimental)
• shadow: a simple class to add shadow on any element with a absolute position.

Full details of the project can be found on Sébastien’s blog.

This looks like a great start for those of us who like to use stuff that just works

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Michel Fortin has created special versions of Safari that allow you to run them all on the same machine. This allows you to test your Ajax application in a variety of versions.

There are similar things for explorer and firefox so this is a great addition to the developers tool box…

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Greg Murray has put the stake in the ground and released jMaki 1.0. The release comes with “bundles” for PHP and Java which you can choose on the download area.

Included in the bundles:

• The core jMaki framework.
• Sample applications.
• Ant task for creating applications and adding widgets and necessary dependencies to those applications.
• All the scripts and widget libraries.

To see more, check out the jMaki Samples.

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

…. would you hold it against Aaron Gustafson? Aaron has written about “laying out images consistently within a design is difficult; especially when you hand the keys over to someone else to fill in the content.”

ACtually a nice tech to get visual control over images and associated metadata in a nice controlled, consistent way

(Via Ajaxian Blog.)

Styling form controls has always been limited with HTML and CSS. Not anymore. FancyForm provides the solution by letting you style checkboxes and radio buttons as you would any other elements, while degrading gracefully on older and non-graphical browsers.

Here’s an example of what’s possible with the script:

Click through to see the demo (worked in most of the browsers I tried, safari, camino, firefox…

(Via Vacuous Virtuoso.)