Pluralink is a tiny JavaScript library for displaying multiple links inside one link.

Rather than mentioning all your links one-by-one, a major link will be displaying all the options when clicked.

Usage is pretty simple:

<a href="http://firstlink.com/||http://secondlink.org/" title="First link description||Second link description">Some pluralink</a>

is all to do after inserting the JS file into our webpages.

The cons are:

• not unobtrusive (if the JS is off, the links won't be working)
• no RSS support (Pluralink team says "they are working on it")

The library also comes as a Wordpress plugin for easier integration.

It is very usual that a website presenting a list of images which is "longer in size than the viewport of our monitors" & we simply need to scroll to view the rest. In such cases, in order to make the websites load much faster, we can use lazy loading.

What is lazy loading?

It is a design pattern that means; not-loading a content until it is needed. Basically, it is the opposite of "preloading".

The technique is mostly used in websites that have a long list of images & rather than loading all the images at once, we see them load when we try to view them by scrolling down.

How the logic works?

Using JavaScript, it is possible to detect the following:

• the coordinates of the part of the page (x-y) we’re viewing
• the coordinates of a specific element
• the width-height of the viewport

Having these inputs, we can easily understand if a given element is in the viewport or not. And, after it becomes "in", we can make a JavaScript call to load the content.

Here are ready-to-use resources for implementing lazy loading:

Read the rest of this entry »

SharpPieces is a set of open source & free ASP.NET controls for improving the usability of the applications easily.

Currently there are 8 components:

• ExtendedDropDownList
• LiveGrid
• FancyUpload
• ImageCheckBox
• Rating
• DynamicImage
• CaptchaImage
• GradientButton

They are all are ready with native support for the latest framework (ASP.NET 3.5) and IDE (Visual Studio 2008).

Bumpbox is another Lightbox clone which offers a very easy usage & has some advantages over others.

There is no need to mention the media type to be displayed as it detects them automatically & as a nice feature, Bumpbox can display PDF files besides FLV, SWF, images or HTML content.

It is built with MooTools & displays the modal box with a nice bump effect.

The script works for both local & remote files. And, to show FLV files, it uses Flowplayer media player.

qWikiOffice is an open source project for creating desktop-like web interfaces.

With the power of Ext JS Library (& PHP), it offers a very similar usage to desktops with:

• windows
• start menu
• dialog boxes
• taskbar & more..

Gritter is a jQuery plugin for creating Growl-like notifications with ease.

The notification bubbles created looks very similar to the ones in Mac OS X & they can be styled easily if wanted.

It is possible to create multiple notifications where each of them can be controlled with their unique IDs.

They can be set to disappear automatically after x seconds or stay until removed manually with the "sticky" option.

You can also mention the speed of the fade effect used while the notifications appear/disappear.

TypeSelect is a JavaScript-based solution for using selectable custom fonts on the web.

It combines the power of typeface.js, jQuery, the canvas, toDataURL, CSS background properties & real overlayed text to accomplish this feature.

TypeSelect is very easy to understand & implement. It is totally controlled via CSS & no server-side files are required.

It has support for double/triple-click selections, UTF-8 characters & gracefully degrades in IE6.

On the other hand, currently, it has some limitations like unselectable text in IE, not being able to use :hover or line breaks & few more.

MyTableGrid is a JavaScript-powered datagrid control, built with Prototype, for displaying data in an easy-to-browse & flexible way.

It offers an Ajaxed interface with pretty fast paging & data-sorting.

Columns can be resized & any columns can be easily removed for a better view of data.

MyTableGrid allows browsing via keyboard (with the help of KeyTable library).

It supports instant editing of cells & complete skinning via CSS.

jQuery Impromptu, a jQuery pugin, is offering a chic replacement for alert, prompt, and confirm dialogs.

Although it is not an alternative for modal windows, it can display any HTML content, supports sequential messages & more.

The plugin comes with a bunch of options for maximum customization like:

• loaded, callback & submit functions to step in every point
• changing prompt & overlay speeds
• using different animations on prompt windows 6 more

The look/feel of the message boxes can be updated easily via CSS & various examples are provided on theming.

jQuery Superbox! is a jQuery plugin for creating easily customizable modal windows (lightbox-like).

It is an accessible script, uses the rel attribute of an element for triggering & href attribute is used for defining the source to be displayed.

To change the look & feel, it is enough to play with the CSS as no styles are set by default.

It can display any type of content as every HTML content can be presented. But by default, images (single or gallery mode), text content & iframes are supported

Dimensions of the modal window can be choosen to resize automatically according to the content or width & height can be defined for a standard size.