jQuery has built-in animations & effects. But when it comes to switching between 2 objects, you may need to code a little more for a flawless display.

ImageSwitch is an easy to use jQuery plugin for switching between images using effects.

The plugin supports various effects like fade in/out, fly in/out, flip in/out, scroll in/out, single door & double door.

And, the code of the plugin is well-commented which makes it easier to improve it.

Tip: Besides the Groject.ImageSwitch.js, check this .js file too to better findout how the plugin works.

Parallax effects give a feel of depth & increase the visuality so much.

mParallax is a MooTools implementation of the popular jQuery plugin: jParallax (see WRD post).

It eases creating parallax effects with offering various customization options.

There are nice examples presented like this & this.

Sexy Curls jQuery plugin is an open source solution for creating a page curl feature with ease.

It uses the jQuery UI & its resizable package.

It provides settings to customize the look & usage:

• side: for defining which direction the curl effect will occur
• turnImage: image used to create the effect
• max. height, starting height & starting width

The smoothness of the curl effect is very impressive.

There is also another jQuery plugin named Page Peel which also accomplishes a similar result, but uses a Flash file.

$fx() is a JavaScript animation library which is only 3.7kb.

Within a timeline, any CSS property can be altered. And also:

• you can combine effects
• group them to the chains and run parallel
• set different callbacks what gives you even more flexibility.

$fx() is definitely not an alternative to other well-known JavaScript frameworks. On the other hand it does its job (animation) good & if that’s what you need, then it saves you from loading bigger sizes of JS files.

Have a look at the examples.

Pixastic is an open source JavaScript image processing library.

It uses HTML5 Canvas element that enables accessing to raw pixel data.

Supported effects are:

• desaturation/greyscale
• invert
• flipping
• brightness/contrast adjustment
• hue/saturation
• emboss
• blur & more

There is an image editor built with it & the library is well-documented.

DD_roundies is another rounded corners solution that is very easy to implement & cross-browser compliant.

This rounded corners script doesn’t use any images, works in IE6 without AlphaImageLoader & lightweight (3.62kb compressed).

Radius of the corners are not fixed & can be defined.

As the major problem for rounded corners lies beneath IE, this rounded corners script uses VML (inspired from Jonathan Snook’s solution). A possible future problem is IE8 -currently- does not support VML.

Seadragon is a technology, by Microsoft, for deeply zooming images of any size. It provides almost perfect transitions independent from the sizes of the images.

Seadragon Ajax is an interface for using/embedding this technology to any website.

Seadragon can be used in 2 ways:

• By uploading images to Photozoom & use Embed Builder
• Compose a deep zoom image with Deep Zoom Composer & upload the images to your website

Developers can customize viewers & controls with the Seadragon Ajax Library. It is also available at the Silverlight platform.

jQuery Corners is a jQuery plugin for creating nice-looking, anti-aliased rounded corners without using any images.

The plugin is unobtrusive & works well with all major browsers including iPhone.

The corners to be rounded & the radius of the corners can be easily set.

And, a great feature is the ability to round form buttons.

Easy Reflections, a PHP script that enables you to create reflections (Web 2.0 look) of any image.

Supported image types are GIF, JPG & PNG.

There is a built-in caching mechanism to prevent creating same images again & again.

And, fade levels used can be configured.

The script works with both PHP4 & PHP5 and requires GD extension 2.0.1+ installed.

Jumpeye Components is giving away 3 FlashEff Premium Unlimited Licenses ($249 value/each) to WebResourcesDepot readers.

Details of the giveaway & how to join it can be found below the post.

What is FlashEff?

FlashEff is a Flash CS3 (and Flash CS4 ready) AS3 component for easing the animation process & creating stunning animations.

Tip: To see the beauty of the effects, click here to go to the effects gallery.

It is also a collection of over 100 patterns (and growing) that enable cool animations and interactive actions on visual objects and texts. FlashEff can be used/customized from both, the visual interface and API.

The visual interface, FlashEff Panel, is a powerful online utility that loads inside your Flash CS3 IDE and configures everything for the FlashEff component.

Using FlashEff, you can:

• Create amazing animations with images, movieclips or text.
• Create animated buttons without coding.
• Perform commands and trigger actions on any event such as rollOver, press or doubleClik.
• Add static or animated fitlers to any visual object within Flash CS3.
• Most of the patterns can be combined to create complex animated objects.

FlashEff Pattern Creation Contest With $2500 Worth Prize!

Do you have advanced AS3 skills? Then create a pattern for FlashEff, submit it until 31 October 2008 & get the chance to be one of the winners who will earn $2500 worth prize.

Click here to see the details of the Pattern Creation Contest.

How To Win The Free Licenses?

Simply comment to this post & that’s all.

Winners will be selected randomly from commenters 1 week later (29 September 2008 - Thursday) with the SQL query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=533 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all : ).