Prototype Update, Kaffeine, js-signals, Zepto, rain.js
Prototype 1.7
Prototype 1.7 is out, and activity on 1.7.0.1 has begun already. This is the version of Prototype that adds Sizzle, $().on, Element.Layout, and ES5 compliance.
Kaffeine
Kaffeine (License) by Jonah Fox progressively enhances JavaScript while remaining backwards compatible. The documentation has examples of the bang syntax, @ alias for this, implicit brackets and more.
That means code that looks like this:
Edge::add = (nick, name, complete, opts) {
opts ||= {}
@client.select 15
user = User.find! {id: nick}
puzzle = Puzzle.find! {name: name}
err, data = client.set! "u:#{user}:p:#{puzzle}"
complete()
}
Will turn into this:
Edge.prototype.add = function(nick, name, complete, opts) {
opts = opts || {}
this.client.select(15)
User.find({id: nick}, function(user) {
Puzzle.find({name: name}, function(puzzle) {
client.set(("u:" + (user) + ":p:" + (puzzle)), function(err, data) {
return complete()
})
})
})
}
The author has outlined his philosophy for the project:
- Progressive enchancement
- Concentrate on small useful feature set
- Hackable, modular, extendable and testable
- Whitespace is not significant
In case you’re wondering, the parser tokenizes input and eval’s the result.
js-signals
js-signals (MIT License) by Miller Medeiros is an event/messaging system for JavaScript:
A Signal is similar to an Event Emitter/Dispatcher or a Pub/Sub system, the main difference is that each event type has it’s own controller and doesn’t rely on strings to broadcast/subscribe to events. To know more about the differences and advantages/disadvantages of each approach check the Wiki page.
One of the claimed advantages of this project is to favor composition over inheritance. This idea appeals to me and the examples make it seem simple enough to get started with fairly quickly (should you need a pub/sub-like messaging system for your next project).
Zepto 0.2
Zepto 0.2 by Thomas Fuchs is out. This version adds support for Backbone.js which seems like a good fit for the WebKit iOS-app style projects people are building with it.
Rain.js
Rain.js (MIT License) by Julio Cesar Ody generates a great rain effect, there’s a demo here. As you might have noticed I’m a sucker for pretty graphical tricks. If you’ve got any scene-style JavaScript hacks please send them in!
