MooTools

Anyone that follows any MooTools Core Developer or Contributor on Twitter may have seen us talking about a ‘hackathon’. Last weekend a large number of the dev team met up in London to work on various parts of the framework. We thought we’d share with you what we got up to, some pictures, and give you a quick update on what to expect over the coming months.

Significant progress was made on MooTools 2.0. Additionally, we will be releasing a 1.3 version shortly, which will include some of the awesome stuff from MooTools 2.0, so you can get your hands on it a bit quicker.

MooTools ART also was given some love. One sticking point has been that Internet Explorer does not support the <canvas> tag but now thanks to Simo Kinnunen (sorccu) we have a VML adapter so we can push on with this development. We can now combine this with the work Aaron Newton has done with Cloudera and we should be able to launch a beta in the coming months. We’re really excited by ART and hope you are too.

Another way we want to improve the MooTools experience is by adding demos to the documentation, particularly for some of the UI components in More. The Mootorial has always been a fantastic resource and thanks to Piotr Zalewa (zalun) and the awesome MooShell we are now beginning to prepare embedded examples in our documentation. We’re writing some great snippets and demos and you can expect to see these appearing on our documentation pages over the coming weeks. We really love MooShell and the team have some great improvements to this valuable tool almost ready, including user accounts and versioning. Keep your ears peeled for a blog post with more details soon!

Next year we hope we can organize similar meet-ups that you, the users, can attend. We certainly intend to hold one in London in the spring, and are discussing other venues across the world. We’re really excited by the prospect of being able to meet people face-to-face and hope that some talks and workshops are something that the community want.

We also want to give a big thank-you to Abacus e-Media for hosting the event. Here are some pictures of the dev team at work:

• http://www.nathanquerido.com/
• http://picasaweb.google.com/christoph.pojer/LondonHackathon
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/zalun/sets/72157622853461134/show/

Look forward to an exciting announcement about the Forge which is currently in private beta — your treasure trove of MooTools plugins will be here in time for Christmas.

You’ve probably noticed a flurry of MooTools 1.2 updates recently, including updates to both MooTools Core and More. We’re happy to give them to you and hope you continue to upgrade your existing MooTools 1.2.x builds. We would like to bring to you attention an upgrade to the MooTools 1.1.2 build and MooTools 1.2.4 build which should be considered a mandatory upgrade for developers still using MooTools 1.1 and MooTools < 1.2.4.

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The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins and tutorials that have been released recently.

MooTools Dependencies Checker

The MooTools Dependency Checker by Arian Stolwijk parses you javascript files to determine which MooTools classes you need to make the file’s javascript code work. Arian’s dependency checker is a great tool for those looking to implement a MooTools plugin or use minified code.

http://www.aryweb.nl/projects/mooDeps/

MooTools InputMask

InputMask is a useful MooTools plugin by Core Developer Christoph Pojer. InputMask allows you to set a template or “mask” for which a string should be formatted like. This plugin is great for date, time, or phone number formatting.

http://cpojer.net/blog/InputMask_Class_for_MooTools

MooTools DatePicker

DatePicker is a great plugin by MonkeyPhysics. DatePicker allows you to provide your users with a calendar to choose dates from instead of making users type in the date. DatePicker is very customizable and allows for easy styling/theming.

http://www.monkeyphysics.com/mootools/script/2/datepicker

MooModernizr

MooModernizr tests the browser’s CSS capabilities — specifically CSS3 feature detection. MooModernizr extends MooTools’ Browser.Features object. MooModernizr is a port of the original Modernizr.

http://www.aryweb.nl/voorbeelden/mooModernizr/

Speed Up Your Moo Part 1: Selectors

MooTools Core Developer Christoph Pojer shares methods for speeding up your applications through the use of optimized CSS selectors. Consider this article a must-read if you use Selectors frequently in your large web applications.

http://cpojer.net/blog/Speed_Up_Your_Moo_Part_1_Selectors

JSCocoaLoader

JSCocoaLoader allows you to develop Espresso.app code editor extensions using MooTools and JSCocoa. JSCocoaLoader’s utility classes are all powered by Mootools, and as a happy side effect your Javascripts can easily take advantage of Mootools many improvements over vanilla Javascript either by requiring a JSCocoaLoader utility class, or by requiring Mootools directly.

http://wiki.github.com/onecrayon/JSCocoaLoader-sugar/mootools-server

Keep Up the Good Work!

These are just a few of the great MooTools plugins floating around the MooTools community recently. Keep up the good work and we look forward to featuring your future plugins in upcoming posts!

The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins and tutorials that have been released recently.

MooEditable

MooEditable is a WYSIWYG editor created by Lim Chee Aun (cheeaun). MooEditable features the usual bold, italic, strikethrough, and underline controls as well as the ability to add images, links, and lists.

http://cheeaun.github.com/mooeditable/

MooTools Intellisense

The problem: Visual Studio 2008 doesn’t provide Intellisense for MooTools. The solution: Darren Waddell (fakedarren). Darren has created Intellisense for our favorite javascript framework. Grab this package to increase your productivity within Visual Studio!

http://code.google.com/p/mootoolsintellisense/

PageZoom

Lim Chee Aun (cheeaun) also blessed the MooTools community with PageZoom, a flexible zooming widget that allows you to zoom in on any element within the page. The plugin is especially valuable for zooming in on photos.

http://cheeaun.github.com/pagezoom/

Notification Message Dispatch for MooTools

Tobias Svensson has created NotificationCenter, a simple implementation of a notification center for MooTools which is heavily inspired by NSNotificationCenter from Apple’s Cocoa framework.

http://return42.blogspot.com/2009/07/notification-message-dispatch-for.html

PyCow

As the description says: PyCow translates Python code to JavaScript code with the “MooTools way of class declaration”. Examples of PyCow’s mindblowing functionality can be seen at the PygoWave Server Google Code site.

http://code.google.com/p/pygowave-server/wiki/PythonToJavaScriptTranslator

Up the Moo Herd: MooTools Tips and Tricks

MooTools contributor Mark Obcena (Keeto) examines and explains the finer points of the MooTools Core. His articles are detailed, accurate, and must-reads for MooTools developers. Three posts have been published thus far: The DOM Fetcher Functions, Natives, Generics and Extending the Language, Classes: Constructors, Singletons and Privates.

Why You Shouldn’t Return False in MooTools Event Handlers

MooTools Core Developer Sebastian Markbåge explains why returning false in event handlers can cause you problems. Check out Sebastian’s tutorial to learn more about event bubbling and the proper way of handling events.

http://blog.calyptus.eu/seb/2009/07/why-you-shouldnt-return-false-in-mootools-event-handlers/

Keep Up the Good Work!

These are just a few of the great MooTools plugins floating around the MooTools community recently. Keep up the good work and we look forward to featuring your future plugins in upcoming posts!

The foundation of every great open source project is its community. The MooTools Team creates the base framework code but it’s all of you that take the framework and build outstanding plugins. Here are some great plugins that have been released recently.

Slideshow 2

Slideshow 2 by Aeron Glemann is an outstanding photo / slideshow plugin that offers a plethora of options and features — many more than you’d find with the average slideshow or lightbox. Slideshow 2 features Robert Penner easing transitions, photo delays, duration settings, the ability to make Slideshow 2 a lightbox, and an on-photo control panel.

http://www.electricprism.com/aeron/slideshow/

MooTools FileManager

Created by MooTools Core Developer Christoph Pojer, MooTools FileManager is a MooTools-driven file manager that allows for drag and drop file management, Ajax directory loading, file content previews, and much more.

http://cpojer.net/blog/MooTools_based_FileManager

Moousture

Moousture is a MooTools Mouse Gesture library created by Zohaib Sibt-e-Hassan. Moousture allows you to create multiple geture patterns and assign them to any number of elements. http://neofreeman.freepgs.com/Moousture/

Fancy Upload 3

Fancy Upload 3 is the newest iteration of Harlad Kirschner’s popular Flash/MooTools upload tool. Fancy Upload 3 features file-specific options, an additional IFrame-based uploader, Flash 9 and 10 compatibility, and the same base features that made Fancy Upload a must-have plugin.

http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/

MooTools.Mode For Coda

If you spend hours with MooTools and the Coda text editor, you’ll love the MooTools.Mode Syntax Mode add-in. This package created by José Prado is free and easy to install.

http://pradador.com/code/coda/moomode.html

Keep Up the Good Work!

These are just a few of the great MooTools plugins floating around the MooTools community recently. Keep up the good work and we look forward to featuring your future plugins in upcoming posts!