Scripty2 - a complete rewrite of script.aculo.us | Hacker News Reader

Scripty2 - a complete rewrite of script.aculo.us

scripty2.com

63 pointscatone20 comments

Every time I see a website like this I think "I really wish I had both the visual design and front-end engineering talents to make something like this happen". I have enough problems getting text to go where I want it to go and while I can read and understand Javascript I just have no clue where I'd even start going about getting, e.g., semi-transparent balloons with rounded corners as a rollover effect. That would probably take me a week to get right, after much copy/pasting.

I suppose that, somewhere out there, there is a front end engineer really wishing he could alter the Big Freaking Enterprise Web App backing his AJAX calls.

Have you looked at jQuery and jQuery tools? they make life easier, by far.

Here's a direct link to the github page, which gives slightly more insight: http://github.com/madrobby/scripty2/tree/master

"scripty2 is a complete rewrite and reimplementation of script.aculo.us, with are modular structure intended to ease the development of highly customized user interface effects and behaviours."

The site has no explanation as to why this was needed.

Well, Thomas Fuchs also created script.aculo.us, so I'm thinking he can rewrite it if he wants. I suppose he and the handful of people he worked with on Scripty2 with thought they could do it better, faster, lighter, whatever if they started over.

(disclaimer: I'm Thomas Fuchs) The reasons are manifold, but the core reasons are as follows:

1) the scriptaculous fx framework was the first serious JS/DOM animation toolkit out there, and by version 1.8.X it was full of old cruft (e.g. hacks for browsers no one uses anymore)

2) I personally needed some more mature effects for my projects (like the pepsicozeitgeist twitter vis amy hoy did with me)

and maybe most important: 3) hacking just for the fun of it :)

Seeing as how you're watching this discussion, I'll throw out an unrelated question:

It seems that jQuery has gained a lot of momentum lately. What are your thoughts on it and prototype? I'm just an 'end user' and try not to do too awfully much with JS, and they all seem like nice work to me... I'm just curious which way the wind's blowing.

I think there are several really great frameworks out there, each one target to specific audiences. I see the current situation as follows:

jQuery: The "I don't have to learn JavaScript" audience, quick+easy to improve certain page interactions. Tons of plugins, but quality and customization options vary wildly.

Prototype: The "I'd like to roll my own components" audience, very Ruby-like, super-easy to do your own specialized UI stuff. Has a learning curve, however.

Dojo, YUI: The "I'm enterprisey and like to edit configuration files" audience. Componentized frameworks, which can do everything (but make tradeoffs for complexity).

And of course there are others, serving various niches.

Your choice depends: Site or app? And do you just want to skin some prefab components, but your site will look like thousands of others, or do you want to roll your own and do more complex stuff and stand out of the crowd?

Don't forget Ext.js: "I hope using this will not make me have to think about UI design. Oooh, shiny late-nineties buttons!" ... :P

This is what I was looking for on the site. I think the site should explain why people would want to use scripty2 versus the original.

Very impressive effects with no much technical requirements. Gooooooooooooood....¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

Note: "alpha release 1" - sounds like fun for some.

Sigh, I just bought a book on scriptaculous! At least I'll get some use out of scriptaculous (and the book) before scripty2 becomes stable.

Yeah, scriptaculous doesn't suddenly stop to work just the alpha of V2 is out! :) Also, most concepts of the old version still apply to the new one.

More information on his official blog post: http://mir.aculo.us/2009/06/26/scripty2-for-a-more-delicious...

Docs sucks.

Prototype's docs are great, btw, but they're going trash them, unfortunately.

How do the docs suck?

They're pretty complete, and they come with animated graphs/examples for every single easing function. Where do you find better docs than that?

http://scripty2.com/doc/scripty2%20fx/s2/fx/transitions.html...

256K (zipped) download, says it all.

Ahm, that's the size with the offline documentation and all. The library itself is about 5k minified and gzipped, plus 35k or so for Prototype.

Thanks for proving me wrong. It was the gripes I always had with Prototype and Scriptaculous, how cool that they finally addressed that.

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