Some interesting JavaScript projects…
Some nice (mostly) JavaScript projects that I have been using recently that have impressed me (in no particular order):
DD_belatedPNG – Finally, someone thinking out of the box on the issue of ‘fixing’ 24-bit PNGs in IE6, and the result is by far and away the best solution going. So much less resource intensive than the other offerings, has full background-position and background-repeat support and is super-easy to implement. I just wish this had been around before!
Bluff – really nice JavaScript port of Ruby’s Gruff graphing library. Straightforward to implement and gives nice looking results.
SWFUpload – JavaScript/Flash mulitple file uploader, which can be set up to give visual feedback on the progress of uploads, can cancel queued uploads and more. A bit of a learning curve if you want to customise it away from the provided demos, but well worth the effort. This sort of functionality should be built into browsers by default.
Typeface.js – another fresh take on a problem, this time the issue of cross-browser font embedding. Clever stuff, and has real potential to knock sIFR off it’s throne.
Cufon is everything Typeface.js should have been, and more. Fantastic.
SoundManager2 – Another JavaScript/Flash hybrid, this time providing a simple API to play MP3s using only JavaScript calls. Useful if you need to do this sort of thing at all.
That’s it for now… It’s certainly quite interesting to see the number of JavaScript plus Flash/canvas/VML etc solutions cropping up that are providing unique ways of addressing age-old problems. Many thanks to all those working on the above projects for all your hard work!