Themes, UI Controls, and the Future of Prototype/Scriptaculous

[shellster]

As a veteran PrototypeJS and Scriptaculous user, I'm curious about the
future of these great libraries. As a web developer, I'm also no
stranger to JQuery. One of the nice things about JQuery is that it
provides a one-size-fits-all javascript library which provides
virtually everything you need to develop 99% of your web
applications. It provides autocomplete drop-downs, multi-selects, div
dialogues, alerts, and modal boxes, as well as datepickers. It also
provides a nice theme system which makes it incredibly easy to
customize these UI elements to match my color theme on a website.

I personally much prefer the PrototypeJS way of doing things in
general. However, I've spent a great deal of time rounding up
scripts, or writing my own, to do all the things that JQuery has
effectively built in. I've seen some efforts to provide these UI type
features by MadRobby in his scripty2 library. Though I've already
incorporated his work into several sites I've developed, the
documentation is rough, and there doesn't seem to be much progress
being made on this library. I know MadRobby is incredibly busy, and I
am sure he's working on it whenever he has a chance.

There have also been many attempts to create repositories for
PrototypeJS libraries. However, none of them are very user friendly,
and most of them appear to be run-down and not up-to-date. As a
PrototypeJS advocate, this makes PrototypeJS much less accessible for
new developers. A lot of developers pass over the amazing
functionality of of PrototypeJS and Scriptaculous/Scripty2 for
libraries such as JQuery.

That's the current lay of the land as far as I can tell. So here are
my questions:

Is there any master plan for eventually creating some sort of unified
complete Javascript library with a UI component (probably via
Scripty2)?

Is there a plan to create a more official website for tracking
PrototypeJS extension libraries?

Is there a plan to make Scripty2 ui elements themeable?

I recognize that PrototypeJS and Scripty2 are a community effort, and
maintained by donated time from very busy individuals. What is the
best way for me to get involved to either improve current
functionality of the libraries or add new functionality? I'm a pretty
skill javascript developer, and I would love to contribute to the
PrototypeJS universe.

Is there some sort of experimental branch for PrototypeJS and/or
Scripty2 where developers can submit more "out there" functionality
for consideration? When I look at the Ticket Tracker for PrototypeJS,
I see a lot of patches submitted which never get added because they
don't really fit the current goals of the project, or add
functionality which is too far out of the base line for the current
version of PrototypeJS. This is certainly a valid reason to not add
functionality, but is also potentially kills a lot of innovation.

Thanks for any answers from either the PrototypeJS team or madrobby/
anyone involved with Scripty2. Please don't take any of the above as
a negative critique of PrototypeJs or Scripty2. I love both projects,
and I very much want to see them flourish, and I am just curious to
see where the current developers see the project moving in the future.

[Pablo Aravena]

Hi

Your concern is the same of mine, some weeks ago I have published a new release of my little project called MyTableGrid (see the samples at http://pabloaravena.info/mytablegrid/samples), then until now I didn't receive any feedback. That is really sad for me because of all the work and effort I put :-(  but anyway maybe I think is a good idea to know how we can contribute to scripty2 UI, I have no problem moving my work there but maybe is lot of work :-).

 

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[Gappa]

Don't worry Pablo, I have noticed your new version :) I had no
opportunity to use it so far, but some colleagues of mine did with the
earlier version :)

On 11 srp, 20:24, Pablo Aravena <paraven...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Your concern is the same of mine, some weeks ago I have published a new

> release of my little project called MyTableGrid (see the samples athttp://pabloaravena.info/mytablegrid/samples), then until now I didn't

[Victor]

OK, you want it - you got the feedback.

1. Input fields have slightly different height depending on OS, fonts, browsers etc., so `<div class="my-combobox-button gradient"></div>` and `<div class="my-datepicker-select-button"></div>` are looking bad. Either you set both heights (of INPUT and of DIV) to the same value explicitly, or instead of additional DIVs make background image on INPUTs.

2. It is not convenient to call every time Event.observe(...) or new MY.DatePicker(...) explicitly (e.g. I have many HTML fragments loaded dynamically via AJAX or created in JavaScript). What do you think about unobtrusive creation? You can create DatePicker and ComboBox when the input field becomes focused first time.

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With best regards,
  Victor

[Phil Petree]

Pablo, Sorry but I've still not had a chance to look at the new version, I'm using the 1.0 version in the admin panel on one of my sites and it works pretty good.  I know the new version requires some code change so it'll be awhile before I can give it a go.

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[Pablo Aravena]

Excellent, I will see what I can do

Thanks

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Victor <vkhom...@gmail.com> wrote:

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