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After four long months of waiting (due to my being busy with sekrit work), script.aculo.us 1.6.2 is now out!

It’s a mostly-bug-fix-only release, so don’t expect any major oohs! and aahs! here, but sure get it. It’s recommended for all users, and addresses various more-or-less cosmetically issues, besides a memory leak bug with Draggables and an endless loop in the Slider code.

Anyway, big, big thanks to all contributors who continue to do patches and bug reports! Hopefully the trac will be up to speed soon (new server is coming!). If you should have any issues, please report it to the rails-spinoffs mailing list.

Updates and fixes:

• Fix a problem in the drag and drop logic if an reverting/drag ending draggable was initialized for a new drag (for example by clicking repeatedly) for all cases where the default start/revert/end-effects are used, fixes #4706 [thx tecM0]
• Fix possible memory leaks with Draggables, fixes #3436 [thx aal]
• Throw nicer errors when requires script.aculo.us libraries are not loaded, fixes #5339
• Make slider handles work when not displayed initially by using CSS width/height, fixes #4011 [thx foysavas]
• Update sortable functional test with onUpdate counter
• Make more Element extensions unit tests work on Safari
• Add the assertMatch unit test assertion for asserts with RegExps [thx Ian Tyndall]
• Fix a problem with Effect.Move causing “jumping” elements because of very low float numbers in some situations
• Fix a missing semicolon in dragdrop.js, fixes #5569 [thx mackalicious]
• Fix a slight inaccuracy with Effect.Scale that could lead the scaling to be one pixel off
• Be more prototypish with Effect.Transitions.linear
• Make Effect.Scale recognize font sizes that use the pt unit, fixes #4136 [thx aljoscha]
• Fix IE hack in Effect.Opacity, fixes #5444 [thx nicholas]
• Fix IFRAME layout fix for IE and Autocompleter, fixes #5192 [thx tommy skaue]
• Fix only option in onEmptyHover, fiex #5348 [thx glenn nilsson]
• Fix Effect.BlindDown and SwitchOff handling of supplied callbacks, fixes #5089 [thx martinstrom]
• Fix a problem with field focus on Ajax.InPlaceEditor and loading external text, fixes #4988, #5244 [thx rob]
• Do not attempt to scroll if scrollspeed is 0/0, fixes #5035 [thx tomg]
• Fix a problem with Sortable Tree serialization, fixes #4939, #4688, #4767 [thx Sammi Williams]
• Fix an endless loop with sliders, fixes #3226, #4051, #4765 [thx jeff]
• Make autocompleter work with update DIVs that have scrollbars, fixes #4782 [thx Tommy Skaue]
• Corrected options parsing on switchoff effect, fixes #4710 [thx haldini]

There are also some updated functional and unit tests (use these links to get to live online versions of these).

Also, this version of script.aculo.us is now included with Edge Rails (as of changeset 4765), and should be part of the upcoming (as in “when it’s ready”) Rails 1.2 release.

Next up: Planning the script.aculo.us 2 release… ;)

Along with fellow core team members and other railsers, I’m going to be one of the Judges for Rails Day 2006.

With lots of cool prizes around, we’re probably going to have a tough time on deciding what’s best (and I do hope some serious freakin’ hot stuff will be developed!).

I’m going to hang out at the campfire tomorrow, and maybe I can even answer a question or two if you’re using script.aculo.us (or just hit #prototype on freenode.net).

I’m doing a one-day training on everything Ajax mainly focusing on script.aculo.us, but naturally including Prototype and a look on Ruby on Rails Ajax capabilities as well, on March 17, here in Vienna, Austria (for german speaking audiences).

Here are the (in-german) details:

In diesem eintägigen Seminar zeigt Ihnen Thomas Fuchs wie Sie die Benutzerfreundlichkeit und Interaktivität ihrer Websites verbessern. Das Seminar bietet einen Überblick über verbreitete Ajax-Entwicklungswerkzeuge und fokusiert auf die Verwendung der Prototype-Bibliothek und script.aculo.us. Weiters werden die Möglichkeiten der integrierten Ajax-Funktionalität von Ruby on Rails demonstriert.

Also, nichts wie anmelden, nur 20 Plätze verfügbar!

Head over to Signal vs. Noise to have a chance to test 37signals’ upcoming Campfire app.

The script.aculo.us documentation wiki is now hosted by the nice guys over at Stikipad, a hosted wiki solution currently in beta (and yes, it’s a Rails app, naturally).

That being said, we’re going to be launching soon and you’ll be able to try out us out free of charge – who knows, we might even throw in a perk for being a script.aculo.us fan!

Thanks for giving the script.aculo.us wiki a new home, guys!

The lastest episode of the Audbile Ajax Podcast is all about script.aculo.us, web usability and other subjects:

Some of the first “wow” moments were due to the effects created by Thomas Fuchs in his Script.aculo.us library that builds on top of Prototype. Many people didn’t realise that with one line of JavaScript code they could get such a nice effect to happen, and now ugly developer-created sites have a chance ;)

We had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas, an we got to discuss his frameworks, and gain knowledge from his experience.

What you will learn in this podcast

• How script.acuo.us was born out of a real project
• Why Rails was chosen for Fluxiom
• Where Rails shines with Ajax
• The new RJS templates feature that makes Ajax even easier
• The difference between Prototype and Script.aculo.us
• How Script.aculo.us is available in Rails 1.0
• Future plans for Script.aculo.us
• When you should use the cool effects, and when you should not
• About drag and drop and web usability
• Challenges that Thomas has faced with his Ajax projects
• Why you would choose an Ajax application versus using other technologies such as Flash
• How hard it is to build a very rich Ajax application
• How to handle browser differences
• Experiences with DOM manipulation and innerHTML
• How naming collisions are not as much of an issue in recent builds of Prototype

So, tune right in!

Sebastian Gräßl is doing a Workshop on Ruby on Rails in Graz, Styria on January 21 and 22.

It’s cheap too, so if you want to start with Ruby on Rails, there’s no excuse now…

Put this in application_helper.rb:

def u(html)
  h(html).gsub(/([^\x00-\x9f])/u) { |s| 
    "&#x%x;" % $1.unpack('U')[0] }
end

This will automatically output 香-style HTML entities where needed.

I’m using it for escaping HTML inside of Edge Rails .rjs templates, to ensure compatibility across browsers (especially Safari seems to be a bit buggy here with support for UTF-8 in Ajax calls).

Start the party!

Update: Read all about on the official Rails weblog!

The presentation on Ruby on Rails that I did last Tuesday, is now available for download at the site of the Austrian Computer Society

It’s just a few overview slides on Rails, nothing special. But I got a few oohs and aahs from the folks there, which were mainly Java developers.

Update: Some nice guy Ichigo (who is a nice guy), who attended the whole thing recorded audio (while the presentation itself is in English, the audio is in German). :)

We’ve finally unveiled what we’ve been working on the last months. It’s a Ajax/Web 2.0 Application (of course) that does asset management, and it’s called fluxiom.

Here’s a short overview of what it does, with some of the marketing speak clarified:

• Upload/Manage/Preview/Download digital media files and documents from any browser and platform (IE, Firefox/Mozilla, Safari and others)
• User-definable tags for categorizing, plus realtime tag filtering and RSS feeds for tag filters (like “inform me of any changes for assets tagged as ‘Marketing’ and ‘Logos’”)
• Freely zoomable “thumbnail” view and full-screen previews
• Realtime searching in metadata and inside files and documents (indexed fulltext search for things like PDF, DOC, and so on)
• Share assets with others using automatically generated .ZIP download packages (so you don’t have to send those 50MB emails)
• Uploads are presented with a progress bar plus you can continue to work in the application while doing an upload
• Supports more than 100 file formats, color profiles, EPS crop marks, plus some more “professional” features

Most important though is that is does all that without getting in your way, and it even looks good.

But enough of this, just head over to www.fluxiom.com and watch the teaser video! :)

Update: For those who asked, yes it’s running on Ruby on Rails, and no, no Flash involved in the user interface, just plain XHTML/CSS plus JavaScript.

The Austrian Computer Society holds a one-afternoon presentation on Open source web development frameworks on November 29 here in Vienna, Austria.

All presentations will be in German (but the presentation slides will probably be available in English).

Participation is free (registration is required!). I’ll do a talk on Ruby on Rails which will “compete” with some Java-based frameworks (Cocoon/JSF/Struts). Hopefully I can lure some Java developers to Rails :)

More information and registration info (German)

Check it out now! :)

So, have a quick look at it!

Still rough warning, so expect more tomorrow or so.

Having a requirement for both internationalization and per-instance customizability of translations in our soon to be revealed application, I wanted to go with an as-simple-as-possible pure Ruby solution for translating strings.

While gettext based approaches might have some advantages over this (some tools available, possibly faster speed with C-based variants) I didn’t want to go with a sledgehammerized solution (I’ve very few strings in the app, and I really only need to support a handful of languages), so I’ve come up with this:

# .rb files to define l10ns in (lang/ and lang/custom/)
Localization.define('de_DE') do |l|
  l.store "blah", "blub" 
  l.store "testing %d", ["Singular: %d", "Plural: %d"]
end

# Call from anywhere (extension to Object class):
_('blah')
_('testing %d', 5)

# in .rhtml
<%=_ 'testing %d', 1 %>

# current language is a class var in class
# Localization, so set e.g. in application.rb
Localization.lang = 'de_DE'

# in environment.rb (rails 0.13.1)
Localization.load

All you need to include for this is the following localization.rb file, which you stick in your lib directory:

module Localization
  mattr_accessor :lang

  @@l10s = { :default => {} }
  @@lang = :default

  def self._(string_to_localize, *args)
    translated = 
      @@l10s[@@lang][string_to_localize] || string_to_localize
    return translated.call(*args).to_s if translated.is_a? Proc
    translated = 
      translated[args[0]>1 ? 1 : 0] if translated.is_a?(Array)
    sprintf translated, *args
  end

  def self.define(lang = :default)
    @@l10s[lang] ||= {}
    yield @@l10s[lang]
  end

  def self.load
    Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/lang/*.rb"){ |t| require t }
    Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/lang/custom/*.rb"){ |t| require t }
  end

end

class Object
  def _(*args); Localization._(*args); end
end

It should be easy to alter or extend that for your own purposes, or just use it as-is.

Update: Changed to module; and here’s a very quick hack to extract a nice pre-generated guesstimation of a l10n file:

# Generates a best-estimate l10n file from all views by
# collecting calls to _() -- note: use the generated file only
# as a start (this method is only guesstimating)
def self.generate_l10n_file
  "Localization.define('en_US') do |l|\n" <<
  Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/views/**/*.rhtml").collect do |f| 
    ["# #{f}"] << File.read(f).scan(/<%.*[^\w]_\s*[\"\'](.*?)[\"\']/)
  end.uniq.flatten.collect do |g|
    g.starts_with?('#') ? "\n  #{g}" : "  l.store '#{g}', '#{g}'" 
  end.uniq.join("\n") << "\nend" 
end

To use that, call up script/console and do a puts Localization.generate_l10n_file.

Update 2: I’ve added support for using nice lambda blocks of code for those “speciality” translations. The block gets passed the *args given to the _ method, so you can basically do anything:

Localization.define do |l|
   l.store '(time)', lambda { |t| t.strftime('%I:%M%p') }
end

Localization.define('de_DE') do |l|
   l.store '(time)', lambda { |t| t.strftime('%H:%M') }
end

_ '(time)', Time.now =>"10:13PM" 
Localization.lang = 'de_DE'
_ '(time)', Time.now => "22:13" 

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is: You can’t, because AJAX get/post data is gathered via JavaScript, and JavaScript has no way at getting at local file contents (for security reasons).

But you can use AJAX to get information on the running upload, as long as your framework has functions that give information on current uploads; and your webserver doesn’t buffer upload data.

In Ruby on Rails that works like this: If you enable the UploadProgress module, Rails stores information about the progress in the session, so while the upload is doing its thing, you can poll the server via an AJAX call and get nice status information. The Upload itself is made via a “traditional” HTML upload form to a hidden IFRAME (the helpers will do all this hard work for you transparently!).

See Sean Treadway’s demo and articles about this.