scripty2: for a more delicious web

scripty2 is an open source JavaScript framework for advanced HTML-based user interfaces. Or simply put, scripty2 helps you build a more delicious web:

• Visual effects: scripty2’s heartpiece is an versatile real-time effects framework
• CSS utilities

And there’s more coming! scripty2 is currently in alpha status, so APIs can change and there’s still a lot more functionality planned.

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.

Please use groups.google.com/group/scripty2 for any development questions for scripty2. Patches, tests, demos, updates and documentation are always welcome.

Build

For building, development and testing, you need to have a working Ruby setup. You’ll need the bluecloth, treetop and coderay gems installed.

To build the distribution, run:

  rake && rake package

This will build the documentation (in /doc) and provides ready-to-deploy JavaScript packages in /dist.

The build process uses the YUI Compressor to build a minified version of the library file. This requires Java to be installed and available.

After the build process is done, you’ll find two files in /dist:

• s2.js (for debugging)
• s2.min.js (minified version for production use)

At the moment this is a prerelease alpha version and not meant for production use (although it is used with great success on several high volume websites).

Usage

scripty2 is dependent on the Prototype JavaScript framework. The download and source comes with a compatible version, or grab the latest version yourself from prototypejs.org/.

Put prototype.js and s2.js in a folder of your website, and include them as follows:

  <script src="/javascripts/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
  <script src="/javascripts/s2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

You’re ready to go! Now look at the documentation and demos (see below!).

Documentation

To build the documentation, run:

  rake doc

The documentation is built with PDoc, which uses specially formatted source code comments to build a fully interactive HTML documentation set.

Navigate a browser to /doc/index.html to view and browse the documentation.

Tests

To run the unit tests, use:

  rake test

You can run specific tests, or use only specific browsers:

  rake test BROWSERS=safari TESTS=css,heartbeat

License

scripty2 is is licensed under the terms of the MIT License, see the included MIT-LICENSE file.