The new jQuery UI will be landing on Sunday, September 16th. This will provide a powerful new set of widget tools to the jQuery toolkit.

What to Expect:

• Draggables
• Droppables
• Resizables
• Shadows
• Sliders
• Sortables
• Tabs
• Accordions
• Selectables
• Trees
• Modals

Coverage and tutorials of the new features will be published next week. In the meantime, check out the latest jQuery 1.2

The JQuery Team just realesed JQuery 1.2.  A major new revision to the JQuery toolkit.  While there are many major revisions to the software.  Some features have been removed, many others added or updated.

Some Key revisions include improvements to the ability to use custom namespaces & queueing for animations.

Other New Features:

• Ajax
  • Partial .load()
  • Cross-Domain getScript
  • JSONP
  • .serialize() Overhaul
  • Disable Caching
• Effects
  • .stop()
  • %/em Animations
  • Color Animations
  • Relative Animations
  • Queue Control
  •  :animated
  • step: Function
• Events
  • Namespaced Events
  • .triggerHandler()
• Internals
  • Documentation Move
  • Expando Management

Find out more at jQuery.com

Think of it as Visual Risk Management. 
As AJAX developers, we regularly place control over swaths of the DOM in the hands of our users and outside of our web designers control.  Sure, we can restrict the users capabilities, clean up word html, run things through validators, & provide all the styles needed, but these fixes require us to anticipate problems before they happen.

Using CSS frameworks, takes a lot of the risk out of the situation.  A CSS framework removes the risk of a user accidentally calling on a structure that hasn’t been anticipated or that isn’t properly styled by our existing stylesheets.   CSS frameworks take the guessing work out of the situation.  By reseting and frequently standardizing all possible html elements.  A CSS framework ensures that your markup behaves appropriately across browsers and user inputs.  It doesn’t matter what framework you use either.  In fact, a corporation’s professionally built CSS templates likely include all of the resets & standardizations needed.

If you don’t trust your stylesheets or are building one from scratch. I recommend you investigate the following frameworks.

• YAML
• Blueprint
• YUI CSS
• Tripoli
• Eric Meyer’s Reset CSS
  

Looking for a css reset that doesn’t leave you with nothing?  Don’t need fancy layout tools?  You should consider Tripoli for your next AJAX app.  Tripoli is a CSS reset that doesn’t leave you with monotonous visual mush.  Instead, Tripoli resets CSS to a standardized presentation consistent across all browsers.  Tripoli lets designer’s start with a clean slate without having to re-invent the wheel.

Tripoli is available at: http://monc.se/tripoli/

Inspired by Dav Glas’ Grids Builder for YUI CSS. The YAML builder has been released.

Some unique features include:

• Style Editing
• Drag & Drop Page Elements

YAML is a robust CSS framework offered under both Creative Commons & Commercial licenses.

For more information visit yaml.de
Take the new builder for a spin at builder.yaml.de

File Uploads with Progress Bars & Batch File uploads are two incredibly useful tools for the AJAX toolbox. This widget from Ariadne.com packs a powerful punch for adding these features to your projects.

AJAX Upload Widget

This is part one of a multipart tutorial on AJAX application construction. Today we will be building a Software Project Scheduling application based on Joel Spolsky’s Painless Software Schedules system.

The application will be built using the Php Object Generator, and ExtJS Framework.

Keep reading →