Base2 is exactly what the title says,  Unlike the major libraries that strive to enhance javascript with shiny new features, Base2 strives to achieve a clean, browser independent execution environment.  In many ways base2 does for javascript what Blueprint, Tripoli et al. do for CSS.

Key Features:

• Inconsistent enumeration across platforms
• instanceof doesn’t always work
• typeof is inconsistent (RegExps identify as type “function” in Mozilla browsers)
• Consistent object/platform detection
• Other various bugs

And the sugar:

• A mechanism for inheritance
• A decent hash object
• Array and String generics
• Array extras
• Support for ISO date parsing

Playing with the library, it really is a breath of fresh air in many respects.  It’s lightweight (20kb compessed & 6kb) gziped and loaded with features that make day to day javascript development faster and easier.  Most importantly, it raises the bar for all browsers by providing Javascript 1.6 features to browsers other than Firefox.

You can get it online at

http://code.google.com/p/base2/ 

and there’s an excellent introduction at

http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2007/12/base2-intro/ 

Today I’m pleased to announce the release of SilkSprite 2.0.  Everything about SilkSprite stays the same but the decompressed file size drops by an astounding 46%.

Key Improvements

• 11% decrease in size for sprite.css
• 50% decrease in size for sprites.png

My special thanks go out to Andrew France for achieving such amazing compression of the png file.

You can find the new version here:

http://www.ajaxbestiary.com/Labs/SilkSprite/ 

Have you recently, or are you currently developing a web front end for a project? Want to talk about it? I’m looking for developers willing to discuss the design & technical challenges of their recent projects for a series of interviews on Ajax Bestiary. I’m asking for at most an hour of your time, In return you’ll get free publicity for yourself and your project and my gratitude.

Please use the form below to contact me if you are interested:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Much like Google’s GWT, Microsoft’s new Volta project compiles .net assemblies into client side ajax interfaces without requiring a line of javascript.

From the press release:

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

Check it out at labs.live.com/volta/

YUI has announced a major new release with the  immediate availability of YUI 2.4.

Key Features:

• Selector Utility: Following in the footsteps of most other toolkits, YUI now includes a CSS Selector.  This beta component includes much of the standard CSS3 selector syntax including the proposed Selector extensions.
• Charting: Using a hybrid Flash / Javascript model, a new charting component has been released with support for bar, line and pie charts.  Of special note is the fact that the charting utility utilizes the same data model as the data table implementation allowing hybrid chart / table interfaces.
• Get: dynamically load scripts and nodes via the new Get tools.
• Profiler: This combined with YUI Test will allow you to quickly and efficiently determine profiles and unit tests.  Most notably, profiler allows unit tests based on performance to be performed.
• JSON Utility: dramatically improved JSON support.

Behind the scenes:

Incremental improvments to: Calendar, Drag & Drop & Button controls.

Dramatic enhancements & customization support added to the Rich Text Editor:

Read about the release here:

http://yuiblog.com/blog/2007/12/04/yuii-240/

It’s official, ExtJS 2.0 has landed.  ExtJS is one of the best toolkits out there for achieving ajax applications that rival desktop applications in interface richness.  Some of the new features in 2.0.

•  Grouping & Group Summary fields: Allows you to group related grid items and create summary rows.  Data sorts within each group set instead of across the grid.
• Scrolling tabs: You can now optimize screen Real Estate by allowing tabs to scroll off the tab par (Ala firefox)
• Anchor Layouts: Tack the dimensions of form elements to their parent container.
• Column Tree: The best of both worlds, integrate the powerful extjs grid & tree widgets

I should also point out that ExtJS continues its tradition of excellent documentation with a new API documentation center and rich set of demo applications to work from.   Check out ExtJS 2.0 here:http://extjs.com/blog/2007/12/04/ext-20-final-released/

I’ve posted a bug fix release to the Layout Tool.

Changes:

• Dramatic improvements to selecting
• Fixed script error for IE 7.

Known Issues:

There are still major issues with IE 7 and it doesn’t work well in IE 6 yet.  If anyone has a clue why the color of the div gets progressively darker in IE 7, I’d appreciate it.

You can testdrive the new version at:

http://www.ajaxbestiary.com/Labs/BLT2/index.htm

Mootoos 1.2 Beta has landed and if you plan on using it soon, you need to get cracking porting & learning the new API.

Some of the changes:

• Test Suite Integration
• Fx.Tween & Fx.Morph to Fx.Style
• Hashables
• Sortables (brand  new version)
• Number Math integration
• Improved object inheritance with Extend & Implement

Read all about it here:
http://blog.mootools.net/2007/11/14/mootools-1-2-beta-1

via Clientside

The SmartClient library is based on databinding & presentation widgets (Similar to Spry).  And is being released as an OpenSource LGPL product. 

The LGPL Version is feature complete for client side development but lacks the presentation server & visual IDE included in the full premium version.

Check it out online  here:

http://www.smartclient.com/product/download.jsp

Prototype 1.6 has landed and is available here Prototype 1.6 final

Scriptaculous 1.8 (based on prototype 1.6) is available here script.aculo.us 1.8 final

Both releases help to dramatically simplify the task of writing AJAX applications.