If you’ve never seen it, SproutCore is a gorgeous framework for developing desktop style apps with rich user experiences and a robust data model.

In particular, the apps it produces are pretty gorgeous, especially in comparison to what would be created from a default dojo or ext.js approach.

Unfortunately, this like the other desktop app style frameworks, was incredibly limiting for those of us looking to build rich web experiences that resemble traditional web content instead of recreating the desktop app experience on the web.  A great example of this is the difference between Google’s search app and gmail.  While the two applications are both rich and complex user experiences, Google Search is definitely more “web like” in its user experience.

SproutCore 2.0 is really making an effort to support the “web like” style of rich web development.  Something much more conducive to the more “web like” user experience needed for most consumer facing web apps.  From the developer release announcement:

Today we’re announcing SproutCore 2.0: a rebuilt SproutCore, designed from the ground up to support every kind of web application. SproutCore 2.0 is highly modular and decoupled, allowing you just to opt in to the features you need.

By removing the need to opt into SproutCore’s view layer, you gain an ability to do complex data driven web front end with a lighter weight view perfect for a significantly greater number of projects.

Read the full announcment here:

http://blog.sproutcore.com/announcing-sproutcore-2-0/

The 1.4 release of jQuery improved a lot upon this library, but there were some serious issues and unimplemented features. These have been resolved with today’s 1.4.1 release.

Some of the most notable are:

• Firing ajaxError when a request returns a 404
• The change event can now be used with live()
• Incorrect handling of self-closing DIV’s in html()
• jQuery.parseJSON has been exposed, so you can transparently support native implementations of parseJSON
• Live() now supports focus, blur and hover events

DOMAssitant 2.7 is a solid improvement to the DOMAssistant framework with a clear focus on CSS.

New functions:

• cssSelect
• AJAX
• setStyle
• setErrorHandling
• first

Other Improvements

• Dramatic Improvements to the CSS Selector performance: I personally consider CSS selectors the most important feature of a framework so the dramatic improvements really help sell me the benefits of the 2.7 release.
• Unicode Support.  This can be a really big one for a variety of reasons.  Personally, I think it should be built into all frameworks from day one (It is built into javascript after all).

You can find out more about the new release here:

http://www.robertnyman.com/2008/04/09/domassistant-27-released-better-faster-slimmer-new-features/

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/ 

Ole Larson has released a new version of Flot:
Key Changes

• Added support for putting a background behind the default legend.
  The default is the partly transparent background color. Added
  backgroundColor and backgroundOpacity to the legend options to control
  this.
• The ticks options can now be a callback function that takes one
  parameter, an object with the attributes min and max. The function
  should return a ticks array.
• Added labelFormatter option in legend, useful for turning the legend
  labels into links.
• Fixed a couple of bugs.
• The API should now be fully documented.
• Patch from Guy Fraser to make parts of the code smaller.
• API changes: Moved labelMargin option to grid from x/yaxis.

Most notably, the new packaging includes the modified excanvas script in the zip download to greatly simplify deploying with IE support.

Read about it here:

http://ole-laursen.blogspot.com/2007/12/flot-02-released.html 

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/

Niall Doherty just released a minor update to the powerful & sexy jQuery CodaSlider widget. The version 1.1.1 release increases the visual styling capabilities of the widget by adding more css support.

Not a major update, but the drop in nature and dramatically increased styling ability make this an obvious addition to any projects currently using the widget.

Get it at ndoherty.com:

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