Developer(s) Thomas Fuchs Written in JavaScript License MIT License | Development status Feature-frozen Type Javascript toolkit | |
Stable release 1.9.0 / December 23, 2010 (2010-12-23) | ||
script.aculo.us is a JavaScript library built on the Prototype JavaScript Framework, providing dynamic visual effects and user interface elements via the Document Object Model (DOM).
Contents
It is most notably included with Ruby on Rails and Seaside, but also provided separately to work with other web frameworks and scripting languages.
script.aculo.us was extracted by Thomas Fuchs from his work on fluxiom, a web based digital asset management tool by the design company wollzelle. It was first released to the public in June 2005.
Features
script.aculo.us extends the Prototype JavaScript Framework by adding visual effects, user interface controls, and utilities.
Visual effects
There are five core effects script.aculo.us offers: Opacity, Scale, MoveBy, Highlight, and Parallel. Through these effects there are over 16 additional effects using combinations of the core effects out of the box. Programmers can also extend existing and create new effects.
Enabling an effect is a matter of assigning an element with an ID name and one line of code for the effect. Below is an example for the Effect.Fade effect applied to a DOM element with an ID of 'message-box':
This will cause the target ID to fade in opacity and end by setting the CSS "display" property to "none".
Various other settings within the effect can be modified, such as the duration of the effect and the range of the effect:
This would fade the element, but stop when the effect is 80% complete (with an opacity of 20%).
Controls
Controls offers user interface elements including:
Builder
Builder allows creating DOM elements dynamically. Using the sample code below:
...creates the following (without whitespace):