MacNative

There are a ton of tools out there that web developers can use to create dynamic and engaging websites. Every once and a while one tool will stand out above the others in it’s usefulness and design.

Fancy Upload is one of those tools. Providing a slick interface and some dynamic classes, Fancy Upload leverages the abilities of the Mootools Javascript library and ties that with some flash integration to create a great solution with an infinate number of uses. Go check it out.

http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/

I have been working on a project with a couple of partners, to hopefully create a little additional security for individuals. The problem that we analyzed is that when people get Insurance, or create a family trust, they are told to document all of their assets. Take photos or video of the items in their home and then store them. Usually the only time that that documentation is used is in the event of a disaster, ie: The Wild Fires in California, or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. If that documentation (pictures/video) are stored like most people store them they will either be a molten pile of goop, or float away with the flood, etc. Even those that store their information in a fireproof safe may still find it a pile of goop if the fire is hot enough. Have I painted a vivid enough picture for you?

People every day find themselves without the ability to easily produce that documentation, and may not get their assets replaced by their insurance company, because they cannot prove the exact assets that they owned.

Treasurebox is built to provide a safe secure online storage location for that documentation, very accessible, and easy to use. The MooTools framework and extentions to it are used extensively to increase the usability of the product.

The initial release is currently in public beta. I would love any readers to sign up (No Credit Card or billing information required) and leave some comments here about your thoughts.

Treasurebox
Twenty Cent Productions, LLC

One of my biggest concerns when building a dynamic website is, “How do I validate the users input?”

Obviously there are many different ways to do this, you can validate the data on the back end as it receiving script is processing, and send an error, requesting that the user input correct information. Or you can do Front end processing on the data when the form is submitted and through JavaScript tell the user that the data is not correct, or you can validate the data as the client is inputing the information, thus allowing the client to correct the error before continuing on (especially useful in large/long forms). Or a combination of the 3, validate on the fly, on submit, and on return.

There is a myriad of different front end scripts that have popped up to handle the front end/live validation, one that I started using was LiveValidation, It was a useful library, but Since I was already using MooTools anyway, there was additional overhead to use this additional library, as well as the validation messages all appeared inline with your other content, and this tended to be a difficult thing to work with in cramped conditions.

This led me to search around a bit more and I found Formcheck, A live validation script based on mootools. It was lighter weight, since it was using the library that I was already using. The configuration/integration was about 100 times easier to implement and manage. And the notification appeared as a hovering box rather than and inline notification, which was just the icing on the cake.

Light, Easy, and Pretty, who could ask for more.

Formcheck Demo

Formcheck Documentation

Formcheck Download

http://moo.floor.ch/

My JavaScript framework of choice is MooTools. MooTools is a very compact, useful, and extensible JavaScript framework. I have used it on several sites that I and my codevelopers have created, I have been impressed by how easy the integration is, the speed of development with MooTools is amazing. It doesn’t carry the bloat that similar frameworks carry with them, ie: Prototype. All in all a very exciting platform to work with.

I look forward to the enhancements that will be made available with the 1.2 release. Exciting.

In later posts I will share and discuss scripts that use/extend the base functionality of MooTools to create some very amazing, usability enhancing, tools and effects.