Ascensor.js is a jQuery plugin that allows you to organize your content in an “architectural” way.
Ascensor.js allows you to create slide-like designs, through which the user can navigate with a road-map.
The demo on the website explains it better than I do.
Ascensor.js is great for innovative designs; representational websites (e.g., that of a cutting-edge product or a plugin); and lots of fun!
html2canvas is an impressive script that allows taking client-side screenshots with nothing but JavaScript.
html2canvas is currently in an experimental phase (but it’s working alright, check out the demos) so rendering bugs and, possibly, some hilarity can ensue.
The script renders the current page as a canvas image by reading the DOM and the styles applied to elements.
html2canvas is dependent on jQuery, but the developers are set to change that soon.
grumble.js (aka Huddle Bubbles) is a jQuery plugin for creating tooltips without the usual direction limitations.
The bubbles are easy to style (CSS) and set in action, supports most browsers, and hey — you can have callbacks, too.
The only “tricky” part of using grumble.js is finding the right angle in which to position the bubble.
grumble.js is particularly useful for demanding designs where you can’t have tooltips in front of existing content.
FlickrBomb is a rapid prototyping plugin made with jQuery.
Usually, prototyping takes minutes at the best, and if you got to search for placeholders (or, even worse, use ugly icons instead of placeholders), you had to search for CC images, resize them, etc.
FlickrBomb automatically pulls images from Flickr — you simply have to enter the search term, dimensions, and, a recent feature — license.
FlickrBomb is made by Zurb, creators of many awesome jQuery plugins we’ve covered — yet Velociraptor stands out as… well, it just stands out.
bulletGraph is a jQuery plugin for turning select elements into small graphs – bulletGraphs.
You can integrate the plugin with a number of data — Excel files, Google Charts, Google Spreadsheets, etc.
bulletGraph also has options: you can change the bulletgraph width; set the number of slider steps; set the value of the sliders; etc.
d3.js is an HTML data manipulation library that can be used for data visualization with HTML and SVG.
Although d3 has a number of useful features, and it is, at its core, much more than a visualization library, I could bet a hundred bucks that visualizations are what d3.js will be used for most — especially in combination with SVG.
It has an extensive documentation, along with a guide for users who’re familiar with the somewhat-similar-yet-less-awesome Protovis library.
31 July, 2011
By Lauris Veips
