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A Mac OS X style HUD window. There is a base class that you extend for whatever component you want. Check out the work in progress here. I will be making this open source under a liberal license in the coming days, along with the Sheet style window.

I’ve been working on a project that has really put me through the ringer in terms of ultra lean code (both html and JavaScript). Having toolkits like MooTools, Dojo, jQuery, and the like, who needs to do any ugly JavaScript code anymore? I didn’t realize how spoiled I had become until quickly realizing that even in their smallest form any library was simply too large for this project. (This is for an embedded browser with very tight CPU/memory limits). So I had to roll my own, and was not happy about it. I did however learn some new tricks, like the delete operator in JavaScript.

I recently saw a Prototype/Scriptaculous version of this and wanted something like it to use with MooTools. This is still very much a work in progress, but I’m putting up a little demo now. I am planning on adding multi-sheet support (with tracking and auto-switching), and maybe a couple of other simple things. After that I’d like to package the class and support files up and offer it for others to use. Check out the demo!

I cranked out a little library today for submitting bug reports in-line from a web app ajax style (probably am only going to use it for beta testing apps, but it could easily be left in for production use). Here’s the scoop: Trac has an XML-RPC plugin that enables some of it’s interfaces to an RPC server (which interfaces and permissions controlled by Trac WebAdmin of course). So I installed and configured that, and then added a hidden div to my UI template in a test project with a form for submitting a bug, which when POSTED, PHP shoots it directly into the Trac project with a description, the users $_SERVER array, and $_SESSION array. The bug reporting form is activated/made visible by pressing ctrl+alt+b from any page in the application (thanks MooTools!). Slick is all I’m going to say. Lot’s of possibilities for extending this. Maybe if I get some time I will package it up for use. If you are interested in it sooner, holla.