Using Sliders with the Scriptaculous Framework
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The Scriptaculous animation framework has become popular with web developers due to its range of capabilities and its versatility. One of its more useful features is a module of DHTML-based sliders, which assist developers in creating front ends for web applications without needing to create complex JavaScript routines.
Introduction
As you’ll possibly know, in the last few months the Scriptaculous animation framework has become extremely popular with web developers, due to its remarkable capabilities for facilitating the development of Internet applications. Indeed, its seamless integration with the powerful Prototype JavaScript package, in addition to its robust DHTML module, makes this software a heavyweight contender among the numerous JavaScript frameworks available on the web these days.
However, in case you didn’t know, aside from its useful animation module, which by the way includes a bunch of eye-catching visual effects, powerful AJAX controls, auto-completion mechanisms, and so forth, this robust JavaScript software also comes packaged with a neat set of drag-and-drop elements which can be easily included into any web page with minor hassles.
Particularly, among this group of drag-and-drop components that come bundled with the Scriptaculous framework, there’s a module that deserves special attention. It can be really useful when it comes to empowering the development of graphical user interfaces.
In this case I’m talking about the remarkable set of DHTML-based sliders, which come in a great variety and suit the requirements of any professional-looking web application. These sliders can be coded by using an intuitive, object-oriented approach, and can be used to enrich largely diverse front-ends without having to create complex JavaScript routines.
Therefore, assuming that you may want to learn how to include with minor efforts these DHTML sliders into your own web applications, over the course of this two-part series, I’m going to show you how to start working with them. I'm also to going to cover some of their most important features, such as the configuration of their additional parameters for displaying offset and range values of the sliders in question, and much more.
By the end of this series, you should be armed with all the tools required to integrate these sliders into any existing graphical user interface, without the need to waste your time coding complex DHTML routines.
With the preliminaries out of our way, let’s move on and learn together how to use the robust set of DHTML sliders bundled with the Scriptaculous animation framework. Let’s get going!
Next: Coding a basic vertical slider with the Scriptaculous framework >>
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