Developing a CMS Site. Part 3: Enhancements
People always want the latest and greatest animations and movement to their websites. Often times designers or novice developers get over zealous and add a bunch of scripts or images that they don’t need, simply because they “look cool.”
If you’re reading this post and getting excited to learn some secrets on how to make your site look cool, you’re in the wrong place. While I am aiming to share some cool scripts, I want to make sure that you will be using them appropriately. Refer to my first post in the series to get started in analyzing usability and layout before reading on further.
I should also address that my aim in this post is to have it teach on a broad level for the novice, but give details and references for the intermediate or advanced developer that wants to get deeper with javascript and AJAX.
Javascript Libraries and Frameworks
First I must address JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks for those that are not familiar with them already. Basically a JavaScript library or framework is a library or core of pre-written code that creates easier functions and methods to call/manipulate and control code. There are many libraries available and all aim to meet very specific needs, some are very common across a broad level of sites and platforms, such as jQuery, prototype, and mootools.
These libraries are a great way to get started with learning javascript, as they simplify the language and development time, as well offering a large community of developers that run forums and are willing and eager to help you learn. Personally I prefer jQuery because it is a medium-weight script that does everything I need it to do for AJAX, animations, and CSS editing as well as being a very modular framework which makes writing plug-ins and finding plug-ins a breeze. Prototype is also a really nice framework for those same reasons, and I love that prototype comes standard in development with Ruby on Rails (server side programming language and framework).
If you really want to get down and dirty with code you can write your own applications, but I’m guessing the average Joe wants to see what’s already out there and available to download, so here’s the list of my favorites image galleries, lightboxes, carousels, and other animations.
You can also refer to some other great resources and cheat sheets
