LogFile

Somewhat delayed but hopefully worth the wait, boxy 0.1.4 is ready. Boxy is a Facebook-style dialog library for jQuery with a rich API for manipulating windows. It’s also pretty well documented.

Changelog:

1. Fixed issue with multiple visible modals
2. Moved modal opacity value from CSS to code to appease IE (not ideal)
3. Moved default options to Boxy.DEFAULTS for application-wide configurability
4. Added custom callback for attaching behaviours to dialog content
5. Added Boxy.alert() for displaying simple messages
6. Added Boxy.confirm() helper
7. Added support for unloading/removing boxy instances: boxy.unload(), boxy.hideAndUnload(after), constructor option ‘unloadOnHide’
8. Boxys created with Boxy.ask() or its derivatives now unload themselves on dismissal
9. Fixed centering issue in IE6 (non-standards compliant mode)
10. Added afterShow callback, fired whenever boxy becomes visible
11. Added Boxy.load() for manually loading boxy content via AJAX
12. Moved WRAPPER to from Boxy.prototype to Boxy to improve app-wide configurability
13. Complete rewrite of $.fn.boxy; see elsewhere for explanation
14. Removed ’single’ plugin option
15. Added option to link each boxy instance to the DOM element which triggered it; this is automatically severed when boxy is unloaded
16. Added option to filter AJAX content using jQuery selector
17. Fixed positioning bug with Opera
18. Added beforeUnload callback
19. Added Boxy.isModalVisible() for testing if a modal dialog is currently visible
20. Added afterHide callback
21. Added afterDrop callback
22. Modal shading now resizes with browser window
23. Added clickToFront option, bringing a dialog to front when clicking anywhere within it
24. Added Boxy.linkedTo() to get boxy instance linked to a given element via ‘actuator’ option
25. Added boxy.toggle() to toggle between visible/hidden

There’s also a new test and examples page that gives all of the major features a workout.

This will be the final release before 1.0; from now until then I’ll be concentrating solely on fixing bugs and stabilising the API. I think I’ve managed to accommodate most feature requests in one way or another.

Linkage: project page | github | direct download from plugins.jquery.com

Just a couple of extractions from recent projects that may be useful to somebodies.

First up is an automatically growing textarea. This implementation is borrowed from Facebook and uses an off-screen auxiliary <div> to calculate the required dimensions of the textarea. Usage is simple:

$('textarea').autogrow();

Next is a cookie-based style switcher, the obvious use of which is toggling between small/medium/large text. Quite why the browser supplied zoom features are insufficient is a mystery to me, but hey ho, the client is always right.

cookieResize('#sizer a', 'medium');

The first argument is a selector matching the resize/style-switching links. When the user clicks any of these its CSS class will be applied to document.body - this class name will also be stored in a cookie for retrieval on successive page views. The second argument is the default class to use if no cookie is present.

No official plugin pages for these; just copy and paste into your project…

Linkage: auto-growing textarea | cookie-based style switcher