BeauScott.com

I’ve completed my updating of my aging AJAX help balloons / tool tips / dialog balloons / whatever you want to call them.

New features included:

• Less library dependence. It’s still prototype.js-based and dependent, but no longer requires Scriptaculous nor the prototype “improvement” script that they previously used. You can optionally still use Scriptaculous if you want the sexy fading effects. Just include the scriptaculous.js file in your document and the balloons will detect it and use it, no configuration needed. (However, if you want to use different Scriptaculous effects than the standard Fade and Appear, you can set the hideEffect and/or fadeEffect options to whatever you want… Doesn’t even have to be Scriptaculous, just Scriptaculous-compatible)
• Use any object as an anchor point. This was available in later revisions of v1, but I’ve solidified it’s support. Simply assign the anchoring element as the balloon’s icon property at instantiation. (See the example page for details)
• Anchor postioning control. This feature allows you to move the anchor around within your icon for fine-tuning the balloon’s display. (See the example page for details)
• Non-caching remote data requests. If you’ve ever tried to use v1 of the balloons with dynamic data, you’d know that once the balloon makes it’s first request, it caches the request result and would not make subsequent calls for fresh data. You can now force the balloon to make a fresh request before each showing using instantiation options. (See the example page for details)
• Fixed direction assignment. By default, the balloons will position themselves based on available realestate, but you can now assign a fixed direction using instantiation options. (See the example page for details)
• Still 100% free, now released under the MIT open source license.
• Better organized and fully commented/documented code. This was a complete refactor/rewrite of the code base, and I made sure to comment the code very thoroughly and try to explain my reasoning (or insanity) as best I could. In addition, I’ve written a proper API page, and have revisited the examples page.

As always, I’m eager to hear feedback — be it wishes, comments, praises or curses. Thanks to all that provided feedback on v1, it was tremendously valuable.

Click here to download the full widget (includes images, HelpBalloon.js, prototype.js 1.6.0.2, and scriptaculous 1.8.1) 556k zip.

Or you can get the latest via SVN:  svn://beauscott.com/widgets/HelpBalloons

Click here for the API Page

Click here for the Example Page

Update: I’m right in the middle of adding new feature documentation, so the docs are a little wonky. I’ll fix shortly.