Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Personal Links

General Websites


Everything2
It's... well... Everything. Noded for easy use. Random and addictive!
SlashDot
Tech news. You either read it or hate it...
Kuro5hin
A community-moderated news and discussion site. Technology and culture orientated.
MetaFilter
A meta-blog of all the interesting happenings online.
Boing Boing
A directory of Interesting Things.
Memepool
Collecting random links for your entertainment.
HydrogenAudio
For digital audio enthusiasts. Codec comparisons and more.
No-Ads PAC File
An easy and brilliant way of accelerating your web browser: don't download adverts.
Digital Blasphemy
Atmospheric 3D rendered wallpaper. Your desktop will never look the same again.

Developer Friends


Matt Wilson
Matt's life and travels.
Andrew Brehaut
He has art projects too, apparently.

Humour

And yes, that is spelt correctly!

The Latest News


The Onion
Online newspapers have never been as accurate as this.
BBSpot
More satirical stories, mostly IT-related.
SatireWire
Sadly ceased updating, but the archives are great.
God's LiveJournal
The Big Guy has a blog these days.

Online Comics


Calvin & Hobbes
It's online. For free. Read it.
Penny-Arcade!
For gamers every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Red Meat
Sick, sick, sick. An online comic that is occasionally very funny.
Dilbert
Come on, you must know this one.
Weebl And Bob
Mmmmm... pie.

Just Plain Funny


Homestar Runner
It's Dot Com! This should only be viewed for good, or awesome.
B3TA
Photoshop shenanigans, because We Love The Web.
Keepers of Lists
The Top 100 Ways To Find Monks Funny.
Real Ultimate Power!
Ninjas are cool. And by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Dave Barry
Hilarious newspaper columns.
DribbleGlass
A little of everything.
Rec.Humour.Funny
Archive of newsgroup humour... a LOT of it.
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize
The worst possible opening lines to fictitious books.
The Writings On The Stall
Wit and wisdom of the world's public toilets.
The Dialectizer
Translates into languages you never knew existed.
Evil On A Budget
World domination to suit any financial means.
Citizen's Self-Arrest Form
Celebrate innovative new measures in crime prevention!
Temple Ov Thee Lemur
Erm, I'm not quite sure I can explain this one.
Happy Tree Friends
Aww! Cute little animals! Warning: don't click if you like cute cartoon animals.
Weebl's Stuff
Badger badger badger...

XHTML & CSS Links

Here are some other XHTML/CSS related sites I find useful. If you're looking for a good reference, tutorial, or example, try these...

Development News & Blogs


The Daily Report
Much-needed standards-based advocacy from Zeldman, with many interesting links.
A List Apart
Magazine for people who make websites.
Evolt
A community of website designers, who have written many interesting articles.
Simon Willison
An interesting blog on all things Web-related.
Dave Shea's Mezzoblue
Dave Shea's weblog; the creator of the CSS Zen Garden.

Resource / Tutorial Sites


CSS Zen Garden
Not really a reference, but it will show you of the power of CSS by blowing your mind.
NYPL Style Guide
Harness the power of XHTML with these simple guidelines.
Eric Meyer
Load Mozilla, Opera or Safari and check out his CSS/Edge experiments...
NC Design
An HTML and CSS reference with clear examples, compatibility and syntax. This is where I head first when I'm on the hunt for tag and class info...
ZVON
REALLY comprehensive set of references on CSS/XHTML/DOM/etc. Bookmark this one.
Index DOT Html/Css
Another great HTML/CSS reference site.
The Nemesis Project
A Wiki-like collection of CSS resources and tutorials/tricks.
Dithered CSS Hacks
Want to fix an browser-specific CSS bug? This is it. The rest of the site's good too.
Glish
A good list of CSS layout resources.
QuirksMode (PPK's Site)
Lots of DOM/CSS compatibility resources and JavaScript information!
Explorer Bugs
Find out exactly how poor the IE6 rendering engine really is, and how to fix it.
IE6 Flicker @ FiveSevenSix
Explanation of a problem common to many CSS based sites.

The Horses' Mouths


MSDN Library
Microsoft's spin on DHTML, CSS and JS, well worth a browse. Look under 'Web Development' > 'Web Page Development', as well as 'Scripting'... this site is packed with information.
Netscape DevEdge
Netscape's developer site, has good Javascript and DHTML documentation.
The Mozilla Project: Web Developers
One of the most standards-compliant rendering engines available.
Opera Specifications
Features supported by the Opera browser.

Send Me More!


I'm always looking for useful web development resources to link. So please empty your bookmark folder in my general direction!

DHTML Custom Development

Welcome to my portfolio of original, high-performance DHTML and JavaScript examples. I've designed them all to be as small as possible (once you trim out the comments, of course) and fast -- small code is my main priority when developing scripts, as users don't want to wait half an hour for their site to load.
I am also available if you want to hire me to extend these scripts, or develop custom projects from scratch or a specification. So drop me a line if you are interested in having me undertake a project... it could save you a lot of time!
If you are going to use these yourself, please respect the Conditions of Use outlined in the individual scripts. That is, be sure to link to this site's splash page, or perhaps consider making a donation via PayPal to support the further development of these scripts. Also feel free to visit my Links Gallery of notable DHTML sites.

Main Projects


FreeStyle Menus v1.0 RC
A lightweight, CSS-formatted menu system. I use it on this site, as it keeps all its data in your (X)HTML document, and can degrade nicely in older browsers.
Cascading Popup Menus v5.2 RC
A well-implemented popup menu system can greatly enhance navigation around a website. This script is a largely JavaScript-based popup menu system with many advanced features like freeform cross frames support and menu animation, but without the bloat of other menu scripts.
SuperNote v1.0 beta
A popup tooltip script that is implemented via normal document footnotes. It's very full of features, customisable, and compatible!
Photo Morpher v1.0 beta
An image gallery on steroids. Blend and morph between images that are defined in a standard list in the page for easy modification and good backwards compatibility.
Tipster v3.1 RC
A neat script that can add popup text descriptions to documents, make them follow the mouse and fade in and out.
CheckTree v1.0 RC
An installer-like expanding tree menu, with support for unlimited levels and based on clean HTML markup.
DHTML Scroller v4.0 RC
Used in this site, this supports loading files into a div and scrolling it on one page. You should be looking at it now... so no more description is necessary. It contains a full feature list -- and a fully working scrollbar. Easily extendable, and quite small.
Inline HV Scrollbox v1.1 RC
This is a 4-directional scroller with support for multiple pages within its scrolling area. It can also be embedded within a table or div or similar, and keep its inline position.
Cross-Browser DHTML API v1.1 RC
Used in most of my scripts, this handles simple browser detection and DOM issues. You may want this to customise the above demonstrations or use in your own scripts.

Older Projects


These are listed for a bit of a laugh, or if anyone wants a simple tutorial-type script. Click the header links for a demo, or the download links if you really want 'em.
Image Cycler v2.0
This preloads, cycles and optionally transitions between an array of images filenames. It includes customisable timers and can start/stop based on user or script control. Download current version, or archived: v1.0.
Quote Scroller v2.3
A cross-browser animation script that shows an array of quotes flowing across the screen at several different speeds and colours. Download current version, or archived: v2.2, v2.1, v2.0, v1.0.
Text Colour Cycler v1.1
Periodically replaces the content of a DIV tag with new markup to create a wavelike effect. Download current version, or archived: v1.0.

Free Download Sites

All of these are worth a bookmark, as they have links to freeware and shareware, some of which are real finds.
NoNags
Big list of freeware, and only freeware.
Tiny Apps
Small apps that are useful, can fit on a floppy disk, and are free!
Pricelessware
A collection of highly rated links to applications.
SnapFiles
The new name for WebAttack; a great categorised list of software.
OSS in Windows
Open Source Software freely available for MS Windows.
SourceForge
The web's largest host of open-source projects, many for Windows too.
Desktopian
Tweak that desktop until you drop.
FreeWare Home
Massive list of software, well categorised.
LockerGnome
Tips on using Windows more effectively.
Shell Extension City
Lots of tweaks for the Windows interface.
The Windows Users Groups Network
Tips, tricks, and a software pick o' the week.
WinFiles
Huge amount of software for Windows.
ZDNet Downloads
Plus some bonus interesting articles.
The Free Site
Not just software, lots of other free resources too.

Free Media / Audio Software

I've labelled most of these with their platform compatibility, and whether they are Open Source Software (OSS).
CD Rippers
CDex (OSS, Win)
Cdex is a 'CD Ripper' - it converts music from audio CD's to files you can play on your computer, often highly compressed. Why? Simply because most people own a gazillion CD's and lack a changer capable of holding them all. Create your own playlist of your favourite tracks, ripped to WAV, MP3 (via the LAME encoder), WMA (Windows Media Audio), AAC, VQF, or OGG files.
Exact Audio Copy (Win)
Like CDex, but focuses on very high quality rips. Has many options to avoid clicks and reading errors, and the usual encoder support.
ISO Buster (Win)
A great CD/DVD analysis utility. View the TOC data on a CD, extract tracks or sessions to image files, load/view/convert image files, build cuesheets, retrieve data from damaged CDs, and more.
Codecs
FFDShow (OSS, Win)
Don't bother installing DivX, XVid, and half a dozen other MPEG4 codecs just for playback. Instead, get this. It plays them all, and has an incredible amount of post-processing options to enhance the quality of MPEG4 video content.
OGG Vorbis (OSS, Win/Mac/Linux/etc)
Patent-free, royalty-free and high quality, this is a great audio codec.
RareWares (Various)
A collection of hard to find encoders and decoders.
Media Players
Media Player Classic (OSS, Win)
This is a replica of the Windows Media Player 6 GUI, with the internals completely reworked from scratch. It plays audio and video, with fine-grained control over codecs and filters in use, and supports almost any format with the codec installed (including WMV, Real, Quicktime, DivX/MPEG-4, subtitling, etc...). Great stuff if you're looking for a fast, free video player.
Winamp (Win)
The original and still one of the better media players. Now with video support, and a decent media library.
foobar2000 (OSS, Win)
Don't be fooled by its simple looks. This is the most customisable audio player I have ever found, with a highly modular design. Designed by audiophiles for high-quality audio processing and playback, it plays most popular open formats. If you do use it, try some of the formatting string available with the default UI.
Videolan Client (OSS, Win/Mac/Linux)
This is a very interesting piece of software. It natively plays almost any standard media format, including DVDs, and can stream files over a LAN for playback on a remote computer.
ITunes (Win/Mac)
It's out for Windows. Some people swear by it; I've never used it much.
RealPlayer and QuickTime
Gotta have them; use Media Player Classic to play them. If you're adventurous, try Googling for 'Real Alternative' and 'QuickTime Alternative', but I'm not too sure how legal those pieces of software are.
Miscellaneous
Audacity (OSS, Win/Mac/Linux)
Audacity is a great free WAV audio editor, with lots of features and a very friendly interface. Supports loading and saving many different formats, and has a large range of effects. Beats SNDREC32.EXE any day :).
GEISS (Win)
It should be under the 'Links' section really, but this site has several programs that should push your computer's graphics capabilities to their limits.
MP3Tag (Win)
Organise and mass-tag your collection of MP3, Vorbis and other audio formats. Can guess tag values from filenames or vice-versa, and retrieve information from the internet.
Peer To Peer Networks
Gnutella
Whilst not edible, Gnutella (originally by Nullsoft, who also made Winamp) is very good at creating a large distributed file sharing network. Basically, this means mp3s of dubious legality. However, since it has no central server, anything can and often has been shared - each user has to connect to another Gnutella user, who in turn knows several other users, and so on. The original Gnutella program is now pretty out-of-date, but several free replacements like Gnucleus exist. See Zeropaid for more.
KCeasy (OSS, Win)
Based on a backend called giFT, this is an interesting-looking multiprotocol P2P client.

Free Utilities

I've categorised most of these by platform compatibility, and whether they're Open Source Osftware (OSS). Hope you find something useful!
Adware & Spyware
Ad-Aware (Win)
Finds and cleans out "spyware" on your computer. "Spyware" is a generic term for small programs that monitor what you do and may send off information about you to various sites, often installed with 'adware' or (supposedly) freeware progarms. It's free, easy, and quick, and you may be amazed at how many 'optional extras' you've accumulated over the years.
Spybot: Search & Destroy (Win)
Another well-regarded anti-spyware solution.
Download Managers
Star Downloader (Win)
Can do multi-source downloading and resuming/scheduling. Small and quite fast.
LeechGet (Win)
Likewise, this accelerates your downloads by retrieving from multiple sources & pausing/resuming downloads. It's a larger program, but quite comprehensive.
Fresh Downloader (Win)
Required free registration to use last I checked.
FTP Clients
FileZilla (OSS, Win)
A nice open-source FTP client (and server, but I haven't tried that) for Windows. Pretty quick and easy to use once you set it up correctly.
LeechFTP (Win)
Although sadly it's no longer being updated, this is a pretty good free FTP client for Windows, with a nice UI and good download speed. It does the usual two-pane view with an additional thread information column, favourites, log pane, and all the usual tricks.
Miscellaneous Utilities
AnalogX Utilities (Win)
OK, so this should really be in the 'links' section there's so much useful stuff on this site. This is one excellent programmer - most utilities come with installers/uninstallers in one file that totals 250k or so! Surf around, there's sure to be something useful there.
Resource Hacker
This is a program to extract resources, such as pictures, icons, cursors, sounds and even entire menus and windows out of programs. It can also modify those resources, with its own internal resource compiler and decompiler, meaning you can rearrange dialogs, menus, pictures and so on within your favourite programs. For instance, I once replaced the picture up the side of the Start Menu and rearranged Winamp's context menu to suit my taste. This is an awesome piece of code, and an essential download for the advanced user who really likes to tweak.
System Internals (OSS, Win)
Again, technically a link but I had to include it here. This is a site full of small monitors that allow you to watch the innards of Windows at work. For instance, there are programs to monitor all accesses to disks and the Registry, as well as programs to show DLL dependencies and lists of open files and ports. If you understood all that, you need these.
DAEMON Tools (Win)
This really rocks. It creates up to 4 'virtual CD drives' into which you can load ISO images or other image formats, to access like real CDs. Copy your favourite games or CDs you find you use often onto your hard disc, and play them from there; no more juggling scratched discs.
Outlook Express QuoteFix (Win)
For Outlook Express at least, this will add a lot of features to plain-text emails, like colourised quotation of replied email conversations, and myriad formatting improvements. If you use OE, try this out.
Analog (OSS, Win/Linux/etc)
A great webserver logfile analyser. Takes a lot of configuration, but is very customisable, producing useful graphs and tables.
Proxy Servers & Web Filters
The Proxomitron (Win)
A local HTTP proxy that I have tried. It can strip out ads and so on, and monitor HTTP headers (useful for CGI script debugging). Worth a look if you have time on your hands.
AnalogX Proxy (Win)
A tiny proxy server with full web/FTP/mail/SOCKS support. If you're looking for a lightweight proxy, this is great. No filtering capabilities though.
WebWasher (Win)
I haven't tried it but this link was emailed to me, and it looks pretty useful. Basically it's a browser addon that helps preseve your privacy online. That means it's a cookie muncher and referrer tweaker, amongst other things, so if you're worried about your online footprints have a look.
Windows Tweakers
TweakUI (Win)
The classic 'Tweak User Interface' tool from Microsoft has been recently updated, and now supports Windows 2000 and ME. For WinXP, there's a separate version that is part of the 'XP Powertoys' colection. Anyway, this allows you to change heaps of hidden options like menu speeds, mouse behaviour, desktop items, shell folders, your Add/Remove programs list, shortcut icons, explorer settings, new documents menu... the list goes on and on. All in a handy controls panel applet that is a must for power users. Look out for the rest of the 'PowerToy' and 'KernelToy' collections, as well as the IE Web Accessories too - they're all worth installing.
XTEQ X-Setup (Win)
Where TweakUI leaves off, this begins. It has over 500 hidden options for Windows and your favourite programs via a 'plugin' interface. Very, very comprehensive for power users - over 500,000 of them according to its creators. One of the best tweakers around, and free!
Cacheman (Win)
A must for Win9x systems that are always running out of RAM and having to go through the whole disk-thrashing process every 30 seconds. This neat utility automates the addition of SYSTEM.INI entries to place upper and/or lower limits on this disk cache size. On my Pentium II system, I loaded the 'System Monitor' applet and told it to display the disk cache size. Nearly half my RAM was tied up in my cache? Setting a manual upper limit certinaly gave application usage performance a boost, especially for games. Also, many people with CD-writers swear by this to reduce the number of buffer underrun errors. Very easy to use, and free.
TClockEx (Win)
You know that clock in the taskbar? Supercharge it with this. Alter the font, colour, contents and width for a start. Then add a popup calender and memory/CPU usage bars. Finish with a customisable tooltip that can display things like free resources and you have an indispensible addition to your system tray.
Zip Utilities
PowerArchiver v6.1 (Win)
It supports a lot of formats for both compression and decompression and has good shell integration (you can do most zipping and unzipping via right-clicks, including good subfolder handling, and dragging uncompressed files onto archives to add them, like regular folders). Note that this is the last freeware version of this application available.
ICEOWS (Win)
The new name for ARJfolder, and it's well worth a look too. Unlike WinZip, PA and others, it doesn't have a native interface, instead it does everything by hooking into Windows Explorer and displaying archives as folders.
7-Zip (OSS, Win)
Reputed to have extremely good compression levels, especially with its own archive format. A small download, too.
Enzip (Win)
No nag screens, an interface resembling Internet Explorer with folders displayed down the left, and shell integration all in a 1.5meg download makes this very usable. No longer being actively updated.
ZipCentral (Win)
A comprehensive free archiver; last I tried it, I didn't like its subfolder support much, although it may have improved recently.
Ultimate Zip (Win)
A free archiver, I haven't tried it.

Free Applications

Try downloading some of these, after all you can't complain about the price. I've marked up most with their platform, and whether they're Open Source Software (OSS).
Antivirus
AVG Antivirus (Win)
A free virus scanner with free updates. Reasonably well regarded and popular, you should definitely consider installing this on any unprotected Windows machine.
Free-AV (Win)
I've never tried this, but it looks to be a worthy free alternative to AVG.
Avast Antivirus (Win)
Likewise, another free scanner I've seen in my travels.
Browsers
Mozilla FireFox (OSS, Win/Linux/Mac)
This is a browser-only Mozilla distribution with tabbed browsing support, popup-blocking, and a huge list of 'Extensions' that add immeasurable features. It's open source, cross platform compatible, fast to render, and a lot more standards compliant than IE6.
K-Meleon (OSS, Win)
This is a native Windows frontend for the Mozilla rendering engine, a similar concept to the Galeon and Epiphany browsers for Linux. Very fast to download and run.
MyIE2 (Win)
Uses the MSIE rendering engine, but adds popup blocking, tabbed browsing, mouse gestures and many more modern features. Definitely try it if you're a stalwart IE user.
Avant Browser (Win)
Similar to MyIE2 in that it's a wrapper for IE.
Opera (Win/Mac/Linux/etc)
It has adverts, but since version 7.0 I've had to revise my opinion of this browser a lot.
Evolt's browser list
Once upon a time I spent hours and hours looking for IE4.0 for 68k Macs. I finally found it, but my search would have been quicker had I headed to this first. If it can connect to a website, they have it listed, so if you're looking for a specific version of a browser hit that link. Also visit the rest of the site which has many good web-development related articles and links if you have the time.
Chat & Instant Messaging
Exodus (OSS, Win)
An open-source client for the open-standards-based Jabber instant-messaging network. If you have a (free) Jabber account you can chat to other users and also use server-side 'transports' to add contacts from other services like MSN, ICQ etc. You can also establish encrypted connections to your Jabber server if you want. Worth a look if you're sick of bloated clients but still want to chat to many services.
Miranda IM (OSS, Win)
An open source and highly modular instant messaging client. It has 'plugins' to connect to almost every conceivable IM network on the client side, and customise its interface.
Trillian (Win)
One of the original multiprotocol messengers. A free version is still available, but I prefer Miranda over this client.
mIRC (Win)
mIRC is probably the most popular IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client for Windows. If you use IRC much (unlike me) you probably already have it :).
Editors
SciTE (OSS, Win/Linux)
My current text editor of choice. It is hard to set up, requiring you to edit a configuration file, but is blazingly fast and has good tab support and syntax highlighting for a huge number of languages.
Metapad (Win)
This is extremely fast and about 50k to download. I overwrite Notepad.exe with Metapad.exe on my system and haven't looked back. No syntax highlighting or tabs; just plain powerful text editing support.
Arachnophilia (Win/Java)
I used to use this to maintain my site. It has full HTML tag highlighting and supports multiple files and an internal preview window for web pages, as well as a whole load of macros. (The name? 'A love of webs' :).
NoteTab Light (Win)
A free, very full-featured program. It supports just about anything you could conveivably want to do to plain text, and a little more besides -- however, it's slightly slow to load. Multiple files can be opened on 'tabs', instead of separate windows. Unless you pay for it, there's no syntax highlighting, but it includes an extensive scripting language. There's also
Editpad (Win)
Another multiple-files editor with a free 'lite' version.
First Page (Win)
This is a semi-automated HTML editor, with many built-in construction and preview functions. It's free, and popular acording to their download figures. I prefer smaller lightweight text editors, so I haven't used this myself, but you might be interested in giving it a trial.
There's also VI and EMACS, but I'm steering well clear of that debate :). If you have heard of them, you probably already use one or the other.
Firewalls
ZoneAlarm (Win)
One of the leading free firewall applicatiosn available (a 'Pro' version is also available). For casual users, is an application-level filter that can deny or allow internet access for specific applications. Whilst the free version is lacking in some aspects like port filtering, it's a halfway decent free firewall. I used to run this, but haven't used it for years now.
Kerio (Win)
Another firewall vendor that offers a Personal edition; I have yet to try this.
SyGate (Win)
Likewise, another free firewall.
Games
Soldat (Win)
OK, so it's not an application, and the latest versions are now technically shareware instead of freeware, but it's a great game nonetheless. Think of a cross between "Worms" and "Counter-Strike", with great multiplayer support, and a refreshingly simple story: 'A couple of guys decided to kill each other and you can be one of them'. Runs well on older computers.
Graphics
The GIMP (OSS, Win/Mac/Linux)
No, this isn't what you think. A Linux stalwart, the 'GNU Image Manipulation Program' has been ported over to Windows and Mac! It's worth it simply for the huge number of filters and effects offered, putting Paint Shop Pro to shame. The interface can be tricky, but it's highly reccommended.
IrfanView (Win)
Halfway between an application and utility, this is an excellent freeware graphics viewer. It supports operations like resize and filtering on images, and a massive variety of formats. Best of all, it's got neat 'batch' capabilities if you've got a few hundred images that need tweaking. Give it a try...
Office
OpenOffice (OSS, Win/Linux)
Well, this open-source product is just like Microsoft's Office, only free. It can work with MS Office files, and pulls all the standard tricks like underlining misspelled words and so on. With text document, spreadsheet, database, graphs, formulas, and image support, it's very comprehensive and worth a look.
Webservers
Apache (OSS, Win/Linux/Mac)
The standard. Yes, it requires some configuration, but setting this up on your home computer is a useful setup if you want to get into serious and/or CGI development.
AnalogX SimpleServer (Win)
A 250k web server that you configure by dropping an HTML file into its window. A very quick and easy way of testing out sites 'online'. Has CGI support according to its feature list, but doesn't seem to run PHP/Perl/etc. well.

JavaScript Menu, DHTML and more.


Welcome to TwinHelix Designs! This site is the home of my freelance JavaScript, DHTML, XHTML, CSS and CGI projects.

Scripting Projects


My scripts below are all free to download and use; if you like them, consider making a donation to support their development. See the menu to the left for more scripts and resources!
FreeStyle Menu v1.0 RC11
A very flexible unlimited-level, drop down JavaScript menu that uses UL/LI list data formatted with a CSS menu layout. It's powerful, lightweight and extremely easy to use!
IEPNGFix v1.0 RC4/5
Makes PNG images and backgrounds work in IE 5.5/6.0 without any modifications to your document HTML.
HTMLHttpRequest v1.0beta3
Dynamically request pages from the server and parse/insert them into your document, using XMLHttpRequest or a hidden IFRAME transport for best browser compatibility. It's great for Ajax web apps or as a frameset replacement!
SuperNote v1.0beta2
Easily turn plain footnotes into dynamic, CSS-formatted popup tooltips.
Photo Morpher v1.0 beta
An image gallery on steroids. Blend and morph between images that are defined in a standard list in the page for easy modification and good backwards compatibility.
DragResize v1.0beta
Makes page elements draggable and freely resizeable.
AddEvent Manager
Easily add multiple event handlers to an object across all common browsers.
CheckTree v1.0 RC
Displays and manages a multilevel list of checkboxes.

V4+ Browser Compatible Scripts


Cascading Popup Menu v5.2 RC4
An extremely customisable hierarchial popup JavaScript menu: it's more of a pure JavaScript / DHTML menu system, with flashy effects and cross frames support.
DHTML Scroller v4.0 RC2
An IFRAME replacement, can load external files and scroll vertically using DIVs.
Tipster v3.1 RC
Adds mouse-tracking and fading popup JavaScript / HTML tooltips to your page, or forms them into nested popup menu arrangements.
Object Browser v3.0 RC
Can view and change the Document Object Model in real time. Great for development and debugging scripts.
Cross-Browser DHTML API v1.1 RC
For DHTML coders, to simplify cross-v4-browser coding.

Transparent PNG Fix for IE 5.5 & 6

IE PNG Fix v1.0 RC4


You know that one browser that has only a vague association with modern web standards? Yeah, Internet Explorer. Wouldn't it be great if it supported stuff like translucent PNGs?
Well, now you can add decent PNG support to IE5.5+ on Windows with no changes to your website HTML source code. This script will add near-native PNG support with full alpha opacity, with only one line in your CSS file, that applies to all < img > tags and also background images!

Script License Agreement


IE5.5+ PNG Alpha Fix v1.0RC4
(c) 2004-2008 Angus Turnbull http://www.twinhelix.com
This is licensed under the GNU LGPL, version 2.1 or later.

Download


If you want, you can view an online demonstration.
To download this permanently: iepngfix.zip (15kb).
Preview Release: Download the latest development code (v1.0 RC5 Preview 5, updated 26 January 2008) at the Test Area.

Compatibility


This uses CSS "behaviors", a custom Microsoft extension to CSS. As such, it will not affect any other browsers like Mozilla and Opera which already implement good PNG support. It will also not help IE4.0 and IE5.0, which don't include the necessary IE filter, and does nothing with IE5/Mac (which natively supports translucent PNG foreground images, however).

Archived Versions


This is the first public release of this script.


CSS PNG Image Fix for IE

CSS PNG Image Fix for IE. A modified CSS snippet to automagically replace PNG images with their AlphaImageLoader equivalent in IE6.



PNG & CSS

Goal: alpha transparent PNG backgrounds for Mozilla, Opera, etc. and alternative content (i.e. not-transparent-but-also-nice backgrounds) for IE6, who doesn't like alpha transparency. All this accomplished by a small CSS trick.
Before we start: this text is written inside a div which is called, er, text.
First, I've assigned a background-image to #text meant for display in
IE6:


#text {
background-image: url(iebackground1.png);
}


Then, I made use of a CSS2 selector that IE6 doesn't understand for giving different style instructions to alpha transparency aware browsers, such as :Mozilla, Opera7,etc.::


body>div#text {
background-image: url(alpha1.png);
}



That's it! The most obvious difference is that, in IE6, the background of the div moves up and down when you scroll. In Mozilla & friends however, the div's background feels more like a sort of filter applied on the Squidfinger wallpaper - which is the way alpha transparency should look like.


Also watch the sidebar's background, by the way. Same effect applied there, but with a green (transparent) PNG. And then, some random content, to make you scroll and enjoy the transparency effects even more: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed scelerisque, pede ut vestibulum pretium, dolor purus lacinia libero, non dapibus nisl nisl pellentesque velit. Aliquam sem quam, vestibulum non, ornare ac, eleifend vitae, est. Pellentesque felis. Nulla accumsan ipsum sed enim. Praesent sed enim. Vestibulum urna ligula, volutpat eget, malesuada at, pharetra sed, quam. Morbi a urna vitae orci faucibus tempor. Nam fringilla laoreet enim. Nunc dignissim, arcu ac commodo sagittis, erat enim mattis diam, et porta pede quam at pede. Aliquam erat volutpat. Sed eget leo ut magna cursus sollicitudin. Maecenas facilisis arcu. Aenean felis. Nam placerat sagittis est. Pellentesque tortor sem, mollis id, posuere eu, tincidunt a, nulla. Duis nec elit. Fusce rhoncus, nibh vitae pretium blandit, turpis erat gravida elit, vitae porta est nulla id wisi. Nam sit amet diam vitae ante facilisis laoreet. Curabitur eros risus, bibendum vitae, ullamcorper vestibulum, aliquet ac, ipsum.