01/06/2008
Sourceforge has approved the project. The code should be available via subversion. If it's not, try again in a few hours while I'm
waiting in the import queue. I'm creating an archive of the files, and the initial 0.1 release should be available via that download.
Look for documentation and other information to pop up there.
Check out the project at Visual JavaScript on SourceForge.net
12/31/2007
Happy New Year!
I just wanted to say thanks to Dustin Diaz for linking to Visual JavaScript. Check
out his site for a lot of great JavaScript information and resources, but chances are you came here from his site anyway =)
I am still waiting on the review of the Source Forge project and will get the code up on there as soon as I can.
12/21/2007
VJS: Visual JavaScript is a platform for designing programs in JavaScript. I originally got the idea in early 2007 by working with IDEs (Visual Studio, KDevelop, etc.). I took a look around for any other projects by the name of Visual JavaScript and I could only find this. It seemed pretty old, but if a name change is required, please feel free to contact me through my website Primate Applications. In fact, contact me with any feedback or if you are interested in helping as well.
The best way to describe VJS is to see it for yourself. Check out the Visual JavaScript Demo.
Click on the elements in the "Fields" section to add it to the "Form". You can then drag your elements around
on the form and define the settings and events for that element. You can also resize the form by dragging on it like you would normally resize something.
When you are ready to test out your new form, then change from "Design View" to "Run View". VJS will keep your Form in memory when you want to go back to
"Design View".
The cool part here is that the Forms are all eventually saved as JSON. This would allow you to save the Form to a database and recall it later with AJAX or however else you want to load it up. The Design Tool was one part of a large project I was working on but lost the time to finish it up. I was shooting for making an entire framework where you save the Form and then you could add forms to the menus of your "Web 2.0" program. This way it would minimize the amount of page loading, though I admit that I haven't done anything for the Back Button issue. The JS also minimizes quite well, but I've left the code readable so people can download and experiment.
This site has a LOT of work to be done, and VJS has a LOT of work to be done to it as well. I have tested VJS in Internet Explorer 6 & 7, FireFox 2.x and 3.0b, Safari 3.0 (Windows only since I don't have a Mac), and Opera 1.5. It mostly works in the IE browsers (I was cutting corners to get the inital demo done), and works well in Firefox 2.x, Firefox 3.x, Safari, and Opera 1.5. It does not work in Opera 1.2, or at least there are a lot of drawing quirks that were fixed from 1.2 to 1.5. I am hopeful to get the source up either on SourceForge or Google soon. Visual JavaScript is licensed under the MIT license. Some of the CSS and design work was done by Eric Chamberlain, and it makes heavy use of Prototype. Enjoy!
I'll also put a link to it on my main site at Primate Applications and on my blog at Code Munkey.
The MIT License
Copyright (c) 2007 Ray Hauge
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.