Modern websites use a lot of javascript to do all sorts of things that used to be reserved for flash; such as carousels, lighbox effects (actually called modal dialogues), fancy menu animations and other such things. We naturally spend a lot of time implementing these features as javascript adds yet another layer that has to be developed, debugged, tested, tweaked, etc. Not to mention having to make it all work in the various browsers, particularly the different flavours of IE. Every development team has a different set of tools that they use when building websites and thankfully there are a miriad of readily available tools out there starting with javascript frameworks (we use JQuery), to the effect libraries and the modules/plugins built on top of them. These packaged tools are a godsend when you need to get something done and don’t have the time to figure out how to do it from scratch.

The Problem:

The problem we came across is when you need to do something that the plugins author did not implement or intend for the plugin to accomplish. You now have to waid through hundreds of lines of code and try to wrap your head around someone else’s baby that is more then likely using a different style of programming and code layout then you are used to. This is compounded by the fact that many of these plugins were written to do everything and the kitchen sink, but of course, not what you need it to do.. Which leads to dirty hacks, large modules or even having to resort to using different implementations of the same effect on the same site!

The Solution:

To deal with all of these issues, we decided to start building our own tools from scratch. Not only would this allow us to flex our programming muscles, but it would also make us more Ninja with javascript and our framework of choice, JQuery. Now that we intimately know every line of code in our tools, it is much easier for us to extend them and achieve whatever it is a website requires. We started by writing a lightbox (modal dialogue) and carousel replacement and have named them BaseBox and BaseShift respectively. We are not claiming that these are works of art, better then other implementations or even done ‘properly’ (what ever that means?), but they work for us and they are our own. We know them, we love them and now you can have them!

http://www.base-10.net/basetools

We have decided to release them as beerware (thank you fancybox author) and offer no warrenties what so ever. We will update them as we work on them and hopefully they will grow into something truely great. We also plan to release other tools as they mature. So have fun and let us know what you think.