IE6 in SP3 has the same version of jscript (@_jscript_version) number as IE7. (5.7 in this case). If you’re using jscript to target conditional compilation, heads up.

Tags: ie6, ie7, conditional compilation

Ever since Awesomebox closed down, I’ve been looking for a YUI-based lightbox script. Looks like I found it in Shadowbox. The best part: it’s completely library agnostic: you can use adapters to run it off any of the big libraries (YUI, jQuery, ext …).

It also aces the "hot lightbox opening animation test." Nice!

And on the side, a libary-agnostic app like this? About time! When are we going to stop seeing a billion different plugins in a billion different libraries and instead see one or two really great plugins that can run anywhere? I guess the limiting factor is the amount of time plugin authors can spend here. Wouldn’t a JavaScript library common architecture be something worthwhile: write it once, follow the plugin standards, and run it anywhere? How about it, library people???

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while, but was waiting on a couple post-launch releases that added some “extras” that I liked.

NikonUSA.com was re-designed and re-built by my company, Molecular. We launched in late February and this was a total overhaul: new CMS (Interwoven LiveSite/TeamSite), new design, and plenty of custom code. I built the entire front-end here, from the overall architecture to writing XSL to build HTML to build pages.

There’s lots and lots of custom stuff I wrote from “Quick View” overlays to DOM stylesheet manipulations, and plenty of YUI, awesomebox, and yCarousel to go around, too.

Cool stuff to look for:

• “Product Detail” page— This one mashes up YUI’s tab component, custom flyout code that I wrote, ycarousel, awesomebox for lightboxing images/swfs/video, and all kinds of loading magic. The D300 serves as a nice example. Take a look at that “Media Bar” right there! Plenty of jazzy stuff.
• Pages I designed: the low-bandwidth homepage and search results page.
• JavaScript-to-XML-to-Flash (built by Alisdair Mills) on the homepage.
• Product views, sample photography, and other images being cranked out by ImageMagick scripts that I wrote (ah, Perl!).
• Liberal uses of iepngfix for good old IE6.
• Plenty of tricks (view source) to add in browser-specific stylesheets and extra print media targeting.
• The CSS-only top nav. Tried and true but always nice to show as cross-browser.

I’m most proud of being able to wrangle some nice, semantic HTML in there. The “AJAX” features feel natural, too, something I always like to do in an app: the lightboxes and carousel presentation makes sense and feels right in context; it doesn’t feel “bolted on”, like these flashy bits sometimes do. I can also now give dissertations on Flash/DHTML layering, ImageMagick, and many other cool things.

I may add a few posts describing bits and pieces of functionality in the future; the front-end here was huge, and I built a lot of stuff (and trained users, and designed pages…). But, it’s still a launch!

Tags: nikon, nikonusa, design, build, launch, javascript, html, flash