jQuery Impromptu – alert and confirm replacement with form support

jQuery Impromptu is an extention to help provide a more pleasant way to spontaneously prompt a user for input. More or less this is a great replacement for an alert, prompt, and confirm. Not only does it replace these but it also allows for creating forms within these controls. This is not intended to be a modal replacement, just a quick tool to prompt user input in a fashionable way.

This is a good plugin to replace alert() and confirm() methods using callback functions. Fully stylabe using CSS. Lots of examples are shown in the site. Read more

Sexy Alert Box for Mootools

It is an excellent script to replace the javascript alert() function. It has good animation effects and lot of customization options. Read more

Three jQuery modal plugins to repace alert and confirm

alert() and confirm() are two javascript functions that you should not use in your web 2.0 sites . The main problem with these are the way those blocks the user from interacting with browser. They are modal in behaviour, that means the user should take an action before he can do anything with browser. He can’t even switch to another tab. Here, we suggest three jQuery plugins to ditch the notorious alert() function.

They are jQuery Modal Dialog, jqModal, jQuery SimpleModal Read more

jQuery BlockUI Plugin

It is a unique jquery plugin to prevent the user from clicking on page elements. For eg:, we may use this script to prevent the repeated clicking on submit button, wait for an Ajax response etc. Read more

Highslide – The best image gallery script?

Highslide is a standalone javascript library created mainly for showing image galleries in a more user friendly way. HTML/Ajax and Flash support is added as plugins. It has improved a lot over time. Now it is in version 4.0

Unlike many other libraries, multiple images can be opened at the same time. And a user can arrange the images as he wish on the browser. So it is definitly more usable than image gallery script that can show only one image – typical example is lightbox effect (opening the next closes the current).

The animation is also brilliant. Very smooth zooming of images. To open an image, you just need to click and to close, click on it again (Customizable in different ways). If you want to open two images, just click on the required images and those two will be popped up. Opening one image does not close the other.

Advantages:

• Stand alone javascript. Does not need a library.
• The most user friendly way to show images
• Good effects
• Can show HTML, AJAX content or Flash.
• Can open multiple images
• The opened image windows are draggable so that the user can arrange it in anyway. This is very useful if you want to compare two images.
• Creative Commons License – Free for personal use

Disadvantages:

• Not free for commercial sites. Requries a license. It can be purchased for one site or unlimited

The author has given good documentation and examples in his site highslide.com

Another cool site to check out is, http://youflow.finnrudolph.de. The author has successfully combined coverflow, youtube API and highslide to create a good mashup.

Is it the best?

Well, I think it has improved a lot. Using this script you can completely avoid browser popup windows. The ability to show images and non image (html, iframe) contents in a more userfriendly way makes it one of the best script ever made. The only drawback I see is the license. What do you think?