March 2nd, 2010 by Mark Stone
On 23rd February 2010 we released Ample SDK 0.9.0, below are some highlights:
1) New JavaScript Charts
With this release we include preview of JavaScript charts implementation in Ample SDK. The charts are not production-ready and should be used with care, much of functionality missing or working incorrectly.
Multi-series charts:
- Bar (normal, stacked, percentage)
- Column (normal, stacked, percentage)
- Line (normal, stacked, percentage)
- Area (normal, stacked, percentage)
- Radar
- Doughnut
- Bubble
- Map
Single-series charts:
2) SVG 1.1 implementation for Internet Explorer
- @transform attribute on all shapes and on groups fully supported
- Text module quirks fixed
- Image element implemented with support for opacity and transformations
- Colors specified in percentage rgb(0%, 90%, 19%)
- Colors with opacity rgb(100, 200, 12, 0.5)
- currentColor and @color attribute
- :hover pseudo-class for A element
- xml:base on image tag
- resolved many issues with scripting elements
Some examples that could not render in previous versions: SVG Grapes, Matrix, Scim. In fact all demos available in the download package now run!
We also added W3C official SVG 1.1 Test Suite (Tiny) into the project to test our implementation against and already resolved several issues thanks to that quite comprehensive set of tests.
In a hope to hear your feedback!
December 2nd, 2009 by Mark Stone
1. Ample SDK gone Open-Source
As we promised at the Ajax Experience and SVG Open conferences, and later on announced in a blog post, Ample SDK is Open-Source project as of 1st November, 2009. You can now use it under GPL or MIT licenses. The simple reason why project had been closed-source for the first year is because the lead developer, Sergey Ilinsky, was bound by a contract with his previous employer.
Several other new articles published that might be of your interest:
2. Project Changes
Below we only highlight changes that may affect existing code, the bug fixes and further development is not mentioned here.
Several minor changes happened this month include:
- ample.$getContainerPosition removed, use element.getBoundingClientRect
- ample.getElementPosition removed, use element.getBoundingClientRect
- $setCapture/$releaseCapture methods became public: setCapture/releaseCapture
- removed private $handleEvent member (was only used within Core/runtime)
- Ample SDK build now includes pre-processed CSS documents, that can be used on a page with regular text/css mime-type
3. New development
We have started implementation of Charting technology. The scope of the project is to implement all major chart types, such as: Bar, Bubble, Doughnut, Funnel, Line, Pie, Radar and Map charts.
Another new project is XML/JSON-RPC APIs. Although most of the Client-Server communication can be managed with the help of XMLHttpRequest object, we’ve got several requests for specialized APIs.
4. Testing set up
We have set up JSUnit unit testing framework. New development will be accompanied with relevant unit testing commits, old code will get unit tests with the time.
5. Other updates
Keep an eye on Ample SDK, next…
October 31st, 2009 by Mark Stone
We are all set to go Open-Source in a couple of days! Source code is in the cloud, links created, tutorials written, reference updated. Look now into new contributing section for ideas and directions while we are still busy preparing The Announcement to appear on Ajaxian.com and freshmeat.net!
And yes, you may already find source open somewhere on GitHub.
October 20th, 2009 by Mark Stone
You can now start playing with Ample SDK project and its technologies without having to download and deploy the project on your site! Just go to the new <Sandbox /> in the examples section and copy-paste XUL, SVG, HTML, JavaScript and see it live!
October 15th, 2009 by Mark Stone
We’ve split up documentation into tutorials and reference. Now Reference contains pure API-related details, while Tutorials hosts guides and articles.
The new Tutorials section got following documents:
Check them out and let us know what do you think!
July 24th, 2009 by Mark Stone
An entire week was spent on lifting up our SVG implementation for Internet Explorer. The result is very impressive and you will soon see examples and demos highlighting results. With this effort we believe we have approached the edge - VML cannot do more useful work for SVG. Yet the functionality implemented is enough to display very complex static and dynamic SVG drawings.
Meanwhile I’d like to mention the improvements and additions:
- Text Module: text, textPath and tspan elements implemented
- Gradients Module: linearGradient and radialGradient elements implemented
- Path Module: path command parsing issues resolved
- Fixed issues with strokes, such as: stroke color modification at runtime, stroke-width rendering, stroke-linejoin implemented
- Fixed issues with transformations: scaling, translating
The reference will be updated with the new elements shortly after the new 0.8.7 release, scheduled for 26th July.
June 10th, 2009 by Mark Stone
HTML5 adds many goodies to the HTML world. One of these goodies is a re-worked Forms module, now with even more UI controls, input data validation and other. However the target year for the implementation of HTML5 technology is currently set to 2022 (let’s not count on the most awaited video and audio tags already available from several web browsers).
In Ample SDK it is possible to enable/extend any markup in a web browser, so you will see and be able to play with HTML5 forms module cross-browser soon, as the work on its implementation has already started!
May 5th, 2009 by Mark Stone
Developing true client-side applications that run in a web-browser is simple when concerns are separated and proper technologies used. Ample SDK helps you managing GUI of your application more efficiently by letting you define Application UI with XML, style UI with CSS and develop logic against standard DOM API. We have written a great tutorial on all of the aforementioned aspects:
Check the tutorial out and leave your feedback on the contents!
April 17th, 2009 by Mark Stone
There is a new tutorial on how to get started with Ample SDK: Getting Started.
In this guide you will learn:
- Where to dowload Ample SDK
- How to set up development environment
- How to deploy Ample SDK
April 3rd, 2009 by Mark Stone
The support for Effects Manager is scheduled to be dropped in favor of new SMIL 3.0 implementation that is already available in Ample SDK. The later is way more powerful both in features and performance.
The scripting API to animations dynamic instantiation is yet to be defined.