I've been fooling around with Papervision 3D lately, which I enjoy a little too much :). Hereby a little car controlling / handling experiment, in cartoony cell shaded style.

A new version of the calendar and datepicker Eightysix has been released!

Version 1.1 offers various neat fixes and additions:

• Created a workaround for the MooTools Date parser bug with '-' as delimiter;
• Added new function getDate;
• Added date correction functionality, which tries to correct the date if it is outside the maximum or minimum date, a exluded weekday or exluded date.
• Added arrow key navigation option;
• Fixed disappearing navigation arrow bug in month view;
• Changed CSS names to more unique names;
• Dates are now stored instead of set on the elements;
• Added event functionality;
• Removed pickFunction, use events instead;
• Included more advanced examples.

Examples, documentation and the download
are available here.

Here's an update for the handy function which eases the development process with Actionscript 3 in Flash greatly: the equivalent of PHP's recursive print function print_r, letting you dump objects and arrays to the console in a way humanly readable way.

Changes:

• The function has been added to a Tools class
• The level of recursively is limited, to avoid stack overflows
• The output is enriched with variable type information

After a stunning 55,000 downloads of vlaCalendar version 2 and two years after vlaCalendar version 1, the Vista-like Ajax Calendar is finally ready for its successor, Calender Eightysix!

Where the vlaCalendar fails, having disadvantages like making use of AJAX and PHP, Calendar Eightysix succeeds; being completely build from scratch with pure javascript, making use of some of the superb features the latest MooTools javascript framework has to offer.

Calendar Eightysix is an unobtrusive developer friendly javascript calendar and datepicker offering a better user experience for date related functionalities.

Key features:

• Quick navigation by jumping back and forth between months, years and decades without drop-down boxes
• Highly and easily customizable
• Packed with three themes
• Lightweight (9.5 kB compressed)
• Purely javascript; AJAX-less and no PHP needed
   

Examples, documentation and the download
are available here.

Update November 11, 2009: Version 1.0.1 released.
Update April 27, 2010: Version 1.1 released.

After eight months of traveling I'm finally back home. During this time I didn't have much time to help with problems regarding the vlaCalendar. My excuse for that. I'm aware of the problems with the calendar regarding the Client-side Extension and regarding IE8.

I've decided not to provide any more support for the vlaCalendar - perhaps besides some quick fixes - and focus on a completely new version branded as 'Calendar Eightysix'. Calendar Eightysix will be ajax-less, better customizable and will have more features. Drop feature requests in the comments.

After dozens of emails and comments regarding commercial use of the calendar I've decided to provide a commercial license for the Vista-like Ajax Calendar. The license includes vlaCalendar version 1, version 2 and the client-side extension version 1. Examples of commercial use include:

• websites with any advertisements;
• websites owned or operated by corporations;
• websites designed to promote other products, such as a band or artist; and,
• products (e.g. a CMS) that bundle the vlaCalendar into its offering.

With this license Commercial entities can:

• use the vlaCalendar on their websites and can include it in applications; and,
• use altered versions of the vlaCalendar - but they cannot distribute or sell those alterations or the original code.

You can view and purchase the license here.

Here's a handy little function for easing the development process with Actionscript 3 in Flex and Flash: an equivalent of PHP's recursive print function print_r, which displays objects and arrays in a way that's readable by humans.

Update March 22, 2010: An update of this function has been released.

The initial vlaCalendar was developed for use with database data. So the calendar uses AJAX calls to PHP parsed documents. This made the calendar only usable for users who have a PHP server.

Huy Do and I developed an extension that makes the vlaCalendar AJAX-less, and thus PHP-less: the client-side only extension for vlaCalendar v2.1.