Spry Team

Happy Friday Spry:readers,

As I mentioned before, we are busy finishing Spry 1.6.
I thought I would give a heads-up on what to expect in the next release.

Since pretty early on, we have been criticized for using custom attributes and that turned into "Spry doesn't follow standards." Well, that is partially right. Spry Data uses custom attributes, as allowed in XHTML. Spry Effects and Widgets have no such concerns. So we decided to take this release to answer some of those concerns, both with code and with words. This next release will focus on accessibility, standards and things like unobtrusive Spry techniques.

We often hear things like: "My page doesn't validate", but find that many users don't know what that means. So we are going to talk about what validating, standards, eXtensible HTML and custom attributes means, and also try to present the pros and cons of each idea. It's more of an 'education' push rather than a 'convincing' push. If users really understand what these things mean, then they can decide what is important.

We worked on what we are calling the Element Selector. This allows page manipulation via CSS Selectors. Those familiar with DOMQuery or jquery might be interested in checking it out. This will allow for unobtrusive Spry pages, allowing Spry attributes and constructors to be attached and fired off from external javascript files. We have always said that making unobtrusive Spry pages is possible; now we offer a tool to make it that much easier.

We are also adding keyboard navigation to the Menu Bar and ensuring consistency between our widgets on the accessibility front.

We will be rounding out our Form Validation widget collection.

But I am not going to give away the whole thing now...
Look for Spry 1.6 in early October.

Speaking of October, back in the previous one, Kin made a Spry Poker Game for the MAX conference in Vegas. Check it out: http://shinarp.com/SprySamples/iPhone/poker/

Thanks,
Don