MooTools Tutorials

  • Using Dotter for Form Submissions

    One of the plugins I'm most proud of is Dotter. Dotter allows you to create the typical "Loading..." text without using animated images. I'm often asked what a sample usage of Dotter would be; form submission create the perfect situation. The following code changes a submit button's text to "Submitting..." (and animated dot patterns) during the submission process, resetting the button text when the AJAX request is complete.

  • Accomplishing Common Tasks Using MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo

    I've been dabbling with Dojo quite a bit lately. I feel great about my MooTools and jQuery skills but I'm a bit still raw when it comes to Dojo. What's important that I keep in mind, however, is that the tasks I'm trying to accomplish are the same — the syntax is simply different. Here are a few basic JavaScript tasks and the syntax to accomplish them within each awesome framework.

  • Create a Trailing Mouse Cursor Effect Using MooTools

    Remember the old days of DHTML and effects that were an achievement to create but had absolutely no value? Well, a trailing mouse cursor script is sorta like that. And I'm sorta the type of guy that creates effects just because I can. Here's how you can create a trailing mouse cursor script for your website.

  • Automatically Generate a Photo Gallery from a Directory of Images: Updated

    Two years ago Chris Coyier wrote an outstanding tutorial detailing how you can generate a photo gallery based on the images within two directories: a thumbnails directory and an originals directory. I've decided to take his tutorial a step further by showing you how to generate thumbnails for the gallery using PHP. I've also implemented a MooTools lightbox: Smoothbox. The following code will show you how to create a beautiful photo gallery by simply dumping your photos in a directory.

  • Prototype’s Element.on with MooTools

    Prototype 1.7RC1 was released on Monday. While the big news with this release appears to be the implementation of John Resig's Sizzle selector engine, what caught my eye was the new on method. This new Element.on method is very similar to Prototype's Element.observe method but with a few enhancements (event relaying, event stop). While I don't necessarily care about the enhancements, I simply love that the event method is called "on." Using "on" as the method name makes it sound more like the event itself. Here's how easy it is to use "on" instead of "addEvent" for your events.

  • Smooth Scrolling with MooTools Fx.SmoothScroll

    I get quite a few support requests for my previous MooTools SmoothScroll article and the issue usually boils down to the fact that SmoothScroll has become Fx.SmoothScroll. Here's a simple usage of Fx.SmoothScroll.

  • MooTools Zoomer Plugin

    I love to look around the MooTools Forge. As someone that creates lots of plugins, I get a lot of joy out of seeing what other developers are creating and possibly even how I could improve them. One great plugin I've found is Zoomer by Anton Samoylov. Zoomer provides an elegant method for zooming in on large images.

  • Growl-Style Notifications Using MooTools Roar

    When I think of premier MooTools plugin developers, Harald "digitarald" Kirschner is usually one of the first people that come to mind. Harald has built some of MooTools' most popular plugins, including AutoCompleter, FancyUpload, and History Manager. My favorite plugin created Harald is Roar — a Growl clone built with MooTools.

  • Track Clicks Outside Active Elements with MooTools or jQuery

    Buried in the MooTools and jQuery code from my Twitter Dropdowns posts was a small but useful snippet of code: hide an "active" element when the user clicks outside of the elements.

  • Create a Quick MooTools Slideshow with Preloading Images

    I've been creating a lot of slideshow posts lately. Why, you ask? Because they help me get chicks. A quick formula for you: