5 April 2008 - Version 0.4 Akihabara Released!

The main aim of this release was to iron out all of the bugs and make everything work the way it should on as many browsers as possible. Getting it to work in Internet Explorer 6 took a lot of time, hacks and patience, but it now works almost as well as the other browsers. Another aim for this release was to get each module fully documented. I settled on a common style for each wiki page that will hopefully make them easy to use. They are by no means finished and I intend to develop them further in the future, as well as adding lots more links for furter reading. My aim is for the sparkl wiki to be a useful resource for web development.

There are also some new modules in this release. The images module that gives some nice classes for flexible images that will float in the text and span half or the full width of their container. There is a code module for styling code examples. This only has classes for html at the moment, but could be expanded in the future to include lots of other languages. The links module provides some basic baseline styling for links. The table module just made it into the last release, but has had a lot of work put into using the most accessible and semantic html. The grids module has also undergone a lot of changes and now has automatic gutters and different, more semantic class names. There is now a vanilla page that demonstrates all of the different modules using a simple, grey theme.

Neil has been busy developing the core Javascript library that should make cross-browser Javascript coding much easier, especially common tasks such as setting cookies and DOM methods. He has also produced some excellent documentation on how to use it. The next release will hopefully have more examples of the Javascript library being utilised.

The next release will also start to incorporate microformats and the Sparkl site will get a bit of a makeover. I'm also working on producing a tutorial in building a page from scratch using Sparkl and hope that more and more themes get developed. Now that Sparkl works, it's time to get it looking better.

14 Feb 2008 - Version 0.3 Yoyogi Released!

This version sees the css dropped from the name, as Sparkl now includes JavaScript! There are 3 really excellent modules provided so far to make event handling, cookie management and AJAX a doddle. A BIG thank you to Neil Anderson for coming on board and providing such excellent work so quickly. I know that Neil has a lot more up his sleeve that means the JavaScript element of Sparkl will really start to take off in future versions.

The CSS has a few new modules - tables has basic styling for tables (but needs quite a lot more work), there is a links module for basic styling of links, a vertical tabs module for vertical tabbed navigation and a gutters module to build gutters in the main content sections.

This version also has a couple of new themes. A business style look and a more design orientated look. You can see these by clicking on the tabs at the top of the example page. The themes have been packaged up and you can download them using the link on the right. It would be great to have many more themes in future versions, so have a go at creating one!

There have also been lots of minor changes to the modules to get it working cross browser, but more work is still needed. Any help in spotting any errors is appreciated.

2 Feb 2008

Version 0.2 (codenamed 'Meguro') Released! Download from the link on the right. This version has a slightly different file structure to organise images and the look and feel has been changed with an updated logo and different colour scheme (lots more blue and no pink or green). This now replaces version 0.1 (codenamed 'Narita')