If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Simon Brüchner has created a great Ajax powered image map creator. This is a great online tool that lets you build an image map as you would in a program like Dreamweaver. As you click to build the hotspots, the HTML is generated on the fly.

Simon uses Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Javscript Vectorgraphics Library, dp.SyntaxHighlighter, YUI Reset CSS, and YUI Fonts CSS to accomplish the creation of the Imagemap.

Paul Armstrong introduced Awesome Box on to the scene today. Awesome Box is basically a rewrite of Lightbox that uses YUI instead of Scriptaculous. Unfortunately, Awesome Box in its current state doesn’t work on IE6. Of course, Paul says he’ll work on that very soon.

Aside from that, Awesome Box looks to be an… awesome… (yeah I know I’m a dork) addition. I’ve used lightbox on a couple apps but I really like the clean load and interface of this. You can also have long descriptions for your photo and show your photos in a slideshow type format.

Over on Ajaxian Dion Almaer posted about SWFUpload, which is a small Javascript/Flash library that is a great improvement in the way file uploads work online.

Created by Lars Huring and his team, SWFUpload recplaces the contents of a div with a small transparent flash file that takes care of all the upload and frontend, Javascript is used for configuration and callbacks, HTML/CSS is there for styling and looks.

Not only is the experience better than most file uploads, there are also a number of added features:

• You can specify which file types are to be displayed in the upload dialog box.
• Multiple files can be uploaded by using CTRL/SHIFT+Click to select them.
• Trigger Javascript functions at the start, cancel, progress and complete stages.
• Get the file information and size before the upload even starts.
• Style upload buttons any way that you want
• No page reloads meaning you can display the uploaded files as soon as they are finished.

The one feature that I think is great (which is why it’s not in a bullet) is that SWFUpload will gracefully degrade to a normal HTML upload form if Flash or Javascript isn’t available.