Web Geekology 101
One thing missing from the Prototype Framework Class object is the ability to observe and fire events. Even though classes do not allow one to observe an event on the class itself, there are still a couple of ways to handle observing and firing events within a class.
Read more on Proto.Observable – Prototype Class Event Handling Mix-in…
This is inherited from the techniques used in A List Apart – Text-Resize Detection. When I wrote this class and wanted to write about it, Mislav created another Prototype based text resize script. However, I’m still going to write about it 
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Read more on Proto.TextResizeDetection – Prototype Text Resize Detection…
After some researching, I’ve extended the Form.Element.Methods with a copyToClipboard method. An example of usage: $('myinput').copyToClipboard();.
A few quick notes about the clipboard and browsers.
Natively in IE5+, you can gain access to the clipboard via the window.clipboardData object. If you wanted to gain access to the clipboard in Firefox, you have to enable security preferences in your user preferences. I couldn’t find a native solution for Opera or Safari. As a result of Firefox, Opera and Safari not having direct access to the clipboard, Flash presents us with an opportunity to gain access.
A question came up in #prototype today, “How can I observe a state change (checked – on/not-checked – off) on a checkbox when the state is changed by the user (mouse click) or programmatically?”. Simple right? Just observe the change event on the checkbox and that should fire every time the value property changes. Only if it was that simple!
I’ve asked this same question myself, but today I am finally taking the time to write about it.
Normally, people might think “I need to find out the x,y where the user clicked and see if that’s within the area of my element”. The answer is much easier than that.
Read more on Detect when a click is “outside” of an element…