I love google trends. On the other hand I’ve never been a huge fan of Flash so it warms my heart to see Jon Resig’s project kicking some serious ass.

Even 12-year-olds can do it.

I knew Prototype had evolved somewhat since I’d last used it extensively back in late 2006, and I also suspected they had implemented something similar.. but Google was not forthcoming.

The traditional way to do this (pre jQuery) was to put your javascript directly before the closing body tag. This way the browser is unable to execute it prior to loading the rest of the page. However this is kind of clunky if you are trying to abstract your javascript to a linked file, or would like to keep your behavioral code (javascript) separate to your markup (xhtml).

An alternative is to use the onload event – in Prototype you would use something like Event.observe(window, 'load', function() { 
.. do stuff ..
});

The problem with this method is that obviously your users have to wait for all the document’s images and other content to finish loading before they can properly interact with the page. Most users aren’t that patient, and will try to use features that aren’t ready to be used, presenting them with a broken user experience.

Here’s the Prototype implementation of document.ready as explained by the Prototype JS website.

Lifehacker has a nice tour of the site, with annotations layered on top of the screenshots.

Nothing like this in SA yet, though I’m sure someone’s thinking about running with it right now.