Develop Reference

JavaScript textarea editor with custom formatting rules

i need to implement simple text editor with custom (probably dynamic) rules. For example, if user change text somehow i want to run regex (or callback method or something else) on this text and apply formatting for it. For ex all ip addresses in text should have red color, names from specified range - black, all words starting from "abc" - green.
So basically what i need is:
- simple text editor based on text area
- ability so add rules applying to text withing text area
I reviewed a lot of related resources and didn't found any simple solution yet. As for now I've started to implement my own editor with using of contenteditable attribute and JQuery.
I never wrote such functionality before, so could you please point me to the right direction? Maybe i can use already implemented tools or specific strategy?
Thanks a lot.

Maybe it would be useful for someone.
After a bit of investigation at first i tried to use jQuery Highlight Plugin, but it does not cover my all of needs so i used Codemirror editor, which i found very nice and customizable.
I wrote my custom mode and it's working perfectly.
As start point i used this article

A Way for Presenting Useful Links in the Website

I am working in my senior project which is a web-based system and I want to dedicate one page of the website for some useful links that are related to my website. I tried to present them in such an innovative way like showing a brief description (in a balloon or a new line or anything) about the link when the mouse comes over it.
I heard there are some JQuery templates for that. I tried to search about them but I did not get anything.
So could you please help me in this issue?
Please provide me with any guide that is helpful to do this issue.
Also, please provide me with your suggestions for presenting the useful links in somehow a nice way.

What you're talking about is a tooltip. I like the tooltip component from jQuery Tools quite a lot, and the documentation is excellent.

There's no need to use JQuery!
What you want can be achieved using only CSS.
Utilizing the :hover selector, its possible to display a box over your link when you move your mouse over it.
Here's a good link to get started.

How about something like Simpletip: http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/, or it's successor qTip: http://craigsworks.com/projects/qtip2/ (hat tip #Edmund Y).
If you look at this Xmarks page, it pretty much lists all of the most popular JQuery tooltip plugins: http://www.xmarks.com/topic/jquery_tooltip, sorted by the number of people that have bookmarked them!

Javascript plugin

i was wondering if anybody knows (and if there is such a thing) a javascript plugin that can do to following:
on the website http://www.worldofmerix.com/ click on any of the menu buttons on top for eg. "about us"; then you see a line appear in the middle and expand so that you can see the entire div...
I need a similar animation effect, flash is out of the question, so i have to use javascript...
i have some ideas on making it with some "smooth div fade in/out" js plugins, but i was wondering if there is a plugin SPECIFIC to the thing i need?
thanks very much in advance for the anwsers!

Ok, since you didn't state any jQuery "dont-wanting" I'd recommend you to check out jQuery. It is a set of JavaScript libraries that help you manage your HTML and CSS with some light code.
You can see HERE, HERE and HERE how it can animate divs and other elements (I see that it is what you need).
You can check out the official web site and there you can find all kinds of examples and documentation that you will ever need. I recommend you to see THIS (click RUN).

Javascript/CSS Tooltip that you can hover over and click

I'm looking for a javascript/css tooltip that can do the following:
Shows up when you hover over some page element (such as a help icon.)
Repositions itself based on the browser window (for example if it's on the far right of the page, it will show itself to the left of the page element, otherwise it'll show to the right of it. That way it won't go off of the page.)
You can hover over the tooltip and it won't disappear. This way you can select text or click on a hyperlink within the tooltip.
I'm using dojo but their dijit tooltip seems to be very inflexible, as it can only spawn off of another dijit element, most commonly a dijit button. I'd rather not having to reference a whole other javascript framework like jquery or prototype so hopefully someone has a way to do this using just one basic script.

Unfortunately for you, the tooltip style plugins available for Dojo are nowhere near the other frameworks (namely: jQuery). Because of this, you have three options:
Reinvent the wheel. Take what you learned from other tooltip scripts and build your own from scratch. This option takes the longest development time (and in the inevitable maintenance of cross-browser bugs).
Extend an existing plugin. You can take a current tooltip plugin for dojo (or perhaps a library agnostic plugin) and extend its functionality by adding your own scripts to it.
Use jQuery. This has already been said twice by others, but let me say it again. jQuery has a thriving plugin ecosystem, and if development/maintenance times are truly important to you, then jQuery should definitely be considered.

Again, assuming that you don't mind using jQuery (it's awesome!!) I played around with a few tooltips and found this one the best: http://flowplayer.org/tools/tooltip/index.html
Extensible with good documentation. Check out the 'position' config option and see if that does what you need.
Good luck!

If you do decide to use jQuery, qTip is a nice jQuery plugin that is very configurable and will probably meet your needs. http://craigsworks.com/projects/qtip/

I have been using several jQuery plugins, including jQuery TOOLS, Beauty Tips and Cluetip. I think all three meet your requirements.
If instead of a black box you want to know what's going on, I recommend this tutorial:
http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/simple-tooltip-w-jquery-css/
(and take a look at the comments section)

The dijit.Tooltip documentation gives two simple examples, the first attaching a tooltip to simple DOM nodes seems to meet your needs. The second happens to wire up the tooltip to another dijit-based widget (a button). Note that the property connectId takes a dom node reference or string id. Note that dijit may be used either programmatically or using a markup-based declaration.
Different tooltip implementations may have different functionality. Among other things, dijit.Tooltip provides ARIA accessibility for screen readers, keyboard access, bidi enablement, and automatic positioning around a node but within the boundaries of the screen.

How to implement "Drag-Select" functionaility within Javascript?

I would like to implement some "Drag-select" functionality into a project of mine but i'm unsure how to implement it.
The creation of the selection area is not a problem, it's the capturing of elements within the area itself which is confusing me.

A jQuery example found here.
Selectable Demo

If you can use jquery there are some plugins that do this operation. Anyway you can check if the position of the element is contained into the selection area coordinates and, if it is, you select it.

Script.aculo.us has a nice implementation of drag-n-drop, but then you have to include this rather large library. Or you could investigate how they done it for that matter, since its open-source.