Amberjack: A Lightweight JavaScript Library for Website Tours

JavaScriptSearch
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; 07:45 AM

At some point, every webmaster may need to quickly implement an informative website walkthrough for visitors, and this is where Amberjack comes to the rescue.  Amberjack is an open source JavaScript library, which can be used to create helpful tours for a site or an intranet application.

The Amberjack JavaScript library is lightweight (~4K), stable, LGPL licensed, compatible across multiple browsers, and can be set up in several minutes. No software installation is required, and all the code is contained into two types of files: JavaScript for the functionality and CSS for the styling. To make matters even more user-friendly, the project's site at http://www.amberjack.org/ offers a step-by-step tour wizard. The wizard makes tour creation a breeze by allowing users to set desired options through the form and then copy and paste the resulting HTML code into any site's template.

Amberjack works by opening a modal window within the webpage, from where visitors can navigate through both the tour sections and the parent webpage with a single click.

Basic HTML and CSS skills are sufficient to customize the look of a website tour.  Users can share designs on Amberjack's website.