Bicycle 1.2 Project Page

Why "Bicycle"?

When you are too lazy to walk but you don't need a car, a bicycle is a smart mean of transport to reach a place. Bicycle JLS is not meant for large javascript projects or web applications 'cause it's not as complete as other libraries (like Mootools or jQuery), but it's an efficient aid for everyday scripting, to make code less verbose and make Javascript a "better place".

Introducing the Core (or global) package

Bicycle Core is a Javascript Library Collection (JLS), i.e. a mix of small libraries, prototypes and functions collected and packed in just one small file of about 9Kb (with YUI Compressor) . Many web developers use these kind of files to add those much needed functionality missing in the core Javascript language, and call them main.js, common.js etc.
From this point of view Bicycle JLS is "nothing new", but everyone who has faced the collection of a common.js knows how difficult is to travel the Web searching for "that" function or "those" prototypes. Here comes Bicycle JLS!

Bicycle Chain, Addons and Telegraph

Starting from version 1.2, Bicycle provides a convenience wrapper to add chainability to its methods in the way many popular libraries, such as jQuery, do. As a result, a new global object $b will be the heart of your code.

Beyond this simple feature, many other new methods and functions have been added to the library, in particular DOM ready event, AJAX functionality (reference) and a complete form objects handling called Telegraph (see $b.getForm )... and everything fits in just 22Kb.

Beside this, you may always just pick the Core only, or add chain, addons, and telegraph components. As a result you can provide functionality on-demand, making it possible to save bandwidth and pageload time.

Extending Bicycle

As a bonus feature, you can extend Bicycle chain main object $b with new methods by the static function $b.extend():

$b.extend({
 	myfunction : function (v) {
			alert(v);
 		return this; // add this line to make the method chainable
 	}
});

As a last feature, since Bicycle just handles simple CSS selectors, you may use your CSS Selector of choice:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="bicycle-min.js"></script>
<!-- Loading the Sizzle engine -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="sizzle.js"></script>

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

$b.engine = Sizzle;

$b.ready(function () {
		var els= $b("ul#list li"); 
});

</script>

More infos here.

Read, use, suggest

Aside from this introduction you may read the complete documentation with sample codes here.