Element Object in Prototype Revised

One of my biggest peeves of Prototype was the singleton nature of the Element object. Doing Element.hide('myelement') just didn't feel right. Justin of Encytemedia has highlighted the recent updates which now allow for the much more elegant $('myelement').hide(). You'll need to download the latest version of Prototype (currently/still 1.5.0_pre0).

Justin also demonstrates the ability to extend the Element object with your own custom methods (which I appropriated):

   Custom = {
     contrast: function(element) {
       var actor = $(element);
       actor.setStyle({color: '#000', backgroundColor: 'yellow'});
       return actor;
     }
   }

   Object.extend(Element.Methods, Custom);

Object.extend() copies the properties of one object to another. In this example, Justin creates an object with one method and then uses Object.extend() to copy that method onto the Element.Methods object.