For quite some time I’ve been dissatisfied with the software available on Linux to work crosswords.  Most sites provide a java applet which allows you to do the crossword, but over the years there have been many hiccups in the integration of java into Linux browsers.  Across Lite is a very popular standalone app, which even has a Linux port, however it is pretty ancient and often incompatible with my distro.  At various times I’ve taken to implementing my crossword application.  Lingering amongst my projects are barely to mostly completed attempts written in Java or C#.  I’ve never been satisfied with those either.  I finally have finished a workable version written entirely in Javascript.  Try it out!  Just click on one of the puzzles at the bottom of the screen to load them.

A couple of considerations that went into the design.  I wanted to maintain a separation between the layout of the page and the engine.  The layout is maintained entirely in HTML and CSS.  This (hopefully) facilitates things like changing the font size or displaying the clues on the left as opposed to the right.

There are a number of issues that I have with the current implementation.

• Firstly, the CSS is really not at all the way I’d like it to be.  For example, in order for the clues to appear in scrollable columns half the height of the grid requires Javascript.
• When you select a word in the grid the corresponding clues are scrolled to, however they appear at the top of the scroll pane, not the middle as I would like.
• Non-ASCII characters do not make it through the way they should.
• Calling the JQuery .text (string) method does not work with HTML entities.
• It has been exclusively tested with Firefox v3.0.3 on Ubuntu v8.04, i.e. there has been no cross-browser compatibility testing.

Anyways, try it out or you can also download a copy and play around with it.  I requires JQuery v1.2.6 and the JQuery scrollTo plugin.  Also, it’s currently licensed under GPLv3 and has no documentation.