Prototip was developed by Nick Stakenburg and can be downloaded from http://www.nickstakenburg.com/projects/prototip2/. The latest version of Prototip is 2.0.5. You can download a trial of the plugin from the link above, which can be used for testing purposes (you'll need this if you intend to follow along with the code examples in this article), but to use the plugin on single or multiple domains, you need to purchase a license.

You can also download the source files for this article in zip form.  

The plugin is licensed as Creative Commons by-nc-nd, which means that there are certain conditions that must be met to use it; specifically, you must attribute the work to the author, you may not use the plugin commercially (i.e, you may not sell it), and you may not build upon, alter or make derivatives of it.

There are a range of pricing options that should suit most developers. These are outlined below:

Now that we have seen what Prototip is, where it can be found, and how much it costs, let's see how easy it is to use. You'll need to unpack the downloaded plugin, and will also need to download and unpack the Prototype library, and optionally the Scriptaculous effects library. To download both Prototype and Scriptaculous in a single package, visit http://script.aculo.us/downloads and choose the latest version.  

We'll need to set up a basic development area for the libraries and plugins to reside in; create a new directory on your C drive called  prototip . Next, unpack  the  scriptaculous   zip file into this folder, which will preserve the Prototype and Scriptaculous directory structure. In the Prototip zip file there are three folders:   images ,  css   and  js . These can all be unpacked to the  prototip   directory as well. Finally, create a new folder within the prototip  folder  called   pages .