Howdy folks,
New here, but I come bearing gifts. I've just open-sourced Extendables, a small framework that simplifies ExtendScript coding. Check it out at http://extendables.org and the documentation at http://extendables.org/docs/.
Extendables isn't a whiz-bang does-everything-for-you kind of framework, but if you're doing any serious scripting, it will definitely make your life easier. It includes some of the newer Javascript 1.6+ Array methods like forEach, useful shortcuts/monkeypatches and modules for logging, HTTP connections and creating user interfaces. Plus a bunch of other stuff.
With the rise of server-side Javascript (you might've heard of node.js, Narwhal or Rhino), there's a growing number of libraries and frameworks out there which don't depend on a browser to work, so the timing felt right to tap into that ecosystem as well for our own profit. For example unit testing is provided by a slightly tweaked Jasmine, which is a great DOM-less Javascript testing framework.
Do note that this release is halfway between a teaser and a working product. Some parts aren't feature-complete, like the HTTP library. Other parts are experimental. There's no common style yet. The UI helpers have a domain-specific language vibe and so does the unit testing library. The HTTP library and a couple of other parts work entirely getter/setter-based (think jQuery). But in other parts I've tried to stay close to how ExtendScript works out of the box, so that it'd feel intuitive for long-time scripters.
It's pretty stable, but I've only been able to test it out on my own system (InDesign CS4 — that's all I have a license for), so I've labeled it an alpha release regardless.
If you're up for that, do feel free to contribute via GitHub, either by helping to flesh out the core framework, by reviewing the documentation or by making your own module packages. There's already a lot of collective wisdom and code snippets out there, and it probably wouldn't hurt to bring some of that together and release it as proper packages.
I guess what I'm saying is: try it out, skim through the docs, let me know what you like, don't like or would like to see. I'd be happy to keep in touch with any tester over Google Talk, mail or IRC, to help sort out any inevitable kinks you might encounter.
(I've put up a similar message over at my blog, but feel free to continue the conversation over here.)