Rail Adds Ajax

Version 1.1 of application development framework Rails went live earlier this week, with more than 500 fixes and additions, including simplified Ajax programming. (See Information Week for more.)

“It makes Web application programming a lot more like desktop GUI [graphical user interface] programming,” said Jeremy Voorhis, lead architect at Planet Argon, a Portland, Ore., services firm that specializes in Ruby on Rails development. Planet Argon has already used RJS on several client projects. Because Rails is an open source project, developers can start working with new features before they make their way into a formal release.

Rails is a two-year-old open source development application used by sites such as Calendar Hub. For more information, visit the Rails Website.

COMET - the next stage of AJAX

An old web technology is slowly being resurrected from the depths of history. Browser features that have gone untouched for years are once again being employed to bring better responsiveness to UIs. Servers are learning to cope with a new way of doing things. And I’m not talking about Ajax.

New services like Jot Live and Meebo are built with a style of data transmission that is neither traditional nor Ajax. Their brand of low-latency data transfer to the browser is unique, and it is becoming ever-more common. Lacking a better term, I’ve taken to calling this style of event-driven, server-push data streaming “Comet”. It doesn’t stand for anything, and I’m not sure that it should. There is much confusion about how these techniques work, and so using pre-existing definitions and names is as likely to get as much wrong as it would get right.

This article from Irish Dev provides some interesting insight into the future of AJAX programming for programmers.

AJAXwrite.com - AJAX word

AJAXwrite is a new application for online word processing. The working and functionality is descent, and is more of a Windows look, rather than a Web 2.0 one.

ajaxWrite is a streamlined word processor, comparable to Microsoft Word. To keep the program lean, we left out some obscure advanced features; you’ll find the functions you use most often, right where you’d expect them to be. (We’re still working on the spell checker.) You can import and export documents in all popular formats, including documents with graphics. The save function lets you save your work to a drive on your computer. Also, since you run ajaxWrite from your web browser, it is platform independent and can therefore be used with any operating system.

Though AJAXwrite do have some tough competetion with popular applications like Zohowriter, Jotlive and above all Google’s own writely

NetJaxer

NetJaxer is a free and easy
way to integrate a users favorite Web 2.0 apps like Gmail, TadaList, Digg, Writely, Kiko, iOutliner, Meebo, financial sites, and other Ajax based web
programs right into Windows. They can create desktop, tray, and quick launch
icons. These applications can easily be used with our custom browser.

NetJaxer is a free program for use with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP. You can listen to the audio interview by clicking on the Podcast options in box in the upper right hand corner of our press release.

filechucker - AJAXed Uploading Script

Ok I’ll send you the file .

What is first thing you do after saying that ? open rapidshare or megaupload ? Its funny how people’s mentality has grown to SHARE, even if it is illegal. face it ! first we used to send attachments through emails, but now most of us prefer free file hosting.
Besides, After Imageshack and Rapidshare got popular, many of the web developers started their own free file hosting or image hosting service. Indeed a lot of money is in it. Internet is growing and so is need of file sharing. Filechuker is a script that allows to Share files that are too large for e-mail by simply uploading them and then sending the link to your friend. There are a lot of features apart from the uploading .

• Share files that are too large for e-mail by simply uploading
  them and then sending the link to your friend
• Real-time progress bar and time elapsed/remaining during uploads

• E-mail notification of new uploads
• Create, move, rename, and delete files/folders on your server through the browser
• Multiple folders/subfolders for uploads, optionally user-creatable
• Can automatically rename all uploaded files to remove any “unfriendly” characters,
  append a time/datestamp, or rename to a completely custom format that you
  specify
• Users can optionally enter comments/information about the file(s) that they’re uploading
• Restrict what kinds of files can be uploaded and/or displayed
  based on file extension
• Easy installation: single script requiring only Perl and CGI.pm, both
  of which are installed by default on most servers
• Adjustable max upload size (in bytes)
• Can upload one or multiple files, up to whatever limit you specify
• And much more…

Page Loading Indicators - Ripped ?

Are you a AJAX developer ? or a web developer ? well, you might need the small loading images while users browse through your pages. Here is a list of AJAX Activity Indicators images .

Well I was digging last night and found this AJAX activity indicator list, though some of the comments there states something different than the description.

These are ripped from other sites. One of the icons even says “remembermilk” in the filename !!! The orange circular one.

What does this have to do with AJAX? And how are these useful indicators? Either use a real progress indicator, or save the user the extra bytes…

not AJAX but nice.

but still, those images makes the “pages” quite .. Web 2.0 . People do anything to get traffic

Want to learn how to use Ajax?

If you’re an Ajax beginner (like me), the following links might be just what you’re looking for:

• Ajax Lessons

According to Lifehacker, an “excellent site” and an “excellent way to learn Ajax fast and get it working quickly for you on the Web.” It includes a series of Ajax tutorials on Ajax Basics, Building Tabbed Content, Shopping Cart using Script.aculo.us, & Live Data with JSON & Prototype.js.

• Max Kiesler’s round-up of 30 Ajax tutorials

These links are more in-depth, but extremely useful; each provides a “step-by-step demo of how to include an ajax feature in your site, often with downloadable code,” according to Lifehacker. You can learn how to create rounded corners, sortable tables, animated live searches, & forms.

CrazzyEgg : Clicks Monitoring

Crazzyegg, is one of the most interesting Web 2.0 applications I have ever seen. To say, it is a simply a click stats monitoring service but an inteligent one. The good folks at crazzyegg let me have an account for their (Beta) service.
Unlike other stats monitoring service, Crazzyegg gives an clear idea of the most sensitive part of a monitored page per session. Each session can be of upto 1,00,000 clicks and 13 days. When we open a specific session the monitored page is shown with few crazzyegg tools and options.
I very much like the Heatmap view of a page, It is like looking at a geographical map of our webpage .

• The heatmap shows area of total clicks, the higher the click are is more red. Apart from the Heatmap view the dashboard has the overlay and list view.
• Over lay is shown shows coloured blocks, the colours of the boxes changes per increase in clicks. This is the dashboard view of the actual page, Sreejith.NET .
• In List view, a simple list of total clicks is shown.

Through our simple tool, content providers have access to user input, and can use this information to tweak aspects of a web page, test the results, and then tweak again based on the user information they continually receive from Crazy Egg.

Using this ongoing optimization process, combined with A/B testing of similar pages, the insight provided by the Crazy Egg tool is the key component to helping you improve how your site works for you and your visitors.

MyToday : AJAX & Mobile RSS aggregator

MyToday is a public RSS aggregator providing the latest news, views and content on a topic-based collection of feeds, called Dailies. Now it may seem like yet another RSS aggregator but one of the things it features is WML/WAP version of the page (ofcourse its not AJAXed )

MyToday.com is a public RSS aggregator providing the latest news, views and content on a topic-based collection of feeds, called Dailies. It is simultaneously available on the web through an Ajax client and on the mobile phone in WML.

Personal aggregators like bloglines.com, my.yahoo.com, live.com etc. give the users an empty plate which needs to be filled with feeds which the user knows about. This approach ignores the fact that users in general are interested in a subject but not necessarily aware about quality feeds and sources in that area. A public aggregator like MyToday.com depends on editorial expertise to choose and pick the best sources in a subject. This way, the reader can get going without any sweat.

The Authors/Creators, have posted a nice long list of how it is better than other popular readers and aggregators compared to MyToday. But I do have a feeling that the design could have been a bit more better.

Rollyo: Roll your own search

Rollyo is an amazing search utility which offers searches direct from the sources they need. Create a Search roll, with upto 25 URL’s and search a word you want to search. Tools include Firefox search plugin, Rollyo Searchbox on your websites and mailing of created search rolls. The webmasters do like Firefox a lot ;), the search is Powered by YAHOO! SEARCH.

Rollyo is the fast, easy way to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust.

WHY ROLLYO?

Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines - with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we’ll create a custom search engine for you.

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