Practical Javascript, DOM Scripting, and Ajax Projects

Practical Javascript, DOM Scripting, and Ajax Projects picks up where Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax left off.

Frank Zammetti’s practical guide to real-world JavaScript and Ajax will have you developing actual client-side apps in no time. As more of a hacker than a theoretician, this kind of guide appeals to me. Usually when I start developing my own apps, some of the code used previously (in building sample apps) will be adapted and tweaked for my own purposes.

Some of the projects you’ll learn how to build in Practical Javascript:
* JSDigester - a library that simplifies (takes away the pain) of parsing XML on the client side
* Mashing up a list of hotels + a Yahoo Map for a user-entered zipcode
* Client-side persistence techniques
* A JavaScript validation framework
* Building widgets and working with UI widget frameworks
* Building a JavaScript mini-game (cool!)
* An Ajax-based client-server chat pplication

You can pick up a copy of Practical Javascript, DOM Scripting, and Ajax Projects at Amazon.com (avg. review score is 4.5 stars).

Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax

Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax will take you from knowing absolutely nothing about JavaScript to being able to manipulate the DOM, build basic Ajax applications and more.

Most of us who have been building websites since the pre-Ajax days learned JavaScript through a mish-mash of one-off scripts, validations, etc. If a book like this had been around, it surely would’ve offered a nice clean overview of the techniques available to the JavaScript programmer.

Luckily for the novice JavaScript programmer (or intermediate developer wishing to hone his craft), Beginning Javascript with DOM Scripting and Ajax does exist now and is the perfect way to learn the fundamentals from the ground up. The 2nd part of the book also focuses on Ajax and some of the interesting hacks one can use in that realm.

The author, Christian Heilmann, has a geeky sense of humor that keeps the reading light — for eaxmple Et Tu, Cache? (pg. 309):

Safari is the main offender as it caches the response status and does not trigger the changes (remember that the status returns the HTTP code 200, 304 or 404) any longer.

Adding this snippet tells the browser to test whether the data has changed since a certain date, i.e.:

request.setRequestHeader( ‘If-Modified-Since’, ‘Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:00:00 GMT’);
request.send( null );

A bit out of context here, but just one example of the kind of thing you’ll find in Beginning JavaScript with DOM Scripting and Ajax.

Snap : New Search Engine

Snap is something which google might become in near future, as everything is getting AJAX’ed nowadays ;). As the title suggests, It’s indeed a marvelous way of searching. With some of the top programmers behind the project, there is no wonder it does so well. Most of the menu and search features are AJAX enabled and is interesting to use and has shortcut keys feature.
Snap’s another great feature is Snap widgets

• Snap Coupon Widget : Snap automatically coupons / special offers relavant to the search result.
• Snap Navigation/Company Widget : Snap’s first result on a company or navigation search will be a 360° view.
• Snap Map Widget : Typing the Zip code of a city returns a map.
• Snap Weather Widget : Typing the Zip code of a city with keyword “weather” gets you the weather report.

Ajax script resources

Working with Ajax? (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) Especially in web applications? Check out the web applications and scripts, coding secrets, and tips on the following web sites. As Ajax grows, so will these resources, so its highly recommended to bookmark them:  (also great sites for HTML codes, CGI, Perl, Javascript, XML, and other coding scripts)

The Javascript Source:  http://javascript.internet.com/ajax/

The Javascript Forum: http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=3

Ajaxed: http://www.ajaxed.com/

Ajax.net: http://www.ajaxpro.info/default.aspx?old=ajax&ref=http%3a%2f%2fwww.google.com%2fsearch%3fhl%3den%26q%3dFree%2bAjax%2bscripts

Open Cube: www.opencube.com

Javascript Kit: www.javascriptkit.com

and don’t forget my Yahoogroups web-design support group at www.yahoogroups.com/ “web-design”

 

 

 

Get Help With Ajax Freaks

While surfing the web I came across a great tutorial site for users of Ajax. Ajax Freaks is an informational website and you can use it while you are learning or if your still in the development stage.

They have over 200 articles, and they also have forums, downloads, scripts and tutorials. If you are completely unsure what Ajax is, try starting here and reading a few articles tutorials.

Yahoo! Instant Search is on !

Yahoo! Releases Instant Search, which is much like Google Suggest. Just that it shows up one result at a time with title and description which looks more like a search result rather than normal drop down suggetions.
Check out a whole range of other Yahoo! Beta’s at http://next.yahoo.com/

Ajax Patterns and Best Practices — Free Chapter Preview

I’ve been meaning to write about this Ajax book (Ajax Patterns and Best Practices - by Christian Gross) for a while now. It’s gotten some really great reviews at Amazon.com, including this one by Jason A. Salas:

I very much enjoyed reading this book and got a lot out of it. To date, I’ve read about four of the major Ajax titles from various publishers, and this is the best of them so far. Christian Gross uses a very friendly voice and makes tacking the technical concepts behind modern-day web programming with Ajax - often a difficult task to simplify by the writing community - very easy to grasp.

Here’s a little more about Ajax Patterns and Best Practices from the publisher (Apress Inc.):

This book addresses the server side with the REST protocol. REST and Ajax blend elegantly together, but REST can also be used alone, with just a computer-to-computer solution. Like Ajax, REST can be used with today’s existing technologies. Millions of client computers are now Ajax-ready, and millions of servers are REST-ready.

This is an ideal book whether or not you have already created an Ajax application. Because the book outlines various patterns and best practices, you can quickly check and verify that you’re building an efficient Ajax application.

You can download a Free Chapter Preview (Ch. 03 - Content Chunking Pattern) from the publisher’s site. (PDF format)

The author has also made available the source code used throughout the book. (probably more useful when you own the book, though )

More Links

Buy Ajax Patterns and Best Practices from Amazon.com.

More about the book from the publisher.

BloggerJacks: the Author’s Weblog (Christian Gross)

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.

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.

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