Practical Javascript, DOM Scripting, and Ajax Projects
December 20, 2007
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
December 15, 2007
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.
Ajax script resources
May 15, 2006
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/
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”
Record a web-browsing session using neato AJAX-powered “web recorder”
April 16, 2006
This is an application which feels like it must surely have a useful purpose. I’m not totally sure what that use would be though. Perhaps recording a demo or walk-through of a website.
From the site:
TAPEFAILURE is a “history recording tool.” What this means is that anyone can record a browsing session using TAPEFAILURE’s recorder, then save it, and share it with others. Each recorded session can be played back virtually perfectly through our playback tool; as long as you know the tape ID or have a link, you can view your recorded session over and over again.
Overall, the site is attractively designed, very simple to get started, and seems like it could be really useful. They should include a couple of example recordings with usage scenarios — the kind of thing that marketing people love to put all over the place, and probably the programmers think is totally obvious.
We did have a problem trying to record something on Ajax Blog — (got a “Precondition Failed” message from our web server).
Some issues I noticed:
- No way to Preview or Play the recording before you Save it.
- Loading Digg didn’t work correctly when recording (kept on reloading the home page)
- Sometimes it felt a little bit slow
Overall, really neat concept, nicely executed, feels like a toy until we figure out the business model.
Oh yeah, and the AJAX functionality is pretty slick — the application does what it promises smoothly, without any downloads or additional steps needed by the user. It would be neat to see what the database info looks like to do the replays.
Check it out: TAPEFAILURE
(Via Digg)
What would you use it for?
WWJUA - Where Would Jesus Use Ajax?
December 3, 2005
There’s a good discussion going on over at Ajaxian about specific times when Ajax should or should not be used based on a posting by Alex Bosworth (10 Places You Must Use Ajax).
From Alex’s article:
For heavy use applications such as a webmail client or a blogreader, users have the luxury of time to learn new UI concepts, and the frustration of interacting with a slow interface. This kind of application is a perfect opportunity to leverage Ajax everywhere. The more frequently users use an application, the more Ajax should be powering that use.
However for most web applications, it doesn’t make any sense to use Javascript for everything or even anything. Ajax only really clearly helps in a limited set of circumstances; the web already worked pretty well before Ajax and there are a lot of pitfalls and drawbacks to using Ajax in web development. A straight html weblog works just fine without being generated dynamically on the client with a stream of asynchronous messages from the server. Plain old HTML also works great for documents, or navigating between documents. Simple or rarely used applications can get along fine without putting in a bunch of Javascript.
A good reminder for sure, that ultimately it is not the technology that should dictate developer choices, rather it should be whatever will best serve the customer (the users!)
Good discussion going on Ajaxian: 6 Places You Must Use Ajax
Ajax without the X? - Good article about combining a generic Javascript new script engine with some PHP to deliver simple AJAX interactions
November 22, 2005
If you’ve wrestled with the whole XMLHttpRequest part of AJAX you should read this article. It clearly explains the technique of appending a new Javascript SCRIPT tag into the body and using the results to display new or updated content.
But there is one problem with most of the current implementations of Ajax: it has one dependency, and that is the XmlHttpRequest object. Most modern browser, like Firefox, have inbuilt support for this object, but older browsers, like Internet Explorer 6, don’t have native support for this object. Luckily, IE 6 does support it, but it’s built in as an ActiveX control, which means your visitors get an ugly warning message about the possible danger of an ActiveX control, or in some cases it just doesn’t work at all.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to use Ajax without even having to use the XmlHttpRequest object.
Read the article: PHPit - Totally PHP - Ajax & PHP without using the XmlHttpRequest Object
Via digg where there’s some good discussion going on about this technique.
ONJava.com: AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons
November 19, 2005
I can’t wait to try this library out to see if it really does work to enable back and forward button support. Don’t be afraid to read all 6 pages of this excellent article and then download the example code and libraries.
This article presents an open source JavaScript library that finally brings bookmarking and back button support to AJAX applications. By the end of this tutorial, developers will have a solution to an AJAX problem that not even Google Maps or Gmail possesses: robust, usable bookmarking and back and forward behavior that works exactly like the rest of the Web.
“AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons” explains the significant issues that AJAX applications currently face with bookmarks and the back button; presents the Really Simple History library, an open source framework that solves these problems; and provides several working examples.
The principal discoveries of the framework presented in this article are twofold. First, a hidden HTML form is used to allow for a large transient session cache of client-side information; this cache is robust against navigation to and away from the page. Second, a combination of hyperlink anchors and hidden iframes is used to intercept and record browser history events, tying into the back and forward buttons. Both techniques are wrapped with a simple JavaScript library to ease development.
Read article: ONJava.com: AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons
Simple and clear example of how to create a MySQL connection with PHP/AJAX
November 18, 2005
This is a good and simple example of doing one very clear action — sending a command to open a MySQL database connection through the AJAX transport layer. It includes downloadable code examples as well to get you started.
Filed under, “Roll-your-own-Ajax” department. 
In this tutorial I will explain how to open a mysql database connection using PHP and the all popular AJAX. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the XMLHttpRequest object works within php and the advantages of using it.
Read the full article: Creating a MySQL connection with PHP/AJAX at John Wiseman
Build an AJAX application in php in minutes with symfony
November 3, 2005
Build an AJAX application in php in minutes with symfony
Easy Ajax in symfony
Overview
Symfony has Ajax helpers that make programming an elaborate interface a piece of cake. This tutorial will show you step-by-step how to create an Ajax-powered symfony application in minutes.
This PHP framework presents a nice screencast demonstrating how easy it is to create an ajaxified web application. This is very very similar to the Ruby on Rails demonstration application, which is really cool, to see people boil it down to a demo-able screen capture movie.
Looks interesting, will check this out. They’re using code from the scrip.aculo.us library in their online demo.
http://www.symfony-project.com/
jsquery - AJAX JavaScript ResultSet with securable JDBC server side component
October 31, 2005
This is a very FAST AJAX implementation using server generated javascript and eval() as opposed to XML.
Site includes full source code distribution with working examples.
An implementation of an AJAX JavaScript data generation server, http client, and client result set
Uses a JavaScript http client to dynamically map the results of data requests from a Java application server to a web browser HTML form without requiring refresh or page submit (similar to Google Suggest). Server side data can be SQL via JDBC, an object relational mapping using a tool such as Hibernate, returned from a server connecting a group of peers or pipelined from another source like a SOAP server.
