Horst Herb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:17, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > 2.) type ahead autocompletion facilities are *very* restricted in > browser > > > based interfaces > > > > this is why everyone's babbling about Ajax: now autocompletion is > > as good and (nearly) as fast as native client. > > No. Ajax has a lot of overhead (xml-rpc via http protocol inherent), and > you > definitely can't do the same swift type-ahead with Ajax, only in a > rather > restricted way as I said.
Although AJAX-enabled Web apps can use XML, they don't have to, and many are now using JSON instead as a more efficient way of serialining and transferring data - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON - using Javascrip to parse XML can be very slowm, but Javascript to parse JSON can be quite fast. > It is definitely good enough for most list selection purposes, but not > good > enough for e.g. tab autocompletion in a WYSIWYG editor - which is > exactly > what I find most useful in my own software (well, there is a way, but it > would require client side caching of huge amounts of data and a lot of > work > to keep your cache in sync preventing dirty cache situations) I think these assertions need to be emperically tested, Horst, esepcially for the situation where the Web server is on the LAN. > As I said: If I type "rx amox500 <tab>" I want instantly either a > selection > box pop up with a selection of Amoxycillin preparations, 500mg as > default > suggestion along with default dosage instructions, or text > autocompletion a > la gnu readline. > The small extra delay caused by XML-RPC/HTTP + browser refresh is > noticeable, But teh whole point of AJAX is that the browser doesn't need to refresh the page - information is updated in place by twiddling the DOM. Perhaps that's what you meant. > and with fast typists you get hickups. For slow typists it probably > doesn't > matter at all, so maybe we should give it a go and see what users think > of > the experience. Worth a try. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
