On Fri, 2007-03-16 at 14:59 -0400, Ronald J Kimball wrote: > Sean Quinlan gave a demonstration of a simple but useful AJAX application > and showed us how easy it is to create one. Watch for a post from Sean > with links to resources.
Here are a few links you might find useful on the subject. Javascript - the first two are for javascript packages that provide a lot of useful functions to help write AJAX applications (as well as do other nifty things), which handle most of the cross-browser special case handling for you. IIRC prototype is used in jifty. The w3schools site most of you are probably already familiar with. While their tutorials are not very deep, they come with lots of examples that you can edit and play with, and I've found them to be a useful first step or refresher.: http://www.prototypejs.org/ http://script.aculo.us/ http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp AJAX (XML HTTP Request) - the first link is to an article describing the concept of AJAX by Jesse Garret, who is credited with coining the term AJAX. The article probably marks the beginning point when the concept started really gaining general momentum. The second is the best quick-start explanation of creating and using an HTTPRequest object that I found when I first set out to learn how to use it. The author also regularly updates the page so it is relatively current. http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html As I mentioned in my talk, if you haven't used javascript yet, or recently, you may be pleasantly surprised. While it is certainly has some browser support issues, they seem to have been pushed out to the edges a bit. And while it is still a fairly limited language, Perl programmers will likely find the current syntax quite comfortable. Indeed, when writing some javascript in a hurry, I've mistakenly used my instead of var on more than one occasion. Javascript has all the basic control structures, excellent regex support (using a subset of Perls syntax) and even associative arrays (functionally). While I personally still prefer to do all my heavy lifting on the server I've recently found that javascript is able enough to push some simple functionality back to the user. And I've found the UI advances available through AJAX (not that I've bothered with the XML part yet ;) to be very seductive; it opens up interface possibilities for web pages that I never would have though possible, or at least supportable, just a few years ago. On the down side, I have yet to find a good, comprehensive, _up to date_ javascript reference online, so when I'm trying to find out if it is possible to do something, or correct some syntax, I'm frequently reduced to a cycle of googling around for ideas. If anyone knows of one, please post the link! Lastly, here is the code I'm currently using to get an HTTPRequest object, which has been tested for IE 6 & 7, Firefox 1.5 & 2 and Konqueror 3.5 and Opera 9: // for scripts needing an XMLHttpRequest object function make_xmlhttp() { var xmlhttp = false; /[EMAIL PROTECTED] @*/ /[EMAIL PROTECTED] (@_jscript_version >= 5) // JScript gives us Conditional compilation, we can cope with old IE versions. // and security blocked creation of the objects. try { xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch (e) { try { xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch (E) { xmlhttp = false; } } @end @*/ if (!xmlhttp && window.XMLHttpRequest) { try { xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch (e) { xmlhttp = false; } } if (!xmlhttp && window.createRequest) { try { xmlhttp = window.createRequest(); } catch (e) { xmlhttp = false; } } return xmlhttp; } // get XMLHttpRequest object /* Try to determine browser type. The primary goal here is just to get the real browser type and version for IE and Firefox. But b_name and b_version will be populated regardless with whatever the default responses are. */ //var isIE = false; var b_name = navigator.appName; var b_version = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion); if (!document.all) { // IE chokes on .userAgent var FF_version = navigator.userAgent.match(/Firefox\/([\d\.]+)/)[1]; if (FF_version) { b_version = FF_version; b_name = 'Firefox'; } } // if document.all unavailable else { // isIE = true; b_version = navigator.appVersion.match(/MSIE (\d+.\d+)/)[1]; } //alert("Browser: " + b_name + " v" + b_version); -- Sean P Quinlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
