What Is Ajax?
— It’s become very popular lately, even though it’s not exactly new. It’s been possible to use the concept behind AJAX since browsers introduced the XMLHttpRequest function in 1999. Enjoy Rob Gonda’s highly popular ColdFusion Developer’s Journal article on AJAX, the hottest software development of 2005, with plenty more heat promised for 2006.

I know there are many out there, but this one comes from the guys over at Ajax.sys-con.com, which is the new Ajax Website that has just been unveiled.

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We've seen and heard a lot about Ajax in 2005. Here is the Ajax year of 2005 in review:

The AJAX Year In Review
— The term (and world-wide attention) behind AJAX is not even a year old, but you can find a wide range of powerful tools either with newly added support for it or created just to support the AJAX way of life. In addition, many of the constaints and problems with AJAX have been resolved or greatly reduced. But keeping track of all these developments is very difficult, so Dion Hinchcliffe has compiled a summary here of the major advances in AJAX so far this year....

One of the things that stood out for me in this article was the section on:

Improved Ajax Techniques

• Content with Style: Fixing the Back Button and Enabling Bookmarking for AJAX Apps
• Saving Session Across Page Loads Without Cookies, On The Client Side
• Call SOAP Web services with AJAX
• Ajax using only an image

source
[tags]Ajax, web2.0, Web 2.0[/tags]

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Andrew Sutherland developed a beautiful Ajax Based version of the Periodic Table.

You click on an element in the table and a window pops up up with more detailed information about the element. The rest of the page is also greyed out.

Check it out.

[tags]Ajax, web2.0, Web 2.0[/tags]

Popularity: 2%

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After all the security issues with phpBB 2.0.18, version 2.0.19 is finally out.

phpBB Group announces the release of phpBB 2.0.19, the "we wish you all a happy new year" release. This release addresses several bugfixes and some security issues only affecting Internet Explorer. Additionally we introduced a new feature to limit the number of logins. The admin is able to configure this feature on two ways, defining the number of maximum allowed logins and setting a time period after the user is allowed to login again. With this feature we hope to address the recent dictionary attacks happening on some forums to crack user passwords.

As with all new releases we urge you to update as soon as possible. You can of course find this download available on our downloads page. As per usual four packages are available to simplify your update.

• Full Package
  Contains entire phpBB2 source and English language package
• Changed Files Only
  Contains only those files changed from previous versions of phpBB. Please note this archive contains changed files for each previous release
• Patch Files
  Contains patch compatible patches from the previous versions of phpBB.
• Code Changes
  Contains step-by-step instructions in MOD format for updating heavily MODified installs

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One of the major complaints that users have about Ajax interfaces is that they have no idea when things are happening in the background. If some important background activity is going to be happening, something that the user needs to wait for, a developer should make an effort to indicate this to the user.

Example:
An input box for user id fetches relevant information from the server. If the user does not exist then the rest of the form should be disabled and the user should be alerted. Imagine now if the user continues to enter half the form (there are some fast typists out there and/or some slow internet connections) they are only going to be annoyed that their typing was all in vain.

Solution:
When background activity is going on, the user should be giving some sort of visual indication. Text is an alternative, but some nice Activity Indicators (animated GIFs) can also be used to grab the user's attention.
[tags]ajax, web2.0, web 2.0, javascript, java script[/tags]

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It's been a long time in the making, but I've finally decided to release a link about this. I have been hunting around a couple places and looking at different solutions around, this is the only thing that seems to work for me. Check out this article: Content with Style: Fixing the Back Button and Enabling Bookmarking for AJAX Apps

Everyone's favourite [tag]AJAX[/tag] technology app is Google Maps. Google have done a stunning job... But when I came to try to bookmark a page and I had to hunt around for 'link to this page' over on the right hand side. Why have they broken such a basic function of the web? I use bookmarks A LOT and the extra effort bothered me. I got over it though, and life went on.

This solutions stems from solutions that Flash developers have been using for some time now. It simply allows the loading of session variables and other needed information in the address bar so that it can be bookmarked. I'm using the solution of placing information after the hash character (#) in the URL under the heading "It's all too easy" because my development environment is strictly going to be Firefox. This solution does not work in IE however. There is a solution that works for IE under the "Now you're just being difficult" heading but I haven't really looked at it.

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New AJAX Website Unveiled: AJAX.sys-con.com @ SYS-CON AUSTRALIA

If you want to learn AJAX you should probably buy a few books, buy an AJAX IDE, and go to a few training classes. But all three things will cost you money. So why not first mingle with people that already know it, by visiting - at no cost - the very latest and fastest-growing AJAX web site, http://ajax.sys-con.com - it's where the prime movers of AJAX come to learn who's doing what in AJAX, why, when, and with whom.

I just stumbled upon this. You may want to take a look. I'm still browsing around. More to come later.
[tags]Ajax, web2.0, web 2.0[/tags]

Popularity: 2%

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One of the most painful things that I'm going through right now is trying to debug my Ajax applications. Debugging any Javascript application, for that matter, is a pain in the neck. Some may claim that we have the Venkman JavaScript Debugger available. True, I suppose.

But take this into consideration:
Most large JavaScript applications and especially Ajax applications are going to be event driven and object driven. How does one track one specific instance of an Ajax call? Things like this are going to remain unanswered for now, until someone comes up with a more reliable IDE for developing Ajax apps. For me, the Venkman JavaScript Debugger is extremely bulky and slow. I mean it gets the job done, but only barely. It sucks up a ton of browser resources also.

Jadudm over at untyped has put out an interesting post about debugging Ajax.

why should developers be willing to take eight steps backwards and be shafted with printf as their primary debugging tool when working with AJAX?

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