Work

Yakov Fain wrote an interesting article: A Cup of AJAX? Nay, Just Regular Java Please at SYS-CON DEUTSCHLAND. I can agree that big Internet guys [Google] can and should invest some serious dough into supporting screen-refresh-on-mouse-move in HTML-based screens. But when it comes to a regular Intranet business application, when the users/browsers/platforms are known and when the cost of the project development matters, Id stay with a fat client written in Java, or (if you like a fancy GUI) Macromedia’s Flash or Flex.

I found this link somewhere, I can’t remember where. But Li Shen has packaged a nice AJAX wrapper called AJAX Client Engine (ACE). I downloaded it and took a look at it and I must say, it is quite functional. I took a look at his source code and found it to be relatively clean. It’s not too bulky making it a nice thin wrapper and he made it very object oriented.

I believe that I now need to rethink the Ajax sequence on the project I am working on for work. As it stands, I had to do some interesting tinkering to make things work and emulate the console side properly. A normal sequence of GETs and POSTs would have been sufficient, except I needed something to handle server pushes. In the console application, there are some instances like popup boxes. Eg.

An interesting article from John Carroll | ZDNet.com explores the differences between AJAX and desktop development. Ajax is rapidly growing into something a lot of developers did not expect. Web designers can now design flashier web pages (minus the Flash). Other web designers are bridging the gap between desktop applications and web applications. Users have begun to take strong notice to this and are, in some cases, requesting such advances in web development.

AHAH: Asynchronous HTML and HTTP. Or AJA, as I like to call it; Asyhcrhronous JavaScript And…. :). Also known as AJAH: Asynchronous JavaScript and HTML. OK, so we’re just throwing around terms here, but basically it boils down to Ajax without the XML component. XML is the main communication method over the Internet. Many applications use XML to transmit data to and from servers and clients. But is it right for all of us?

This is where many web developers tend to disagree. We can never seem to settle on a good code editor, ever. I’m going to leave you with a few of my favorites and some that I hate.

First off, I live and die by Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 Win/Mac. As a matter of fact, I also use Macromedia Fireworks 8 heavily for my web site designs. I just think that they have done a good job and incorporating HTML and CSS together. Especially with version 8.0. But then again, you get what you pay for because it’s going to set you back quite a pretty penny ($399). But it was a good investment for me.

On the other hand we have the Frontpage junkies. I haven’t really looked at Frontpage much since early 2000. I’ve opened up the version that comes with Office XP, but I was not impressed. What I do remember is that back in the day it was horrible. Frontpage used to dump a bunch of Microsoft specific “tags” into the code that it just served to bulk up the final output. There is the small advance of using Frontpage Extensions, which enable things like site counters and other things (sorry, I really haven’t been looking into it), but the problem lies in the fact that Frontpage extensions on servers usually cost more and they are very limited, and simply I haven’t heard anything about Frontpage lately, so I’m staying away from it.

For PHP editing I use a simply text editor called emEditor. One nice feature is tabbed editing. It also has syntax highlighting. Since I don’t write or compose very large PHP scripts, this is more than adequate for me.

When I’m at work and on Linux (Fedora) I stick to KDevelop. Most likely, I would be doing some C programming anyways, so it is just convenient since it is already opened to just drag and drop scripts and HTML files in there. I don’t, however, do any heavy HTML design on Linux though. I haven’t found tools suitable for such yet. There is something called NVU, but it just doesn’t do enough for me to design a site from scratch using this.

After days of configuring and reconfiguring, I have finally gotten the sequence down for a Fast CGI installation. Please note, these instructions are specifically for a fresh install of Fedora Core 4. This is what I’ve been working with, for distribution purposes. You may generalize the instructions where applicable of course. And as always, proceed at you own risk. Here we go (Italics indicate my personal settings): Run the following command at the prompt: `yum -y install httpd-devel` You may also download the RPM, or if you're really adventurous, build it from the source.

Here’s a little intro what I’ve been working on at my Job for the past couple months. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML for web development. Basically you use a some JavaScript to get down below the browser level and control HTTP “GET"s and “POST"s and stuff like that. It’s used by stuff like Google Maps and Google Suggest and GMail. What it enables is basically background activity without the user’s knowledge.

I first came across AJAX at my job. I was trying to give an application some Web capabilities and I realized that the normal way the browser works was very limited. In an article at News.com, Martin LaMonica has also realized the limits we are at: At the moment, Web pages are limited, compared with most desktop applications. AJAX frees Web pages from the clunkiness they suffer from by making them more interactive and so more functional, Web developers say.