Learning AJAX
Friday, August 11th, 2006 by Favio
Why did you decide to learn AJAX? For the hype, I guess. It just popped out everywhere, and I got this old application (in JSP) with some serious design problems (which when you make an app in just a weekend as part of school homework, but that will be used to solve a real problem, it’s pretty obvious that there will be not problems but nightmares…) needing solving ASAP (red flag warning).
I remember some years ago watching a XMLHttpRequest demo: the object graph dictionary. And I said: “Nice, looks cool”. Then, at some point in the space-time dimension (I need to do something about my memory problems…sigh) google maps came out. My impression: Wow! But that was it. Still didn’t knew much about why using AJAX was a good thing ™ and I did not see a need to use that kind of stuff in the applications I was working on.
So back to the old application, and the hype!, as usual I started a search on guess what? Google of course. (I’m conviced that in the near future we are only going to need water and google to live >.>). Here are some interesting results and why are they interesting (in an almost accurate browsing order):
- Notes on JavaScript Libraries. This was what re-started my interest. Now AJAX is cool, but learning Javascript the right way ™ is pleasing.
- Easy Ajax with Prototype. Get something done!
- Developer Notes for prototype.js. You gotta start somewhere, so I choosed Prototype. Tyvm Sergio! :D
- AJAX on WikiPedia. Thanks for providing pros and cons. It turns out not all is hype!
- Ajaxian. Summary: a showcase of applications using this technique, a resources section, complemented with some interesting articles, and checkout the podcast, and, and…
- AJAX Patterns. Heh, I have the books: Design Patterns, and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Guess I’m gonna like this.
- Introduction to AJAX and Web 2.0 - Web Database Project. Impressive. A big thanks for sharing this! This should be your first stop if you are trying to get what is AJAX all about imho.
- The AJAX response: XML, HTML, or JSON?. I thought simple html snippets were enough; it’s all about context in this case.
- Have Your DOM and Script It Too. Just after reading the previous article.
I’m using prototype, and html snippets as the response. Let’s see what happens. I’ll update this to reflect any change or recommendation. Experience, my favorite teacher. I sense that redesigning the User Interface will be the most challenging problem, so integrating AJAX should be easy?
This entry was posted on Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Ajax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.