Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make Asynchronous Requests with JavaScript and Ajax

Most Web applications use a request/response model that gets an entire HTML page from the server. The result is a back-and-forth that usually involves clicking a button, waiting for the server, clicking another button, and then waiting some more. With Ajax and the XMLHttpRequest object, you can use a request/response model that never leaves users waiting for a server to respond. In this article, Brett McLaughlin shows you how to create XMLHttpRequest instances in a cross-browser way, construct and send requests, and respond to the server.

McLaughlin, Brett D. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced Requests and Responses in Ajax

For many Web developers, making simple requests and receiving simple responses is all they'll ever need, but for developers who want to master Ajax, a complete understanding of HTTP status codes, ready states, and the XMLHttpRequest object is required. In this article, Brett McLaughlin will show you the different status codes and demonstrate how browsers handle each and he will showcase the lesser-used HTTP requests that you can make with Ajax.

McLaughlin, Brett D. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>DHTML>Ajax

Optimized and Predictable Ajax Applications

Wouldn't it be nice for developers if all browsers, computer models, and Ajax application users were the same? Maybe, but the reality is that they are not. Developers face a myriad of challenges when developing applications that behave predictably across browsers, computers, and individual user settings. When users transfer Ajax applications from one browser type to another (and especially when they transfer an Ajax application into a Web service portal), they're not guaranteed the same browser experience because of each browser's inherent limitations. In this article, author Judith Myerson gives a brief discussion of these limitations and what pitfalls to avoid, including some helpful solutions for optimizing browser differences.

Myerson, Judith. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Ajax

Performance Ajax Tools

Wasting server resources can impact the performance of Ajax applications, resulting in excessive HTTP requests, high memory consumption, and the need for an unusual amount of polling to make applications work. Regular developerWorks author Judith Myerson suggests some open source tools and Firefox add-ons you can use to improve or solve problems with your Ajax applications.

Myerson, Judith. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Responsible Asynchronous Scripting

Asynchronous or remote scripting has been lurking in the background of web app development for quite some time now. Originally dependent on proprietary technology like Java applets, ActiveX and Flash or clever combinations of disparate technologies like images and cookies, native support for the XMLHttpRequest (XHR) object in modern browsers has made it easier than ever to make web apps more responsive and more like their desktop counterparts. This lower barrier to entry also makes it easier to make poor decisions and inappropriate use of a powerful technology.

Inman, Shaun. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Ajax

Speed Up your Ajax Applications While Dodging Web Services Vulnerabilities

Deploying bandwidth-efficient Ajax applications does not guarantee that the service levels in a Service Level Agreement will stay high. No matter how well you change code in the Ajax format to make it more bandwidth efficient, there will be always risks and vulnerabilities you'll need to watch out for and mitigate. Regular developerWorks author Judith Myerson gives a brief Ajax recap, shows what Web services vulnerabilities are and why Service Level Agreements (SLA) are important, and suggests some solutions for speeding up Ajax applications.

Myerson, Judith. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Ajax

Speed Up Your Ajax Applications While Dodging Web Services Vulnerabilities

Deploying bandwidth-efficient Ajax applications does not guarantee that the service levels in a Service Level Agreement will stay high. No matter how well you change code in the Ajax format to make it more bandwidth efficient, there will be always risks and vulnerabilities you'll need to watch out for and mitigate. Regular developerWorks author Judith Myerson gives a brief Ajax recap, shows what Web services vulnerabilities are and why Service Level Agreements (SLA) are important, and suggests some solutions for speeding up Ajax applications.

Myerson, Judith. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Survey of Ajax Tools and Techniques

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) programming techniques are increasingly dominating the world of Web application development. New developers are stepping into the world of Ajax development every day, and they come from disparate development backgrounds. Part 1 of this multipart series gives you a cheat sheet of Ajax development resources from an expert team of Ajax developers at IBM. The authors draw from their own ramp-up experiences to help you with practical information that will put you on a fast track to effective Ajax development.

Shachor, Gal, Yoav Rubin, Shmulik London and Shmuel Kallner. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Ajax

Survey of Ajax Tools and Techniques

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) programming techniques are increasingly dominating the world of Web application development. New developers are stepping into the world of Ajax development every day, and they come from disparate development backgrounds. Part 1 of this multipart series gives you a cheat sheet of Ajax development resources from an expert team of Ajax developers at IBM(R). The authors draw from their own ramp-up experiences to help you with practical information that will put you on a fast track to effective Ajax development.

Shachor, Gal, Yoav Rubin, Shmulik London and Shmuel Kallner. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Ajax>Methods

User Annotations in Ajax  

The ability to add notes and comments to your Web site can be a powerful and attractive feature for users. This tutorial demonstrates how to implement an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)-based user annotation system in the form of yellow sticky notes that sit on top of regular Web page content. The only additional, required configuration is a back-end Perl script that stores the annotations.

Travis, Greg. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>DHTML>Ajax

Web 2.0 Can Be Dangerous

AJAX, rich Internet UIs, mashups, communities, and user-generated content often add more complexity than they're worth. They also divert design resources and prove (once again) that what's hyped is rarely what's most profitable.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Web Development Trends

So we’re in the middle of Web 2.0, the first real movement in web development since it’s interception. New technologies, most notably AJAX and the enhanced knowledge and usage of CSS, has allowed for amazing, innovative websites that would have never been created in the not so distant past.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Ajax

XML Processing in Ajax, Part 1: Four Approaches

Any programming problem can be solved in multiple right ways. This series looks at four approaches for creating an Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) weather badge, a small reusable widget that's easily embedded on any Web page. This first article lays the foundation and examines the first approach--walking the DOM tree.

Pruett, Mark. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>XML>Ajax

Retrieving Data on a SQL Anywhere Server Using AJAX

The article shows how an AJAX call can be made to a resource on the SQL Anywhere Server using stored procedures and web services.

Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. Ajax World (2008). Articles>Web Design>Databases>Ajax

Build Ajax-Based Web sites with PHP

Learn the process of writing Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) applications using native JavaScript™ code and PHP. This article introduces a few different frameworks and application program interfaces (APIs) that reduce the amount of code you need to write to achieve a complete Ajax-based Web application.

Ramirez, Ken. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>Ajax>PHP

jQuery-Based Popout Ad: Part 1

Today I’d like to start an article series of three parts, the result of which will be a popout-style, jQuery-based box like the one pictured above, which I think strikes a nice balance on the obtrusion-scale.

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

jQuery-Based Popout Ad: Part 2

We're going to take the ad we built last week and animate it, as well as provide the user with a means to open and close the ad. We’ll be using jQuery for most of what we do, so you’ll need to include the jQuery library script at the top of your document for this to work (see the source of the example page to see how this is done).

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

Generating Automatic Website Footnotes with jQuery

Generating footnotes for HTML documents in the past was always a slow, painful task — and every time I did it, I wondered why there wasn’t a better, easier way. Today, I’m happy to announce that I’ve come up with a better solution to web footnotes using the jQuery JavaScript framework and a few tags and attributes that already exist in XHTML.

Glazebrook, Rob L. CSSnewbie (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

Parse JSON with jQuery and JavaScript

While exploring the options for traversing JSON, I discovered that there is no official W3C documentation, or even a draft. As a subset of the ECMAScript language specification, it will probably remain under the governance of ECMA International. So unlike XPath, which is a commonly accepted language for traversing XML, JSON must rely on JavaScript’s object notation.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

jQuery and XML Revisited

In releasing jQuery v.1.2, a decision was made by the development team to drop XPath support from the core. Instead, an officially released XPath jQuery plugin is now available, which provides deprecated functionality. Although initially disappointed by this decision, I was happy to discover that alternative methods for obtaining data from an XML file are still available without the plugin.

Reindel, Brian. d'bug (2008). Articles>Web Design>XML>Ajax

Stop Using Ajax!

We got things like browser wars, browser-specific DHTML, and table-based layouts. These were things that got in the way of the original vision, because people wanted rich content when the technology wasn’t ready. And now it’s happening again.

Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Ajax

Making a Cross-Platform AJAX-Based Web Application

I will go through how to make a full-blown widget that uses AJAX technology. It fetches news from a newsfeed source, presents them nicely to you, includes some eyecandy and of course lets you customize the amount of news items, refresh time and which category of news you want to be shown.

Mendoza, Nicolas. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Issues When Working With AJAX

This paper covers the main stumbling-blocks you're likely to come across with AJAX: instantiating the necessary JavaScript object, building the request, and using the response.

Mercurytide (2005). Articles>Web Design>Ajax>JavaScript

Fun with Overflows

Making use of the overflow and scrollLeft DOM property to scroll elements is a much more effective use of the CPU, over animating using CSS top/left. So this episode of J4D demonstrates the same effect used in two completely different ways.

Sharp, Remy. jQuery for Designers (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Image Fade Revisited

This episode is revisiting the image cross fade effect, in particular Dragon Interactive has a beautiful little transition for their navigation that some readers have been requesting. Greg Johnson takes it one step further to implement this method using jQuery and the methods shown here.

Sharp, Remy. jQuery for Designers (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax