Advanced XML Validation

XSLT stylesheets are designed to transform XML documents. Coupled with Java extensions, stylesheets can also be a powerful complement to XML Schema when grammar-based validation cannot cover all the constraints required. In this article, Peter Heneback presents the case for validating documents using XSLT with Java extensions and provides practical guidance and code samples.

Heneback, Peter. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Ajax for Chat

Learn to build a chat system into your Web application with Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) and PHP. Your customers can talk to you and to each other about the content of the site without having to download or install any special instant-messaging software.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Ajax

Ajax for Java developers: Build Dynamic Java Applications

The page-reload cycle presents one of the biggest usability obstacles in Web application development and is a serious challenge for Java™ developers. In this series, author Philip McCarthy introduces a groundbreaking approach to creating dynamic Web application experiences. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a programming technique that lets you combine Java technologies, XML, and JavaScript for Java-based Web applications that break the page-reload paradigm.

McCarthy, Philip. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

Ajax for Java Developers: Java Object Serialization for Ajax

If you're doing Java Web development using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), then delivering data from the server to the client is probably your top concern. In this second article in the Ajax for Java developers series, Philip McCarthy walks you through five approaches to Java object serialization and gives you all the information you need to choose the data format and technology best suited to your application.

McCarthy, Philip. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Ajax for Lightboxes

In a world where everything is designed to amaze and distract, it's awfully difficult to get a user's attention. Learn how to use new techniques such as lightboxes, pop-ups, windows, and fading messages with your Ajax tools to get your users' eyes on your content.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>User Interface>Ajax

Ajax for Lightboxes

In a world where everything is designed to amaze and distract, it's awfully difficult to get a user's attention. Learn how to use new techniques such as lightboxes, pop-ups, windows, and fading messages with your Ajax tools to get your users' eyes on your content.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Ajax

Ajax for Media: Use Ajax Techniques to Show Movies and Slide Shows

With the advent of widely available broadband, media, movies, images, and sound drive the Web 2.0 revolution. Learn to combine media with technologies such as PHP and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) to create a compelling experience for your customers.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Ajax

Ajax for Ratings and Comments

In the age of the people-powered Web, allowing your readers to rate and review content on your site is critical. Discover just how easy it is to add rating and commenting features to a site with Ajax.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Ajax

Ajax for Ratings and Comments

In the age of the people-powered Web, allowing your readers to rate and review content on your site is critical. Discover just how easy it is to add rating and commenting features to a site with Ajax.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Community Building>Ajax

Ajax for Tables

One strong suit of Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) is presenting data from the server to users in a dynamic fashion. Discover several techniques that use Ajax for dynamic data display using tables, tabs, and gliders.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2008). Design>Web Design>Ajax

Ajax Performance Analysis

Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) continues to raise user expectations for interactivity and performance, and developers are increasingly treating Ajax as a must-have component of their Web applications. As more code is moved client side and the network model changes, the community is responding by building more tools to address the unique performance challenges of Ajax. Examine toolsets that find and correct performance problems within your Ajax-enriched applications.

Zyp, Kristopher William. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Ajax RSS Reader

Learn how to build an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) Really Simple Syndication (RSS) reader, as well as a Web component that you can place on any Web site to look at the articles in the RSS feeds.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2006). Design>Web Design>XML>Ajax

Ajax Tradeoffs: The Many Flavors of XML

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and the idea is that with modern Web browsers you can, with acceptable reliability, keep a channel open to the server to pass data back and forth as your Web application is used. This contrasts with standard Web techniques that follow links, causing the entire page to load anew. Many aspects of Ajax-based development require design different decisions than traditional Web pages: How to manage the back button, how to display updated data, how often to send updates, and more. The focus for now will be on just one group of related aspects: what format should the data exchange take?

Elza, Dethe and David Mertz. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>XML>Ajax

The Ajax Transport Method

Discover three Ajax data transport mechanisms (XMLHttp, script tags, and frames or iframes) and their relative strengths and weaknesses. This tutorial provides code for both the server side and the client side and explains it in detail to provide the techniques you need to put efficient Ajax controls anywhere you need them.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>Ajax

Ajax-Based Persistent Object Mapping

The Persevere persistent object framework brings persistent object mapping to the browser JavaScript environment. Object persistence has seen great popularity in the Java(TM) programming and Ruby worlds, and the dynamic JavaScript language is naturally well suited to mapping objects to persisted data. Persevere automates mapping and communication in Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax)-based Web applications in addition to simplifying much of the development challenge by providing a manageable data model, transparent client-server Ajax interchanges, automatic state change storage, and implicit transaction management.

Zyp, Kristopher William. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>Ajax

All Hail Shale: Shale Isn't Struts

What Shale isn't is a shrink-wrapped, well-documented, well-tested product complete with an automated installer and a polished management interface. Now find out what it is, as Brett McLaughlin unveils this mighty -- and rightful-- heir to the legacy of Struts. In this first of a five-part series, Brett explains what Shale is, how it's different from the Struts framework, and how to install and set it up in your development environment.

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

Are you ready for XOP (XML-Oriented Programming)?

The domain model is a familiar concept to most OOP (Object Oriented Programming) developers and architects, and has been used successfully in a variety of systems and projects. But how does this principle apply to SOA-based solutions?

Xu, Peter. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML

Assemble a Cross-Platform Firefox Extension

XUL is a surprisingly easy way to build cross-platform browser extensions or even stand-alone applications. Discover how to build powerful, flexible Mozilla browser extensions that go beyond the capabilities of other tools like embedded scripting languages or CGI--because they're built right into the user's browser.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>Web Browsers

Avoid Unnecessary Ajax Traffic with Session State

Where possible, creating Web applications -- including Ajax-based applications -- in a RESTful way avoids a large class of bugs. However, a pitfall of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is sending duplicate data across similar XMLHttpRequests. This tip shows how the moderate use of session cookies can maintain just enough server-side state to significantly reduce client-server traffic, while still allowing fallback to cookie-free operation.

Mertz, David. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Ajax

Baby Duck Syndrome

What if something neither looks nor quacks like a duck, but users think it is a duck? The cranky user comments on baby duck syndrome and how it can trap users with systems and interfaces that don't really meet their needs.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2005). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>Usability

Bad Design Can Be So Taxing

When people design Web forms, they often overlook some great sources of professional expertise in the world -- the existence of form design techniques with which nearly all users are familiar. This month, the cranky user looks at form design and management.

Seebach, Peter. IBM (2005). Design>Web Design>Forms

Build a Customizable RSS Feed Aggregator in PHP

RSS (Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) has been around since the mid-1990s. Over the years, several variants of the RSS format have popped up and several claims have been made about its ownership. Despite these differences, RSS never ceased to serve its usefulness in distributing Web content from one Web site to many others. The popularity of RSS gave way to the growth of a new class of Web software called the feed reader, also known as the feed aggregator. Although there are several commercially available feed aggregators, it's easy to develop your own feed aggregator, which you can integrate with your Web applications. You'll appreciate this article's fully functional PHP code snippets, demonstrating the use of PHP-based server-side functions to develop a customizable RSS feed aggregator. In addition, you'll reap instant benefits from using the fully functional RSS feed aggregator code, which you can download from this article.

Nathan, Senthil. IBM (2008). Articles>User Interface>XML>RSS

Build a Shopping Cart Application Using XForms

This tutorial focuses on key aspects of the W3C XForms 1.0 standard to produce a fully functional Web-based shopping cart. With this approach, the reader will get a good start at creating real-world applications with XForms, without having to learn the entire XForms specification.

Speicher, Steve K., Keith Wells, Jan J. Kratky and Kevin Kelly. IBM (2007). Design>Web Design>E Commerce>XForms

Build Ajax into your Web Apps with Rails

Ruby on Rails provides an excellent platform for building Web applications. Discover how to use the built-in Asynchronous JavaScript(TM) + XML (Ajax) features of the platform to give your application the Web 2.0 rich user interface experience.

Herrington, Jack D. IBM (2006). Design>Web Design>Ajax>Ruby on Rails

Build Custom Templates for Your Data-Driven Web Sites

Most developers dread dealing with HTML tables and cells to build their Web sites. For one thing, tables make it difficult to modify the site later or to change its appearance. Discover some basic techniques for writing Web sites that you can later re-skin by using templates during the site's initial creation. Also, learn why you should use data-driven techniques for your own Web sites.

Ramirez, Ken. IBM (2008). Articles>Web Design>Databases>SQL