• InfoQ: System Integration Testing Using Spring – When it comes to system integration testing Spring adds real value. In this session, Rod Johnson discusses: integration testing and the support that Spring provides for it, issues around testing the persistence layer, testing web applications.
• InfoQ: BEA and Oracle incorporate Sun’s Project Tango – In a recent article, Sun’s director for SOA products, Kevin Schmidt mentioned the fact that both Oracle and BEA have incorporated Sun’s Web Services stack, Project Tango. Tango is MS .NET 3.0 interop
• InfoQ: Using Java to Crack Office 2007 – With Office 2007, no third-party libraries are necessary-a Java application can now read and write any Office 2007 document, because Office 2007 documents are now nothing more than ZIP files of XML documents known as the OpenXML
• Welcome to jXLS – jXLS is small and easy-to-use Java library for generating Excel files using XLS templates. Also jXLS can be used to read XLS files and populate Java beans with spreadsheet data according to XML configuration file
• How To Read / Write Excel Spreadsheet From Java – Both JExcelAPI and Jakarta POI (HSSF) are open source software to read & write data from / to Excel spreadsheet even on non-Microsoft platforms. In my tests HSSF came out to be the clear leader and recommended solution because of robustness and features.
• Eloquent JavaScript – Eloquent JavaScript is a hyper-book providing a comprehensive introduction to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them.
• http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-protocol-17.txt – The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) is an application-level protocol for publishing and editing Web resources. The protocol is based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted representations. The Atom format is documented in the Atom Syndication Format.
• F1 News – Grandprix.com – One of the big problems with the ongoing Stepneygate Affair is that there is a huge amount of hearsay, but not a great deal of fact
• YUI 2.3.0: Six New Components and a Prettier Face » Yahoo! User Interface Blog – We’re pleased to announce the release of YUI version 2.3.0. This release features six new additions to the library as well as a new skinning architecture and a new visual treatment for most of our UI controls – plus 250 enhancements and bug fixes
• Greg the Architect : Episodes – Find out what happens when Greg tries to swallow three different SOA pitches in one day. Will he save the day, or will Greg have to chuck the project?
• Dr. Dobb’s | Java Message Service | July 2, 2007 – SOAP-based web-service development continues to grow, and uses XML and HTTP to remove the implementation details from remote procedure calls. But while SOAP has broken new ground in distributed computing, message-oriented middleware such as the Java Messa
• Plans for the Rich Web Application Backplane – Both mashups and Ajax are now firmly entrenched in the Web landscape. Put them together and you have the makings for Rich Web applications. This article explains the Rich Web Application Backplane, currently a W3C Note, which is designed to bring standard
• 10 things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA successfully by SpencerUresk – I decided to share a few things I learned about using Hibernate/JPA in a large project with a complicated database setup
• OpenJPA no longer requires bytecode processing – Historically, OpenJPA required that you either run a post-compilation tool or run your application with a javaagent. The latest build of OpenJPA removes this restriction by providing various levels of support for unenhanced classes.

• 0 Comments

• Apache CXF: Interview with Dan Diephouse and Paul Brown – O’Reilly ONJava Blog – I recently had a chance to sit down with both Dan Diephouse and Paul Brown of Envoi Solutions to discuss the merger of XFire and IONA?s Celtix project into a new project, Apache CXF, currently under incubation at the Apache Software Foundation.
• Easy Ajax using Struts 2 – Kb – Struts 2 makes it easy to implement and test an Ajax Java Web application, using standard javascript frameworks such as Prototype. This wiki article gives technical notes on how to kickstart your Ajax Java development.
• Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally « – Let?s look at 12 ways Facebook can benefit the web worker, particularly those who are home-based. The more connected you are to your co-workers and clients without being intrusive, the better your working relationship.
• AJAX Magazine: YSlow Helps You Speed up your web pages – Yahoo! released an excellent performance utility on YDN called YSlow, to help you understand why your pages are slow. YSlow is a Firebug addon
• Agile Ajax: Review of GWT in Action – The book does cover many of the new features in GWT 1.4, such as Image Bundling, the new loading mechanism, and the Serializable vs IsSerializable changes. As I’ve said, overall a fine effort.
• High Performance WordPress Presentation « Barry on WordPress – The slides from the HyperDB and High Performance WordPress presentation are now online via SlideShare
• Web page to PDF Firefox extension – LOOP is a unique extension for Firefox that converts the web browser into a proper PDF writer that can do some amazing things sometime not possible in other free PDF conversion software
• Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups – With businesses and families spread out more and more, we?ve dug up 60+ sites that will help everyone be on the same page
• InfoQ: Presentation: Introduction to Component Based Architecture – Mark Miller delivered an introduction to Component Based Architecture. In this presention he shares tips and tricks focused on maximizing the development strength of your team
• InfoQ: Using ETags to Reduce Bandwith & Workload with Spring & Hibernate – ETags are used in conjunction with the “If-None-Match” header on a GET request to take advantage of the browser cache. Because the server generated the ETag in the first place, it can use it later to determine if the page has changed.
• InfoQ: Bridging the gap between BI & SOA – To summarize, implementing a BI solution by using EDA and SOA is superior to using traditional ETL. Not only do we get our basic BI, but we actually get better, real-time BI?not to mention improvement in the overall quality of our SOA.
• How risk management affects agile approaches | confused of calcutta – Once you switch focus from content to process, agile techniques don?t stand a chance. Agile in a ‘content’ perspective leads to the Baconian ‘A man that starts with doubts shall end in certainties’; … These two positions are polar opposites
• Json-lib 2.0 released – I’m pleased to announce that Json-lib version 2.0 has been released. JSON-lib is a java library for transforming beans, maps and XML to JSON and back again to beans and DynaBeans

• 0 Comments

Ajax examples (XMLHttpRequest examples), code snippets and proof of concepts – the links below should help get you started on building your own functions with XMLHttpRequest and Ajax.

Loading XML into a page with xmlHttpRequest

A cool little blog post and demo that Retrieves an xml atom feed and xsl stylesheet with XMLHttpRequest().

XMLHttpRequest, REST and the Rich User Experience : Paul James

Paul James gives the basics of getting started with XMLHttpRequest and using REST for attaching the client-side to the server.

He builds an example where, upon entering a postal code and pushing a button, a form queries the server for the rest of the address information and fills in the appropriate fields when the data is returned.

Using the XML HTTP Request object

Jim Ley provides his overview of the XML HTTP request object, getting into some browser details and detection before providing some examples and getting into using XMLHTTP with google’s SOAP API.

Very Dynamic Web Interfaces – XMLHttpRequest

Drew McLellan provides an excellent overview of the basics of using XMLHttpRequest offering up a simple, well documented example used for checking if a username is available (similar to g-mail).

Client Side Validation Using the XMLHTTPRequest Object

An example of using XMLHTTP to perform real time data validation, in this example for validating data entered into a user registration form. The example focusses on Microsoft and ASP.

XMLHttpRequest Demo

Three examples of XMLHttpRequest in use: autocomplete, live search, and live action.

To Do with Ta-da List: Simple sharable to-do lists.

A free web based to-do list application provided by 37Signals, makers of Basecamp. Sign-up and try it out; XMLHttpRequest in action.

XHConn – A Simple XMLHTTP Interface

From the site: This library is meant to simplify and unify the code necessary to successfully send and receive simple data via XMLHTTP.

XMLHttpRequest API madness

Two scripts that use XMLHttpRequest: 1 – a javaScript interface to the languid.cantbedone.org API and 2 – a javaScript interface to the del.icio.us API.

Dynamic HTML and XML: The XMLHttpRequest Object

Apples page on the the XMLHttpRequest object, covering object creation, methods and properties in addition to security issues. They build an example for reading XML data, by retrieving iTunes RSS feeds that you select from a dropdown menu.

LiveSearch – Bitflux Blog Wiki

The wiki page for the livesearch function. From the page: On the client side, we use XMLHttpRequest for sending the request to the server. There we have a little PHP script, which returns a small HTML file (http://blog.bitflux.ch/livesearch.php?s=PHP ) . This is then inserted into the page with some DOM manipulation.

XMLHttpRequest and innerHTML

XMLHttpRequest is one of modern DHTML’s best kept secrets. – Haha, not anymore! Simon Willison offers up a little code that takes an HTML fragment, fetched via xmlhttp.open, and inserts it into an element with a specified id. Some good links and comments follow the article.

Google Suggest feature with ASP.NET 2.0

This article provides an ASP.NET 2.0 angle of Google Suggest along with a short little look at the history of javascript, frames, remote scripting and XmlHttp + XMLHttpRequest.

A nice overview of the history and a good breakdown how the Suggest feature works.

SAJAX – Simple Ajax / xmlHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP

From the site: Sajax makes it easy to call PHP functions from your webpages via JavaScript without performing a browser refresh. Worth checking out and having a play with.

Amazon Zuggest

From the site: This is my take on Google Suggest only with Amazon so I’ve called it “Amazon Zuggest”. Head on over and give this a try.

Francis writes “The Javascript runs in the browser and fires every so often, looks for something to search on, it shoots a request using XMLHttp to my webserver, which in turn creates a SOAP message that gets sent to Amazon. They send back the content and it’s formatted on the server, then streamed to the browser. All in the blink of an eye.

This is a cool little app. When you are done searching, have a hover over the “History” list in the left hand column… The site comes up a little messy in Firefox…

Instant Edit

Manolo Guerrero sets up a little app that allows you to click on a form field and edit the text, which is automatically saved to the server via xmlHttpRequest. Worth a look, though the commented Javascript is in Spanish.

AJaX for weblogs

A neat little script to play with (not sure what it has to do with weblogs especially tho). From the site: It uses Javascript to get data from a remote source and then loads that into a specified target. Whatever content you like to wherever you like on the page.

AJAX Login System Demo

A proof of concept, Ajax based login script that, in this case, uses a php/mysql backend. The author provides all of the scripts involved and lists some advantages and dis-advantages of his method.

Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice

Thomas Baekdal gets back into accessibility and Ajax. From the site: Let’s look at what we can do to turn an otherwise user-hostile XMLHttpRequest application – into a usable one…. An excellent write-up.

XHTML live Chat via XMLHttpRequest

An excellent proof of concept and something I was waiting for someone to code up ;-). This XHTML live Chat uses XMLHttpRequest to post chat messages and to periodically check the server for new messages and update your chat window.

This is simply a proof of concept, and would work really well in a blog commenting setting or for forums when those fast threads start happening.

Ripped Tickets – Live Search

Here’s an excellent application of the livesearch idea that has been seen around the web. Type in your search (a band name) and the results show up in a nice table below the search box.

Running XMLHttpRequest with Java on Google’s API

Similar to other livesearch functions out there, only this one plugs into Google’s API and has a Java backend, returning a list of results and descriptions for your query.

SproutLiner

From the site: Sproutliner is a free web service that helps you manage your projects and ideas. This tool looks to be very promising, and to be honest you have to try it out to ‘get it’. It is a sort of Ta-da list on steroids, so to speak, in that it is very simple yet a user can add to it and tailor it to their needs.

Very cool…

The Fonz uses XmlHttpRequest and AJAX to spy on you.

While makaing some excellent points in the article, the little adventure game “The Search For Fonzie’s Treasure” built using Ajax technologies is pretty cool. The author discusses user profiling as an “evil use” of Ajax. I’m not so sure that I would say that it is evil…

Backbase – Rich Internet Applications

A very impressive piece of Ajax work, with some context provided here. Have a click thru the site and try out that back-button. Also be sure to head in and check out the demo section.

• 0 Comments

The system BIOS is one part of the computer that often goes untouched even by the IT pros. However, upgrading the BIOS can help increase the life of your machine. Tech site Hardware Guides, explains what the BIOS is, and how and why to flash it.

With the help of a Dell rep, I smoothly flashed my BIOS once. Have any of you flashed your BIOS? How did the process go? Share in the comments.

Why and How to Flash Your BIOS [Hardware Guides]

• 0 Comments

When programming for the web, sometimes the need arises to test a function on the fly without being too intrusive. You may be debugging and need to test for a result, or simply testing. The following is a simple strategy that can help in those cases.

Firing a function from your browser

The concept is as simple as firing a function from your browser, and it leans on PHP’s call_user_func_array.

I’m going to outline the concept as I have implemented it. This exact implementation may not work in your case, but perhaps you can adapt it to do so.

if(isset($_GET['f']) && function_exists($_GET['f'])) {

$func = $_GET['f']; // Get function name.

unset($_GET['f']); // Drop function from from get.

// Fire and print function, passing

// remaining GETs as function parameters.

print_r(call_user_func_array($func, $_GET));

exit;

}

In our CMS/Framework, we set up a controller with the code from above to respond at a given URL, for example http://www.example.com/__FOO. By passing a function name as a GET variable, in this case ‘f’, and the parameters necessary for that function to work as subsequent GET parameters, the result of that function will be printed to the screen.

So, http://www.example.com/__FOO?f=hello_foo&a=world would fire the function hello_foo(’world’), perhaps printing Hello World! to the screen.

This allows for a quick and dirty test of a given function, and can be done remotely on a live site, if necessary, without touching any files or whatnot.

We hide this behind an authorization wall and also clean our parameters before they get to this level, so if you try this, keep these points in mind.

• 0 Comments

PPC ads like Google AdSense and Clicksor are a great source of income for many web site publishers.

You sign up and put the ads on your web sites. They deliver the ads live, with each page load — ads relevant to the content of the page the ads are delivered to. (Well, sometimes they aren’t so relevant, but they try.)

The ads are delivered from the inventory of ads they have available.

What happens when no ads are available depends on the PPC ad distributor. AdSense delivers non-profit (non-paying) ads. I don’t know what Clicksor does.

Both of those organizations, however, allow you to specify content to display whenever they don’t have sufficient relevant ads in their inventory. Instead of their ads, they display your ads.

I will show step by step how to make those alternate ads so they fit within the space allotted for the PPC ads.

You’ll be able to deliver your own ads, paying ads or your personal selection of non-profit ads, whenever AdSense or Clicksor inventory runs out.

Step 1
Create a web page that will contain your ad. A style in the head area should specify zero margins.

Here is an example:

<html>
<head>
<style type=”text/css”>
body { margin:0px; font-family: sans-serif; }
p { font-size:14px; line-height:18px; }
a:link { text-decoration: none; }
a:visited { text-decoration: none; }
a:hover { text-decoration: none; }
a:active { text-decoration: none; }
</style>
</head>
<body bgcolor=”white”>
<p>
This is the best!
</p>
<p>
<a href=”http://example.com”>Click Here!</a>
</p>
</body>
</html>

The ad on the web page can contain any content a normal web page could contain — text, images, Java, forms, and so forth — so long as it fits within the allotted ad space.

I’ll show you an easy way to tweak for the fit.

Step 2

Make a separate, temporary web page to be used for tweaking the ad web page. The temporary web page will contain an iframe tag, which is the “secret” for quickly and easily adjusting the content on the ad web page.

The iframe tag is the same dimension as the allotted ad space. Let’s assume a 250 x 250 square space for our example:

<html>
<body>
<iframe
src=”http://example.com/adpage.html”
width=”250″
height=”250″
frameborder=”1″
marginheight=”0″
marginwidth=”0″
scrolling=”no”>
</iframe>
</body>
</html>

The iframe has a border so it’s easier to tell how much more space the ad web page can occupy, or where the excess content is cut off.

Put your ad page URL in the src attribute (in place of http://example.com/adpage.html).

Adjust the width and height when designing ads of different sizes.

(This temporary web page may be kept on your computer’s hard drive, handy for when you want to tweak the size of another web page ad.)

Step 3

Load the temporary web page into your browser. The ad web page will load into the iframe.

Adjust the ad web page as needed until it fits nicely in the iframe. Test in various browsers, especially the two most popular ones, IE and Firefox. Different browsers render content a bit differently, even when CSS styles are used.

Step 4

Upload the ad web page to your server and make a note of its URL.

Step 5

Tell the PPC ad distributor the URL of your alternate ad web page. This is done by specifying the URL in the JavaScript code that delivers the ad.

The following apply as of this writing.

AdSense:

For AdSense ads, the ad web page URL can be specified when you generate the ad code. The URL will then appear in the generated JavaScript between the quote characters of this line:

google_alternate_ad_url = "";

Clicksor:

For Clicksor ads, put the URL of the ad web page between the single-quote characters of this line:

clicksor_default_url = '';

If the line isn’t in the code obtained from Clicksor, it can be inserted.

Ads of Different Sizes

Make an alternate ad web page for each PPC ad size on your web site.

Once set up, you can display ads that make you money even when the distributor is out of inventory.

• 0 Comments

Search engine optimization, or “SEO” in the biz, isn’t only for people trying to turn their Web site into a revenue machine, to make money online, but can really be useful for everyone building Web sites. There are lots of different facets to writing, designing and adjusting your Web pages to maximize the chance of them being a top result for search terms, but one of the best – and easiest – is to work with keyword density.

What is keyword density? It’s basically a measurement of how relevant a given keyword “topic” is to a page of material. For example, this page is quite relevant to the word ‘keyword’ and the phrase ‘keyword density’ because both occur many times. More importantly, the ratio of their occurances to the total number of words or phrases on the page is reasonably high because, well, they occur a bunch of times.

That’s what keyword density is about. The keyword density of the word “keyword” is calculated by counting the total number of words on the page, then figuring out how many of them are “keyword”. Typical highly-ranked sites have at least a 2-3% keyword density for the key search word or search phrase.

But don’t take my word for it. Check out the keyword density of your favorite Web page at Search Engine World with their terrific – free – keyword density analyzer. To keep your sanity, I suggest that you set it to ignore words of five letters or less.

Of course, SEOs will tell you that keyword density isn’t the only factor to consider when building your page. Among the other important search engine optimization topics are so-called keyword prominence, that is, where on your page the keyword or keywords appear. A title tag is considerably more prominent than the alt text of an image, for example. :-)

Nonetheless, it’s quite informative to search for a key phrase that you would like to have match your own site and then use the keyword density analyzer to see the density of top matched pages versus your own. Then add the phrase a few more times on your page, perhaps in the title or a h1 tag or similar, and try again.

And don’t be surprised if this change all by itself helps boost your site ranking on the search results.

• 2 Comments

You want to get a presence online. You want to tell the world about yourself and your family, start an online business, promote your offline business or just for the fun of it! You don’t want to spend a vast fortune on your online presence but you want to create a good looking website. The good news is that it is possible to create web pages with a real wow factor using just a free website builder. Find out how…

You can start with just your computer!

You can get your website started using just your computer. To create a website in this way you will have to write your pages using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language – but don’t worry about that!). HTML is the standard way that web pages are coded for transmission to any computer in the world. Your web browser takes an HTML file and turns it into the image you see on the screen.

Learning and using HTML may sound pretty daunting at first – and there is a large learning curve to get started. But it’s not impossible. Try this:

Open a text editor on your computer (e.g. Notepad or Wordpad if you’re on a PC) and type in Hello – that’s all you’ll need. The trick is to save this file using “save as”, select “all files” in the “save as type” box and save it as test.html. When you look at the folder where you’ve saved the file, you should see your file showing up as an HTML document. When you double click on this document, it will open in your web browser and display the word Hello on a white background – you’re first webpage!

…Of course things get a bit more difficult when you want to create a good looking page with an attractive layout and lots of graphics!

Luckily there’s a load of free resources on the internet – including several excellent HTML primers – that can help you to learn to do everything you want to do. Just set aside a good chunk of time for learning.

The benefits of learning HTML are:

* You will get a good understanding of how web pages really work
* There are time when being able to tweak a page directly is by far the fastest way to get the result you want!

Use A WYSWIG editor

Just like the word processor you use on your computer, there are What You See is What You Get (WYSWIG) editors for HTML documents. You may have been put off in the past by the high price tag of industrial strength products. The good news is that there are some excellent new products around that you can download for free from the internet.

While these free products don’t have all the features of the expensive commercial products, I have test driven one or two of them and I have found that they are perfectly ok to create good quality websites. The benefits of a WSYWIG editor are

* You don’t have to learn HTML if you don’t want to.

* You can create good looking web pages quickly – I’ve put together pages literally in minutes!

* Some of the editors come with very helpful video tutorials that cover all the important stuff you need to know to create professional looking websites

* Good editors have facilities to help you manage an entire website

* If you do decide to familiarise yourself with HTML, good editors will include a facility that lets you look at the HTML you’ve created

Perhaps the only disadvantage of using a WYSWYG editor from day one of your online career is that you may never find out how to tweak a web page by editing the HTML – but that’s a small price to pay for the overall convenience of using an editor!

Summary

You can create a good looking, professional website without having to spend a penny on expensive software to help you. It’s possible to start with just your computer and a bit of determination, teach yourself HTML and build a website from the ground up.

If you don’t relish the learning curve you’ll need to get familiar with HTML, you can download a free WYSWIG editor and get started within minutes! I’ve tried both and I would recommend you start with a good WYSWIG editor such as My Free Website Builder. You can use it to create your own high quality, professional looking website.

• 0 Comments

The pace of life in Darwin resembles that from a small country town. Slow and relaxed. It`s reflected in the way the residents take their time to stroll down the street, the way they drive unhurriedly around.

That`s Darwin for you. There`s no rush. The only city around for over a thousand kilometres.

For the traveller, most of Darwin city can be seen in a day or two. Stay at one of the inexpensive motels and walk around the town. The centre of the town is probably the mall, a pedestrian only shopping zone, lined on both sides by shops. Further up, there`s the ubiquitous Coles store, open 24 hours 7 days a week. For variety, there`s also two Woolworth stores within walking distance. Great eats can be found at Hog`s Breath and Roark`s Drift along Mitchell Street, with Duck Nuts providing the exotic option. The budget traveller with a large appetite may prefer to try Tim`s Surf and Turf over at Litchfield Street.

Prefer to get closer to the marine life? Hop over to Doctor`s Gully, where the fishes come to be fed by hand. It`s a curious feeling to have the fish nuzzling your hand.

For those looking for a quick buck, there`s the casino over at the MGM Grand Darwin, just up Mitchell Street. Popular with asian tourists and the indigenous aboriginal people, it`s open through the day and night.

Probably the highlight of any trip to Darwin is the Mindil Beach Market, held every Thursday. Go early to enjoy the beautiful sunset, before you enjoy some inexpensive dinner from the numerous stalls lining the paths. Asian cuisine abound, with a choice of chinese food, indian curries and japanese sushi. There`s also kebabs, pizza, fish and chips and even a number of burger stalls. Ladies might find something to buy among the trinkets on sale.

Darwin also has no lack of good eating places. Cullen Bay offers some decent fare, and Yots Cafe serves a decent barramundi wrap. Stokes Hill Wharf is also a popular destination for an inexpensive dinner, with the ubiquitous fish and chips, calamari, oysters and schnitzel.

But Darwin`s main attraction is its proximity to several beautiful national parks, all worth a visit. Kakadu National Park is around 3 hours away by car, which Litchfield is relatively nearer at around an hour and a half of travelling.

Over at Litchfield, do remember to pack a change of clothes, as there`s many places to swim and enjoy the refreshing cool water. Wangi falls, with a huge pool surrounded by cliffs and two beautiful falls, is the perennal favourite, with Florence Falls another popular destination. But my favourite has got to be Buley`s Rockholes, with a series of falls upstream from Florence Falls. The water is cool and clean and refreshing. And there`s a plunge pool at Buley`s where kids can perform their cannonballs and dives, where the ladies can enjoy the water and soak in the sun.

If your idea of Australia is a dusty red desert, of crocodiles and kangaroos, you`re probably right. But a visit to Darwin could show you more of the hidden wonders of the continent down under.

• 0 Comments

With the popularity of AJAX growing every day I’ve had the opportunity to collect and try out many more tutorials in the last several months. These examples and how-to’s represent the best tutorials that I’ve personally used or otherwise had the opportunity to work with out of the overall group. This post is intended for individuals who learn best by example. Most of the listed tutorials come complete with instructions and source code. I’ve also categorized all of the tutorials for easy browsing.

AJAX Activity Indicator Tutorial
CakeTimer – An Ajax File Uploads Progress Bar
This is a demonstration of an AJAX powered progressbar to monitor file uploads with (Cake)PHP.

HowTo add Ajax in-progress indicators
Ok, so my little del.icio.us app (click link to read about how I added Ajax functionality to a simple Rails app) is pretty cool, but it was missing one big thing. When the user clicks the “Get Results” link she has no idea that the page is communicating with the server.

AJAX Bookmarklets Tutorial
Creating Huge Bookmarklets
A bookmarklet is a special piece of JavaScript code that can be dragged into a user’s link toolbar, and which later can be clicked on to implement cross-site behavior. People have done all sorts of cool stuff with it.

AJAX Chat Tutorials
AJAX Chat Sources Code for Download
After a slow start (following the announcement of the XHTML (ajax) Chat) things got finally busy. I had so many requests that I have decided to offer the complete sources for download.

Lace – Ajax Chat
Lace is a free, lightweight Ajaxian communications engine suitable for a shoutbox, chat room or similar. Version 0.1.3 brings with it several bug fixes, a tiny bit of code reorganization and most importantly, an oft-requested User List.

Most Simple Ajax Chat Ever
Very easy to use AJAX chat demo.

AJAX Client-Server Communication Tutorials
Implementing simple AJAX interaction in your Web Application using XMLHttpRequest object
Everybody till now must have atleast heard about AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). This example will give you an idea about how you can implement simple AJAX interaction in your web application.

Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
In this article, you’ll begin with the most fundamental and basic of all Ajax-related objects and programming approaches: The XMLHttpRequest object. This object is really the only common thread across all Ajax applications and — as you might expect — you will want to understand it thoroughly to take your programming to the limits of what’s possible.

Advanced requests and responses in Ajax
n this article, I move beyond the basics in the last article and concentrate on more detail about three key parts of this request object, the HTTP ready state, the HTTP status code and the types of requests that you can make

AJAX
In this tutorial, you’ll be introduced to Ajax, a technology that allows you to send these requests through small JavaScript calls, meaning the user doesn’t have to wait for the page to refresh.

All Request, All The Time
Let’s build a simple application that accepts input from the user, passes it to some PHP on the server that checks it against a database, and returns the result to the browser. It comes in three parts.

AJAX Drag and Drop Tutorial
Drag and Drop Tutorial (with a cool video)
Adding items to a shopping cart in common e-commerce applications isn’t very close to the actual “add to cart” metaphor, since it requires clicking an “add to cart” button, watch a new page (the shopping cart), and then go back to the shop or checkout with buttons. Ajax allows to get closer to the cart metaphor, by enabling drag-and-drop interactions and giving immediate visual feedback, without leaving the shop.

AJAX Dynamically Content Loading Tutorials
Dynamically loaded articles
This is a basic example showing you how to use AJAX. In this script, you have a list of article titles at the right side. When you click on one of them, AJAX will be used to request the content of the article from an external file and show it in the main DIV.

Ajax – Dynamic Content
This small generic script makes it easy for you to load content of external files into HTML elements on your page.

AJAX Forms and Autocomplete Tutorials
Scriptaculous Lists with PHP
The drag-and-drop effects, most notably the sortables, caught my eye because the look great, they are so easy to implement, and they’re just so much nicer than the standard listbox with up/down arrows that we see in most of today’s applications and administration tools.

Alter data with Ajax forms
Displaying rich formatted questions and lists, even paginated, is not enough to make an application live. And the heart of the askeet concept is to allow any registered user to ask a new question, and any user to answer an existing one. Isn’t it time we get to it?

Dynamic Client Lookup
This script uses AJAX to autofill a form. Open the demo and type in 1001 in the “client ID” text field. AJAX will when you have done this call a script on the server and auto fill the rest of the form with client data.

Chained Select Boxes
This script uses Ajax to popuplate a select box with cities based on which country you choose.

Ajax Dynamic List
This script shows you a list of options based on what you type into a text input. Example: Type in “A” and Ajax will get you a list of all contries starting with “A”.

AJAX Framework and Toolkit Tutorials
My-BIC – Tutorials and How To’s
A collection of easy to follow tutorials using the My-Bic Framework including a, hello world – getting your ajax setup, posting comments via AJAX and changing views from a drop down. There are beginner and intermediate tutorials here.

New Echo2 Tutorial Series
Part 1 of a multipart Echo2 tutorial series, entitled “Ajax with Echo2 and Eclipse” is now available from our web site. The related archive with the Echo2 distribution plus the EchopointNG library is available here.

AJAX Design Patterns – Using The Dojo Toolkit
Is this tutorial any different from the others? Well yes and no, it is different in being a tutorial on how to design and build a complete site and not just some fancy little details like how to turn caching in AJAX off or how to create a fancy widget.

Using Dojo and JSON to Build Ajax Applications
In this article, I will show how to build Ajax-enabled applications using Dojo and JSON–two very different but complementary technologies that can significantly enhance the interface and usability of web applications.

AJAX General Tutorials
Building a Spy
Step by step instructions on how to build a Digg like spy page.

Building a Shelf in WordPress
Nice tutorial on how to build a sliding shelf in Wordpress.

AJAX from Scratch: Implementing Mutual Exclusion in JavaScript
This AJAX from Scratch series of articles describes fundamental techniques needed to develop AJAX Rich Internet Applications in JavaScript from scratch.

Saving Session Across Page Loads Without Cookies, On The Client Side
This is a mini-tutorial on saving state across page loads on the client side, without using cookies so as to save large amounts of data beyond cookies size limits.

A Tale of Two IFrames or, How To Control Your Browsers History
This is a mini-tutorial on the black art of iframes and browser history, known to AJAX experts but rarely presented clearly.

AjaxWorld Special: What Is AJAX?
Learn more about AJAX and ColdFusion

Simple Ajax Functions – Snippets
I’ve created a list of very common JavaScript functions for Ajax. They have been created in quick reference fashion and do not contain any fancy stuff. Instead of creating one function which can handle various tasks depending on passed values, they are split into seperate basic task functions. The reason for this is simplicity.

AJAX Using ASP.NET 1.1
You’ve heard of it. It is the latest buzz term for web programmers these days. AJAX is an acronym that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX gains its popularity by allowing data on a page to be dynamically updated without having to make the browser reload the page. I will describe more about how AJAX works, and then go into some sample code to try out.

Speed up Your AJAX Based Webapps
It sets the expiry of the JavaScript to years and not days. Once the JavaScript file is downloaded it is never downloaded again, ofcourse unless you force it by removing the file in the cache. If you visit the site often the JavaScript will not be removed from the cache.

Kick-start your Java apps, Part 2
This tutorial guides you through the development of a small human-resources application, first using conventional JavaServer Pages (JSP) based technology, and then migrating it to a highly interactive solution using Ajax.

Howto integrate Google Calendar in your website using AJAX
One of the features I find it interesting in Google calendar is the possibility to create shared calendars, but also the availability of your calendar as XML or ICAL whatever it’s a private or public one. As soon as we have XML of our calendar available I was wondering why not integrating Google calendar directly in website.

Create Your Own Ajax Effects
Why let script.aculo.us have all the fun? Start building your own Ajax-driven visual effects today. The basic and prebuilt effects in script.aculo.us are nice, but if you really want to build something great why not investigate doing your own, homegrown, do-it-yourself effects. We’re going to show you how to take basic effects and build on them to create your own.

AJAX Getting Started Tutorials
An Introduction to AJAX
A very nice introduction to AJAX.

Nitty Gritty Ajax
In the course of this tutorial, we’re going to look at what Ajax can do. Then we’ll use a JavaScript class to simplify your first steps toward the ultimate in speedy user interactivity.

A simple AJAX example
Based on Rasmus’s 30 second AJAX tutorial, I’ve cobbled together a very rudimentary example of one approach to AJAX programming. A “Hello, World” AJAX program, if you will. You can view the demo here on my site, and download the source code (document attachment at the bottom of this article).

A List Apart: Articles: Getting Started with Ajax
The start of 2005 saw the rise of a relatively new technology, dubbed “Ajax” by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In a nutshell, it is the use of the nonstandard XMLHttpRequest() object to communicate with server-side scripts.

Ajax Toybox
Justin has put together a nice group of AJAX tutorials including, Hello, World, Dynamic City, State Lookup, Ajax to Clean Your Clock, Ajax Calculator and an RSS News Ticker.

Introduction to Ajax
When it comes to Ajax, the reality is that it involves a lot of technologies — to get beyond the basics, you need to drill down into several different technologies (which is why I’ll spend the first several articles in this series breaking apart each one of them).

Ajax Toolbox / XMLHttpRequest AjaxRequest Library Examples
A great group of AJAX examples.

Rasmus’ 30 second AJAX Tutorial
I find a lot of this AJAX stuff a bit of a hype. Lots of people have been using similar things long before it became “AJAX”. And it really isn’t as complicated as a lot of people make it out to be. Here is a simple example from one of my apps.

An Ajax “Hello World” project to Get You Going
Sometimes we all want something very simple to build a thorough understanding of the mechanics of a new technique before we dive into the deeper water beyond. Now, if you are into ASP.NET and not PHP you might like to take a look at my version of this ultra-simple introduction to Ajax with sincere thanks to the original author.

Ajax Beginners Tutorial
In this tutorial we’ll discuss the basic principles of remote scripting using Ajax, a combination of javascript and XML to allow web pages to be updated with new information from the server, without the user having to wait for a page refresh.

AJAX Image and Gallery Tutorials
Image crop – DHTML user interface
This script gives you an Image crop/resize DHTML user interface. Drag a rectangle around the area you want to crop. Click the “Crop” button and let Ajax send crop data to the server and the cropped image back to you. PHP uses ImageMagick on the server to crop and convert the image.

Prototype Javascript Lightboxes
This class is based on Prototype 1.5. The code is inspired of the powerful script.aculo.us library. You can even use all script.aculo.us effects to show and hide windows if you include effects.js file.

AJAX Sortable List Tutorial
How to Make Sortable Lists
Many web applications need to offer an interface to order items – think about categories in a weblog, articles in a CMS, wishes in an e-commerce website… The old fashion way of doing it is to offer arrows to move one item up or down in the list. The AJAX way of doing it is to allow direct drag-and-drop ordering with server support.

AJAX RSS Tutorials
Simple Ajax RSS ticker script
This very small and simple script reads RSS data from an external source and shows them inside a predefined box DIV or other tag) on your page. What you have to do is to specify the url to the RSS feed, how many items you want to show, and for how many seconds you want the script to display each item.

Dragable RSS boxes
This is is a script that uses Ajax to read data from external RSS sources and display them inside dragable boxes. You can also create new boxes dynamically directly from the page. This is the first version of this script. New functionality will be added to this script during the following weeks and months.

Slide In RSS items
This scripts reads RSS feeds from an external source and displays them on your page. Each items appears after a predefined number of seconds by sliding in from the right side.

RSS Ticker with AJAX
Well, with this powerful RSS ticker script, you can now easily display any RSS content on your site in a ticker fashion! This script uses a simple PHP based RSS parser called LastRSS for retrieving a RSS feed, then Ajax and DHTML to display the feed dynamically and with flare. As a pre-requisite then, your site itself must support PHP, though the page using this ticker can be any regular HTML file.

AJAX Shopping Cart Tutorials
Fly to basket (Shopping cart)
This is a DHTML shopping cart module. The products will fly to the shopping basket when you click on the “Add to basket” button. Ajax is used to dynamically update the content of the basket.

Flexstore on Rails Tutorial
Flexstore is a traditional Shopping Cart application that you can write in Ruby on Rails. Very comprehensive and cool.

AJAX Sorting Tutorial
Sorttable: Make all your tables sortable
While the web design community gradually moves away from using tables to lay out the structure of a page, tables really do have a vital use, their original use; they’re for laying out tabular data.

AJAX Trees Tutorials
Update a tree with AJAX
his scripts adds an AJAX extension to my static folder tree. Open the demo and press down your mouse button on one of the nodes in thee tree. This will make a text box appear which makes it possible for you to rename nodes. AJAX is used to send this value to the server without reloading the page.

Static list based folder tree
This is a list based folder tree. What you have to do is to create a UL LI list. The script will then create the tree based on this list. The script uses cookies to remember state of nodes. It also includes functions for expanding/collapsing all nodes.

AJAX Username Availability Tutorial
AJAX username availability checking
The goal of this AJAX example is to allow a user who is registering for your site to see if the username they want to use is taken already or not, without having to submit a form and reload the page.

AJAX Voting Tutorial
Digg-like AJAX Vote On
This tutorial will show you how to add AJAX-enhanced interactions to askeet. The objective is to allow a registered user to declare its interest about a question.

Ajax Poller
A poller script that uses Ajax to send vote to the server and receives vote results from the server. The results are displayed in some animated graphs.

• 0 Comments