Adding Ajax

Shelley Powers9780596529369, 0596529368

Adding Ajax is ideal for the intermediate to advanced web developers among you who are worried and confused about Ajax, thinking that it will force you to start over with your craft. This refreshing guide will calm those fears by offering an entirely new approach to the topic. Rather than introduce Ajax as a completely new way of doing things, this book shows you how to integrate Ajax with existing sites, and does so by building to Ajax rather than building from an Ajax foundation. By reading this book, you will learn how Ajax allows you to create “rich” web applications, but more importantly, you’ll see how the practices you follow feed right into Ajax – and that, in most cases, you already work with the technologies involved. Adding bits and pieces often makes much more sense than tearing down and rebuilding, and you’ll learn to integrate Ajax with your usual process. At the end of Adding Ajax, there’s reflection on whether starting over might be a fun idea, but by then you should be much more comfortable with it.

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Table of contents :
Adding Ajax……Page 1
Table of Contents……Page 6
Preface……Page 10
Audience……Page 12
Contents of This Book……Page 13
Conventions Used in This Book……Page 15
We’d Like to Hear from You……Page 16
Acknowledgments……Page 17
Getting Ready to Make a Move to Ajax……Page 18
A Natural Progression……Page 20
The Technologies: Book View……Page 22
Start Clean……Page 24
XHTML and HTML Validators……Page 25
CSS Validators……Page 26
Checking Accessibility……Page 27
Converting Tables to CSS Layouts……Page 28
Continuing the Conversion: Element by Element……Page 33
Dealing with Browser-Specific Quirks……Page 34
Taking Control……Page 35
Discovering Your Clients……Page 37
An Open-Door Policy……Page 38
The Plan……Page 39
Meet Your Reader……Page 41
Safe and Secure……Page 42
Progressive Enhancement Versus Massive Overhaul……Page 43
The Web Application……Page 46
The XMLHttpRequest Object Structure……Page 53
Preparing the Object for Use……Page 54
Preparing and Sending a Request……Page 56
HTTP GET, POST, and RESTful Friends……Page 57
The Parameters……Page 58
Sending the Request……Page 59
Processing the Ajax Response……Page 62
A Quick and Easy Response: HTML Fragment and innerHTML……Page 63
Working with a More Traditional XML……Page 67
Simplifying Processing with JSON……Page 71
(X)HTML Fragment……Page 75
Endpoints, the JavaScript Sandbox, and Widgets……Page 79
JSON Endpoints and Dynamic Script Creation……Page 80
Dynamic Scripting with XML……Page 82
That Security Stuff……Page 84
A First Look at Performance……Page 85
One Last Word on Asynchronous Versus Synchronous……Page 86
Ajax Tools and Terminology……Page 88
Prototype……Page 89
The JavaScript Prototype Property……Page 94
Associative Arrays and the Risks of Prototype……Page 95
External Libraries: Risks and Benefits……Page 96
script.aculo.us……Page 97
The script.aculo.us Effects……Page 98
Ajax Pagination……Page 100
The Rico Weather Widget……Page 101
Dojo……Page 102
Declarative HTML……Page 105
Using JavaScript to Bypass Nonstandard Attributes……Page 107
Other Libraries……Page 109
jQuery……Page 110
mooTools and moo.fx……Page 111
WZ_jsGraphics and qForms……Page 112
And More……Page 113
Interactive Effects……Page 114
Maintainable Event Handling……Page 115
Mashable Event Handling……Page 116
The Dojo Event System and the Target Object……Page 119
Form Help……Page 123
Tooltips……Page 131
Live Echo Preview……Page 135
Ajax Preview……Page 137
Timers and Animations……Page 140
Ajaxian Timers……Page 142
Creating a Flashing Notice……Page 144
Space: The Final Frontier……Page 150
Horizontal Spacing: The Accordion……Page 151
Creating the Effect……Page 152
Getting an element’s height and width……Page 157
Finishing the transition……Page 159
Using Prepackaged Accordions……Page 161
Packaging the Accordion Code……Page 165
Expand and Request: Mixing Accordions and Ajax Calls……Page 171
Tabbed Pages……Page 177
A Straightforward Look at Tabbed Content……Page 178
Packaging Revisited: Creating Generic Tabs……Page 184
Using the YUI TabView……Page 186
Tabbed Content and Accessibility……Page 189
Overlays……Page 190
Dynamic Data……Page 197
Adding an Editable Field……Page 198
Diving into the Client……Page 200
The Server Side of the Application……Page 207
In-Place Editing: Performance, Security, and Accessibility……Page 209
Performance and Accessibility……Page 210
Improvements……Page 211
Signaling a Deletion……Page 213
Polling and Highlighting Updates……Page 219
Revisiting the In-Page Deletion……Page 225
Revisiting In-Place Additions……Page 227
Live Validation……Page 228
Performance and Two-Phase Commits……Page 231
Ajax That Plays Well with Others……Page 232
Ajax, Caching, and Database Transactions……Page 233
Building and Maintaining Forms……Page 234
Drag-and-Drop Sorting with script.aculo.us……Page 235
Adobe Spry’s Validation……Page 236
Other Library Data Effects……Page 237
History, Navigation, and Place with Single-Page Applications……Page 239
Introducing the Challenger: Paged Content……Page 240
Creating the Slideshow Infrastructure……Page 241
Creating a Photo Slideshow……Page 248
Splitting Text……Page 253
Paging Through Data……Page 256
Remembering Place and Page Fragments……Page 261
Remembering Place in a Timely Manner……Page 265
The Difference Between Clever and Smart……Page 268
Old and New Persistence: Side by Side……Page 269
The New Page View……Page 278
Post-Mortem……Page 281
Adding Advanced Visual Effects……Page 282
Advanced CSS Tricks……Page 283
Rounded Corners……Page 284
Sliders and Scrollbars……Page 285
Draggable Container……Page 291
Scalable Vector Graphics……Page 294
Embedding SVG……Page 295
Adding Script……Page 297
SVG Inline……Page 298
SVG Quick View……Page 299
Basic Shapes and Attributes……Page 300
Defs, Gradients, Filters, and Effects……Page 301
Mixer: SVG and Ajax……Page 304
HTML5 Canvas……Page 307
The Future of Graphics……Page 311
Mashup Your Site……Page 313
Google Maps: Quick and Easy……Page 314
Get There from Here……Page 317
A Second Service: Flickr……Page 320
Creating the Mashup……Page 321
Creating Photo Objects and Revisiting Prototype Versus Localized Functions……Page 326
Converting Flickr/Google to Tabbed Pages……Page 330
Adding Technorati to Our Mashup……Page 334
Accessible Tabs……Page 343
Google Maps, IE, and Knowing When to Let Go……Page 348
Abstracting the Web Services……Page 349
The Script-Free Application……Page 353
The New Ajax Client……Page 357
Summarizing Mashups……Page 364
Scaling, Infrastructure, and Starting from Scratch……Page 366
Frameworks: Tight Versus Loose Coupling……Page 367
The Web Service: Resource and Security……Page 369
Ajax Libraries: Homegrown or Borrowed……Page 370
Designing Ajax from the Ground Up……Page 371
Maintenance and Testing……Page 372
Memory Leaks, Local Storage, and Robustness……Page 373
Critical Areas of a Site……Page 374
Limit “Cool”……Page 375
But Cool’s Good, Too……Page 376
ASP.NET and AJAX……Page 377
Java and GWT……Page 378
Python, GWT, and Django……Page 380
Ruby on Rails, Ajax, and Tight Coupling……Page 381
Go Forth and Ajax……Page 382
Index……Page 384