Video Tutorial - AJAX in PHP

Derek Allard made an interesting video tutorial on how to use AJAX within the CodeIgniter PHP framework to create a cool web application with AJAX flavored search capabilities. Derek makes use of Scriptaculous to incorporate AJAX capabilities into this tiny web application.

Clean URLs and AJAX

I have been perplexed for a while when starting to develop a new web application. I wanted to implement clean URLs in it, because clean URLs are the buzz these days. Actually I wanted to use clean URLs to make my web application more user and search engine friendly which would help in SEO as well as make the application look cleaner and neater.

AJAX is another hot topic these days which I did want to make use of in my application. The interesting thing is that by default an AJAX based application does not change its URL while the user interacts with it. Gmail uses AJAX extensively and its URL never changes.

Those two concepts, clan URLs and AJAX seemed to collied with one another at first. Then after some research and thought I came up with the logical conclusion. For parts of your web site which you want search engines to see and index and which you want your users to be able to bookmark and exchange its link with others, use clean URLs. For other parts of your application where a user interacts with the system to display specific information for that user as a result of his or her interaction with the system, then use AJAX for such parts of the system and do not change the URL while the user interacts with the system.

I came across this interesting wiki about unique URLs which discusses in some detail how to use AJAX while at the same time making your web application have more than a single URL so that people can bookmark specific parts and search engines can index those parts as well.

Yahoo Releases its AJAX Library into Open Source

YUI or Yahoo! User Interface Library is an open source library provided by Yahoo! that offers a rich set of code elements enabling user interface manipulation with AJAX, JavaScript, DOM, DHTML and CSS. You can download YUI from Sourceforge.

Yahoo's user interface library is an attempt to answer back to Google's GWT or Google Web Tookit. Here is where you can download GWT.

AJAX Chat

Chat on the web has been implemented mostly using Java applets. Another rudimentary web chat method was dong by automatically refreshing the web page. ActiveX was also an option for implementing chat on the web.

AJAX now is a new contender to the mix and enters as an interesting method for enabling chat on the web. Here is a very simple AJAX chat room created with PHP code.

Dojo - A JavaScript Toolkit

D0jo is a JavaScript toolkit that provides an impressive library packed with JavaScript functionality including AJAX and much more.

AJAX or Flash?

Social networking with a spin. That's what Geni is all about. Family tree web applications are nothing new, but Geni attempts to take them a step further by giving them a social networking spin. The cool thing about Geni is its user interface, not only is it very easy to use and intuitive, but it's also pleasant to use. They use a Flash user interface to achieve such a result.

Google has long pushed AJAX to the limits in order to provide rich user interfaces on the Web. Despite the growing interest in and excitement about AJAX, many cool web applications use Flash to achieve a rich interactive online user experience. Although Google is using AJAX most of its web applications such as gmail, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Maps, yet it's interesting to note that in one of Google's applications they use Flash instead. This application is Google Analytics.

Google AJAX Based Web Site Builder

Google Page Creator is not the first to offer do-it-yourself web site creation. Geocities, now part of Yahoo!, and many others have offered long ago 'easy' means for the pubic to create their own web sites without having to learn HTML or other web technologies. The spin Google has added is to use AJAX instead of low-usability forms or relatively heavy Java applets to enable users to develop their sites. Google again is pushing users towards the web, making the browser as powerful as desktop applications, and is doing so through AJAX.

Perhaps Yahoo! will respond with an AJAX web site builder. Who knows.

Google Boosts AJAX on Java

Google is maintaining its push for AJAX giving Java developers a convenient way to develop web applications with front ends that are almost on par with desktop applications. This move is driving Microsoft crazy because it is making the operating system less important. Take a look at the Google Web Toolkit.

AJAX, Flash and Java Applets

The web first started as static HTML pages. Later dynamic web pages were introduced putting life into the web by interacting with databases and the user. Those dynamic web pages collectively enabled web developers to develop web applications using a server side scripting language of their choice such as Perl, PHP, ASP, JSP, Python among several others.

The problem with web applications was that compared to regular desktop applications they were pretty much slow in response time. An attempt to answer this issue came from Sun by introducing and strongly pushing Java Applets as the way ahead to create dynamic rich web applications that were responsive much the same as their desktop counterparts.

The problem with Java Applets was that they were heavy to load, not to mention you had to have the JVM installed on your machine. Microsoft, being an opponent of Java due to its threat on Microsoft's operating system and office monopoly, tried to push Flash forward as an alternative for Java Applets. Indeed Microsoft managed to throw Java Applets from their hoped for place and position Flash instead. First Flash was touted as the means to do animation for the web, which was also what Sun was pushing Java Applets to be, a way of making rich graphics and animation on the web, later Flash was pushed further and proposed as a method for making rich web clients that are interactive with users much the same as web applications, Java Applets tried to do so as well but failed.

While both Java Applets and Flash failed to gain widespread acceptance as the way ahead for rich web applications that mimicked desktop applications in their look and feel and response time, JavaScript attempted to be a way to perform some sorts of animation on the web as well as interactivity with the user within the web browser (client side interactivity). Yet JavaScript by itself fell short of creating the sought after web applications due to its inability to talk to the server.

Enter AJAX. AJAX appears to be the answer for what Flash and Java Applets failed to achieve. Indeed Google is pushing AJAX forward and using it in many of its applications such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Maps and many others.

Same Time Document Editing!

You can think of Writely as the Google version of Microsoft Word. You might ask, what's the big deal, Word is doing fine already. But let me tell you why I love Writely.

First of all, all your documents are saved online instead of being saved on your physical computer. This means if your computer breaks down, a hardware failure happens, your hard drive is locked or damaged or any other disaster happens to your computer, your documents will still be safe, having been saved online instead of being saved on your physical machine. Of course you access your online document via a username and password, so don't worry about any intruder gaining access to your private documents because they are secure. Another cool thing is that you might switch computers, in this case you can still easily access all your documents, because simply they are stored online. If you want to access your docs from home, from work or from anywhere, they are always there. Sure there is a catch to this, which is the computer must be connected to the Internet, but who hasn't got a net connection these days anyway. Hotspots are sprouting around, so even in the streets you'll have access to the net. The future is pointing towards total connectivity where you can access the net from just about anywhere.

Besides being able to access your documents from any computer, the second cool feature of Writely is that you can decide to share one or more of your documents with a friend or colleague. You may allow one of your friends to view a document you wrote. You may even give this friend permission not only to view your document but to edit it as well! Amazing! You are in control. You can allow as many people as you like to view or edit the documents you with them to view or edit. You will realize how cool this feature is when you actually use it. If you are working on a document of yours and one of your friends, whom you've granted permission to edit that document, is editing it at the same time, you almost instantly see the edits as your friend types them! Try it, because it is a lot of fun.