Drewery Publishing

For the last few months I’ve been trying to gain a better understanding of the many frameworks and libraries proliferating the development community.  When I first discovered Yahoo! User Interface (YUI), I knew it was something powerfully useful, easily accessible, and would change the work flow of more than a few developers and designers.

As I dug deeper, my giddiness subsided and I was soon immersed knee-deep into Ajax, JQuery, Mootools, Scriptaculous, and Prototype.  I’ve been long overdue posting my findings, and for good reason: It was important to learn more about “why” you would want to use one framework versus the other.  However, I also circled back around and found yet another framework right at home in one of my most trusted tools, Dreamweaver, called Spry and developed for designers by the good folks at Adobe.

In an effort to keep things brief, I’ll discuss the above frameworks in a series of future articles.  First we’ll explain Ajax in a nutshell.

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a technology that allows a web page to perform actions or update data dynamically, without reloading the page or fetching data from the server.  By using Ajax, a web site can be more responsive and interactive.  For example, Google Maps wouldn’t function as it does without Ajax. Imagine if when you tried to scroll the map to the left you had to wait for the page to reload? With Ajax, Google Maps provides a user-friendly tool that allows you to manipulate the application by dragging or clicking a page object to view or pull additional data. Ajax allows for a much shorter delay and a less disruptive process than if you had to wait for the entire page to reload for each and every interaction you initiate.

JavaScript is not new to the web by any means.  In the early days of the web it was, admittedly, used for just as much evil as good. I have horrible memories of multiple-occurring pop-ups, flaming pillars, and animated insects scurrying across web pages.  What’s new today, however, is how it has been adopted into a developer’s tool kit to make a semantically marked-up and beautifully designed CSS web page truly interactive.  This is called the behavior layer.  Of course, the downside to JavaScript occurs by the simple act of turning it “off” within the web browser.  But, here again the maturity of JavaScript can come to your rescue by degrading your code gracefully to accommodate a browser that has opted out of your meticulously designed user experience.  No harm, no foul.  If JavaScript is turned off, the user will still benefit from whatever page content is present absent the really kewl functions and actions that JavaScript can create.

To learn more about Ajax, check out Wikipedia or this very good article by J.J. Garrett at Adaptive Path.

~ by Rodney on June 23, 2008.