Entries Tagged 'Ajax' ↓

I have settled on ASP.NET AJAX 1.0. Why you ask? Well for many reasons! One, it is written well. Lacks all the visual effects, but seriously, who needs those? It is fast, as it uses JSON, and that is a MAJOR surprise, as I figured M$ would be all over using XML. Secondly, if you pair it up with PHP for Microsoft AJAX it just flat out works nicely and costs little effort to write scripts for!

I wrote a few sample scripts using it in less than 5 minutes! 5 minutes!! I cannot stress that enough. I was amazed at the type of complexity I could write in just a few minutes of using it. Now, I am not a “big” M$ fan, but I am willing to give credit when due, and they deserve credit for this. I am truly pleased with the fact it works in Firefox, it works in IE, and it probably works in Opera (though I haven’t tested it). It has files for all languages, to handle currencies, dates, etc. Totally amazing.

I have so many plans on how to use this to perform more advance functionality in several of my applications and best of all, I didn’t have to write my own XmlHttpRequest methods.

I am searching for a good ajax library to use in several of my applications. I have heard about Prototype, Mootools, Dojo, etc but which one does the trick and does it well? I tried Dojo a while back and never really got the hang of its layout. Connecting events to the controls felt awkward and not very clear. I have seem demos of Prototype and Mootools, and though they look cool, I have not had any experience with them.

At work, I write my own Ajax utilities. Primarily because we run .NET v1.1, and it is just FREAKIN’ easy to serialize a class straight into XML than write methods to output JSON. So, if you didn’t figure it out yet, I wrote prototypes in JavaScript to read the XML and make useable objects in JavaScript that could easily be handled. This process seems to be a bit slow, and though its effective, its costly to wait 5 seconds for the process to finish.

So why don’t I just write my own for my upcoming applications? Well the difference is, the upcoming applications are in PHP. PHP does not have nice ways of serializing directly into XML, so that is less of a reason for continuing my current approach. Plus, with it taking 5 seconds to run, it kinda seems like its slow. I visit many sites whose Ajax runs much quicker than that.

So let’s hear it! Tell me which Ajax framework works best for you, what are its’ strengths, its’ weaknesses? Leave nothing to the imagination.

So, I have been working on a new project lately, and it is looking promising.  Of course, all I have done is 92% of the Table Schematics, 92% of the base classes, and 92% of the base class XML schema’s, (if you didn’t realize, that means 22 of the 24 tables are design, 22 of those 24 tables have their classes defined [just variables and constructors at this point], and 22 of those 24 tables have their database schema written in an XML file).

I am not going to go into a lot of detail over what the project is about or its purpose, but lets just say it will ROCK!  I have been working on the schematics for the past 16 days, and with only two tables away, I am looking to get a few developers who may wish to contribute.

If the need is there, I will setup a SVN repository on this site.

To give you an idea on what type of help I will be needing, here are a few specs of the application so far:

1. Entirely Object-Oriented
2. Database interaction is inherited by all of the other classes
3. The Database class inherits the Error handling class, to ensure all error handling is done in the same fashion.
4. Design templates to direct the output of the pages is a REQUIREMENT, whether that templating will follow the footsteps of cpCommerce or go a different direction is still up in the air.

So basically, I am looking for several programmers with OO experience in PHP, though any OO experience in any language is likely to be beneficial.  I will be looking for a few Graphic designers to design templates for the system.  Looking for something sleek and fast loading.  Knowledge of CSS and XHTML is preferred.

If you are interested, leave a comment.  I will be checking it from time to time and when enough leave a remark, I will setup the repository and get in contact with each person.

Oh, and the name is “kiosk”.