Introduction
Back when I was doing my internship we had a major problem we were trying to solve. The project involved creating a web based terminal emulator using AJAX. Well, it was a little bit more specific than that. It was basically duplicating a specific application in the browser window.
Problem
Sounds all well and good except that this application made heavy use of F Keys, e.g. (F10, F5, F1, etc). Needless to say this would not really be viable in a browser since F1 would call up help, F5 would refresh and F10 would send the cursor to the menu. We had already written a nice enough key handler that worked rather well, with the exception of these F Keys.
JavaScript Solution
After a lot of hacking around I found a way to stop the browser from calling up and propagating those events. My code was, for lack of a better word, nasty; but it did work. It involved a lot of IE/Mozilla workarounds. I recently came across some cleaner code, so here you go:
Yes, I know I’m a bit late with this, but I still had to give you the run down.
Originally created by Lokesh Dhakar
Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.
Have you ever gone to a website and seen this nice lil' thing they do when you click on a thumbnail and it pops up a larger image in the same browser window? That’s LightBox. I’ve seen it before and I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I just naturally assumed that it would take too much time to implement, so I left it alone. Oh was I wrong.
It's funny how these new AJAX applications always have these funny names. Zamzar, wow. But I must say, I haven’t seen anything like it. Well we’ve all seen file conversion. We might have even seen it free. And a few of us have come into contact with a couple free online converters, but not like this. Not all in one pack like this. You have documents, images, music and video. Have fun kiddies.
I'm not sure what exactly the entire package does, but this is something they demoed on the website. A beautiful AJAX site timer. It shows start time, connect time, time of first byte and time of last byte for every element on the page that it loads. Check it out.
OctaGate SiteTimer
Brand new. InstaCalc. Just like the name says, it’s an instant making use of AJAX. No need to hit “enter”. Your results are written as you type, just like any other AJAX application. You can set a number of rows and even set variables and use them similar to Excel. One neat feature is that it understands words like “thousand”, “million”, etc.
You can even define a calculator and then embed it into an HTML page.
How long have you been waiting for this? A step by step tutorial on integrating Google Maps into your web application using Ajax. He starts out with an introduction to the Google Maps API. After this, he delves into more advanced techniques for adding dynamic markers, etc using ajax. Interesting article. By far, the simplest I’ve seen without making use of some already existing library.
John Ferguson Smarta Writes:
…we will discuss how you can easily implement dynamic interactive maps on your Java web application, using the Google Maps API for the web interface, and Ajax to provide real-time interaction with the server.
WebTTY is an interesting package. During my internship I actually had to do something like this. My employer didn’t appreciate a pre-packaged solution though, so I had to produce all the code myself.[
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The WebTTY package allows any Linux terminal processes to be controlled in a text area HTML element on a webpage. The output from the server process is collected on server side, and is send to a text area element.
Victor De la Rocha Writes
This is just a cut and paste job:
http://www.econsultant.com/web-developer/ajax-tutorials/
Check out the rest :
http://www.econsultant.com/ultimate-web-developer/index.html
Bill Scoot over at Looks Good Works Well wrote a very interesting article: Nine Tips for Designing Rich Internet Applications.
Here’s a synopsis:
Make it directly interactive Make it inviting Use lightweight, in-context popups instead of page transitions where possible Use real-estate creatively Cross page boundaries reluctantly Create a light footprint Think of your interactions as storyboards Communicate transitions Think in objects Most of this we’ve heard before, but I like lists 🙂
I found this rather interesting:
One of the more interesting aspects of Ajax is the ability to track a users interaction within the browser. I wanted to investigate navigation patterns, so I have written an Ajax based link tracker. If you press the “Ctrl??? and “X” keys you will be presented with an overlay which displays links usage by percentage. This functionality was created with JavaScript and a very simple API.