Ajax · the Definitive Guide by Holdener, Anthony T. III -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Ajax: The Definitive Guide

A Note Regarding Supplemental Files Preface

Who Should Read This Book

Web Developers Managers

How This Book Is Organized Conventions Used in This Book Using Code Examples How to Contact Us Safari® Books Online Acknowledgments

I. Ajax Fundamentals

1. Reinventing the Web

Web Page Components

Classic Web Components Ajax Case Study

The application then The application now

Modern Web Standards

XHTML JavaScript The DOM Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) XML Syndication

RSS Atom

XSLT

Browsers

Gecko Trident KHTML/WebCore Presto Others

Standards Compliance Welcome to Web 2.0

2. From Web Sites to Web Applications

The Transition

Planning Design Implementation Test and Release

Basic Web and Ajax Design Patterns

Client/Server Basic Three-Tier Model-View-Controller Rich Internet Applications

Application Environments

Intranet Commercial Educational Government Specific Content

The Developer What Ajax Is Not

3. Servers, Databases, and the Web

The Web Server

CGI FastCGI Servlets SSI

Server-Side Scripting

ASP/ASP.NET PHP Python Ruby Java

Databases

Oracle Microsoft SQL Server IBM DB2 Open Source Databases: MySQL and PostgreSQL Nonrelational Database Models

Getting Data Into and Out of Relational Databases Interfacing the Interface Frameworks and Languages

The .NET Framework Ruby on Rails Java Frameworks

Jakarta Struts Spring Tapestry

Python Frameworks

Django Zope

PHP Frameworks

CakePHP Zoop Zend

What Good Are Frameworks?

4. Foundations: Scripting XML and JSON

XML

XML Requests and Responses Parsing XML in a String XPath XSLT

JSON

JSON Requests and Responses Parsing

Choosing a Data Exchange Format A Quick Introduction to Client Frameworks

The Dojo Toolkit Prototype

script.aculo.us moo.fx

DWR jQuery Sarissa Others

Simplifying Development

Prototype Helper Functions Prototype and Ajax

5. Manipulating the DOM

Understanding the DOM We've Already Met Manipulating DOM Elements, Attributes, and Objects

Creating Elements, Attributes, and Objects Modifying and Removing Elements, Attributes, and Objects Element, Attribute, and Object Information Walking the DOM

Change That Style

Modifying and Removing Style Style Information What About Internet Explorer?

Events in the DOM

Creating Events Initializing, Firing, Adding, and Removing Events Event Information What About Internet Explorer? Part II

DOM Stuff for Tables Is innerHTML Evil?

6. Designing Ajax Interfaces

Usability

What Can Go Wrong?

Bloat, bloat, bloat Poor focus Obscurity Lack of navigation Expecting too much from your end users Web reading style

Principles for the Ajax Web

Minimalist and aesthetic structure Flexibility and efficiency Consistency Navigation Feedback Documentation and help

Functionality

Common Web Tools Tools in a Desktop Application What Can Be Done?

Visualization

Layout Fonts Images and Icons

Accessibility

W3C-WAI Is This Important? Ajax Accessibility Issues When All Else Fails

The Ajax Interface

II. Ajax Foundations

7. Laying Out Site Navigation

Menus

Simple Navigation Bar Button and Image Navigation

Advanced buttons Image rollovers the Ajax way

Drop-Down Menus The File Menu

Adding Ajax to the menu

Tabs

CSS to the Rescue Image Tabs The Tab Content

Navigation Aids

Breadcrumbs Links at the Bottom Paged Navigation Navigation Boxes

Trees, trees, trees Vertical lists

Accordion Navigation Ajax and Page Loading

Problems with Ajax Navigation

Bookmarks The Browser's Back Button

General Layout

8. Fun with Tables and Lists

Layout Without Tables

Old Layouts Using CSS

Accessible Tables

Interacting with Tables Ajax and Tables

Sorting Tables

JavaScript Sorting Sorting with Ajax And the Winner Is...

Tables with Style

Keeping Style with Sorts

Table Pagination

Making Pages with JavaScript Ajax Table Pagination Sorting Paginated Tables

Lists 2.0

What We've Already Seen

Lists for All Seasons

Table of Contents Sortable Lists Ajax and the Draggable List An Ajax Slide Show

9. Page Layout with Frames That Aren't

Using Frames

The Frameset and Frame The iframe Craze

XHTML and Frames

The Deprecated Ones If Frames Are a Must Using iframes As Frames

The Magic of Ajax and a DIV

Laying Out the "Frame" Inserting Content

Page Layout

Think About Being Dynamic The Proven Theory Let CSS Be Your Guide

10. Navigation Boxes and Windows

The Alert Box Integrating the Window

The Window Style Moving the Window

Navigation Windows

Placing Content into Windows Information Boxes Replacing Alerts, Prompts, Confirms, and So On

Tool Tips The Necessary Pop Up

11. Customizing the Client

Browser Customizations

Stylesheets Font Sizes Character Encoding

Stylesheet Switching

Creating the Stylesheets Alternate Stylesheets The Switching Object Remembering the User's Selection

Switching Different Customizations Easy Font-Size Switching

Using Relative Sizes The Font CSS A Font-Size Slider Bar

Creating Color Themes

Remember the Zen The Rest Is the Same

Throwing Ajax into the Mix

Preparing the Structure for Change Arrays to Store Ever-Changing Information

Changing Site Language with Ajax

The JSON to Send Switching Out the Data A Faster Alternative?

Repositioning Objects and Keeping Those Positions

Dragging Objects Around Storing Information in a Database Sending Changes with Ajax

Storing It All in the Database

12. Errors: To Be (in Style) or Not to Be

Error Handling on the Web

JavaScript Errors Server-Side Errors

Server scripting errors Database errors External errors

Should I React to That Error?

Trapping an Error

try...catch...finally Throwing an error Ajax gone wrong

Ignorable Errors Hold It Right There!

Handling an Error with Care

Notifying the User Emailing the Developer Logging to a Database

Integrating the User Error

Following Site Design User Instructions for the Error

13. This Ain't Your Father's Animation

Animation on the Web

The History of the GIF Format How Does It Work?

The file structure Palettes

What Is Wrong with GIF?

Color Depth Alpha Transparency

Building Animation with the PNG Format

What Is Different About a PNG? The PNG CSS JavaScript Looping Putting It All Together Adding Ajax to Our Animations

Ajax Animations

Frameworks Are the Way to Go Dragging and Dropping

The script.aculo.us objects Dojo Toolkit dragging Dragging with other frameworks

Moving Objects

How frameworks do it

Other Animations on the Web

Object manipulations Drawing libraries

14. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Form

XHTML Forms

Form Elements Accessible Forms

Accessibility Usability

Using JavaScript

Getting Form Values

Simplicity with Prototype

Fancier Forms

CSS and Forms

More functional radio buttons and checkboxes Fake drop downs

Using Libraries and Toolkits

Dojo Zapatec

The Basics of Ajax and Forms

GET/POST Form Data Without Using the Form Submit

Accepting Ajax-Delivered Data

GET/POST/RAW POST Email Form Data Saving Form Data in a Database Getting File Uploads Sending Data Back to the Client

Server Responses

Reporting Success/Failure Handling Other Server Responses

15. Data Validation: Client, Server, or Both

Data Validation Is Important Validation with JavaScript

Value Checking Using Regular Expressions Specialized Data Checking

Phone numbers Email addresses Social Security numbers Credit cards

A Validation Object Using Libraries to Validate

CSS Notification of Errors

CSS Error Rules JavaScript Rule Switching

Validation on the Server

Did We Get What We Expected? Protecting the Database Value Checking on the Server Returning Problems

Ajax Client/Server Validation

On-the-Fly Checking Client and Server Checking in One

III. Ajax in Applications

16. Search: The New Frontier

Types of Site Searches

Keyword Searching Full Text Parsing Page Indexing

Database searching

Search Engines for Local Use Advanced Searching

Dynamic Searching with Ajax

Giving Hints Sending Results to the Client

Googling a Site

Google's AJAX Search API

GSearchControl GSearchForm GwebSearch

Using Google's AJAX Search API

GwebResult

Displaying Results

The response Site formatting

17. Introducing Web Services

What Is a Web Service? Web Service Architectures

Remote Procedure Call Service-Oriented Architecture Web Service Standards

SOAP Web Services Description Language Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration

Representational State Transfer

Ajax and Web Services

Client Requests Server-Side Scripting to Services Gathering the Data Sending the Web Service Response

Web Feeds

Scraping Syndication

RSS and Atom

Feed Validation

Web Service APIs

18. Web Services: The APIs

Publicly Available Web Services

Blogging Services Bookmark Services Financial Services Mapping Services Music/Video Services News/Weather Services Photo Services Reference Services Search Services Shopping Services Other Services

Ajax and the API

XMLHttpRequest and the Web Service

The Next Step with Services

19. Mashups

Mashups in Web 2.0 Applications What Are Mashups?

A Brief History

Mashups As Applications

Pitfalls and Travails

Just because Clutter Cohesiveness Reinventing the wheel

What Mashups Can Do

Data Sources

Public Data

Public records Background check records Business records People searches

Open Source Services

Application Portlets Building a Mashup

Choose a Subject Select Data Sources Decide on the Backend Code It

Mashups and Business

20. For Your Business Communication Needs

Businesses and Ajax

Reducing Costs Easing Installation

Real-Time Communication

Client/Server Communication Connecting to Chat The Chat Client The Chat Server

File Sharing

Sending a File File Notification Receiving the File

Whiteboards

The Board

Using an existing library Collecting mouse movements Drawing on the board

Communication

Sending the mouse movements Drawing on other boards

Enhancing the Board

Pen colors Stamps and shapes

Combining Applications

21. Internet Games Without Plug-ins

Gaming on the Web

First-Person Shooters Strategy Games

Abstract Real-time Turn-based, economic, and God-like

Adventure Games Role-Playing Games

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games

Puzzle Games Arcade Games Other Games

Internet Requirements

Plug-ins

Flash Shockwave Java applets

Game Development with Ajax

Animating a Character

Creating the Walking Loop Moving the Character

Static directions Dynamic directions

Basic Collisions

Rectangular Collision Detection Circular Collision Detection Linear Collision Detection

User Input

Keyboard Input Mouse Input

The Basics of Event Handling

Handling User Input Starts and Stops Changes in Direction Collisions Receiving Data

Putting It All Together

IV. Wrapping Up

22. Modular Coding

What Is Modular Coding? The Client Side

XHTML

Components of the page Smaller pieces are better

CSS

Style properties Media types

JavaScript

Functionality Page-specific components

The Server Side

Using the Server Side for Structure Modularizing SQL Server-Side Components

23. Optimizing Ajax Applications

Site Optimization Factors

Size Execution Speed

HTTP

HTTP Headers HTTP Compression

Packets

Optimal Sizes

Client-Side Optimizations

XHTML and CSS

Size reduction

JavaScript

Size reduction Code speed enhancements

Server-Side Optimizations

Compression SQL Optimization

Inline queries Stored procedures

Ajax Optimization

Communication Data Code Optimization

V. References

A. The XML and XSLT You Need to Know

What Is XML? Anatomy of an XML Document

Elements and Attributes Name Syntax XML Namespaces Well Formed Comments and Processing Instructions Entity References Character References Character Encodings

Unicode encoding schemes Other character encodings

Validity

DTDs Connecting DTDs to documents

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation

The Progression of XSL The Stylesheet

Document declaration

XSLT Elements

<xsl:template> <xsl:text> <xsl:value-of> <xsl:for-each> <xsl:if> <xsl:apply-templates> The standard elements Using functions

B. JavaScript Framework, Toolkit, and Library References

Prototype Framework Reference

Ajax with Prototype Ajax Response Callbacks Passing Parameters to the HTTP Method Evaluating JSON The Global Responders Dynamic Page Updating Automating Requests

script.aculo.us Library Reference

Auto-Completion

Ajax.Autocompleter Autocompleter.Local Autocompleter.Base

Inline Editing

Ajax.InPlaceEditor Ajax.InPlaceCollectionEditor

Effects

Rico Library Reference

Ajax with Rico The Response Handling Responses Effects

MooTools Library Reference

Simple Server Requests Making an Ajax Request Form Submission Effects

Dojo Toolkit Reference

dojo.io.bind Handling Results JSON and Dot Notation Sending Form Data The Rest of Dojo

Sarissa Library Reference

Sarissa's Ajax Request Parsing Data Sarissa and XML

MochiKit Library Reference

MochiKit.Async Ajax in MochiKit The Rest of MochiKit

jQuery Library Reference

Ajax with jQuery Other jQuery Functionality

C. Web Service API Catalog D. Ajax Risk References

Requirements Bookmarking Issues Back and Forward Button Problems Security Risks Search Engines Accessibility Content Changes

Index About the Author Colophon

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