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Build an RSS Feed Reader using Ajax and PHP

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Programming, Ajax, PHP — Chris Cornutt at 9:56 am on Wednesday, August 2, 2006

ScratchProjects.com has posted both Part one and Part two in a new tutorial series, this time with a focus on creating a RSS feed reader by combining PHP and Ajax.

In Part one they lay the foundation, explaining how the tutorial will work, what the parts are, and what the parts do. Then, it’s on to the code, showing first how to fetch and parse the remote feeds and create the DIV the results will be dropped into.

Part two takes the next steps and creates the form to add a feed to be parsed, the functionality to insert it and its information into the database, and to grab the list of feeds from the database and read in the contents.

It’s a pretty basic tutorial, but great for those just starting out with this handy, powerful functionality. It requires a bit of knowledge about PHP, but most of the code needed is spelled out for you. Plus, you can download the code as well.

CSS: The Tech Ajax Forgot

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Ajax, CSS — Chris Cornutt at 8:24 am on Tuesday, August 1, 2006

The shifting sands of time can make people forget things, things they once knew and loved, things they couldn't live without....things important to Ajax too. Michael Mahemoff reminds us of one such thing in his new post - CSS.

CSS is as important to Ajax as Asynchrony and XMLHttpRequest. Which is to say, it's very useful, even though it's not essential. Due to an accident of the English language, JJG's creative mind, and the propensity of certain terms to rise to buzzdom, it doesn't explicitly feature in "A.J.A.X.". However, the original Ajax article certainly spells out the importance of CSS matters.

Michael continues, talking about the real significance of CSS in an Ajax-enabled architecture, noting that it's more than just a way to "cut down on markup". CSS really is a key to several of the features we've come to know and love - just take a glance at Script.aculo.us.

CSS is as integrated into Ajax and Web 2.0 applications as anything yet some seem to forget about some of the other powers that it has. Simple CSS can be found all over, but look at CSS-only layouts and some of the more advanced documentation to see how its power can be used for good for you and your site. I think you'll be impressed.

Aptana: New Web IDE in Beta

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Ajax, Utility — Dion Almaer at 12:59 pm on Friday, July 28, 2006

Fred Anderson pointed us to Aptana, a new web IDE based on Eclipse.

They provide some nice screencasts of the functionality, and in the documentation they list “hot-To’s” for Many of the frameworks.

Features

  • Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions
  • Outliner that gives a snapshot view of your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure
  • Error and warning notification for your code
  • Support for Aptana UI customization and extensions
  • Cross-platform support
  • Free and open source. (Source available soon)

Aptana

Is Ajax development slowing down?

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Editorial, Ajax — Chris Cornutt at 8:42 am on Friday, July 28, 2006

In his latest blog post, Eric Pascarello asks the question “Is Ajax development slowing down?” Is the shiny new coating of this revolution in web development finally wearing a bit thin, causing people to move on or not innovate like they used to?

I was asked an interesting question by a friend the other day. “Is Ajax development slowing down?”

I noticed the same trend; I just did not really think that it was a big issue. It seems that there is a slow down in the amount of information that is coming out on the net.

He doesn’t seem to think that there is a real slowdown in Ajax development, it’s just a perception. He gives four reasons why this seems so:

  • It is SUMMER in the northern hemisphere! (more outside, less inside = less code)
  • Seems like frameworks are maturing and that people are fully developing applications before they release them.
  • Seems like people are focusing on more of the technical issues of Ajax now and not the wow factors.
  • It really seems like new developers in the realm of Ajax are taking their time looking at what Ajax has to offer. They are looking at frameworks versus a custom solution.

Cross-site Ajax (from OSCON 2006)

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Programming, Ajax — Chris Cornutt at 3:35 pm on Thursday, July 27, 2006

Kevin Yank, SitePoint’s “reporter in the field” at this year’s OSCON has a new post on the SitePoint Web Tech blog with information and his impressions about a talk given by Joseph Smarr, a Plaxo developer on cross-site Ajax.

Mashups, if you’ve been living under a rock, are web applications built by combining services provided by several specialized web applications, typically using AJAX as the glue. One of the main challenges faced by developers of mashups is the same-origin policy, which prevents JavaScript on one site from contacting other sites as a security measure. For mashups to really work, developers need to find a way around that restriction.

Kevin talks about some of the solutions that have been found to the problem - a server-side proxy, a Flash application proxy, JSON-P - but all have issues surrounding their use. They don’t quite fit in elegantly with the rest of the strong, flexible code around them.

So, is there a solution? Does Plaxo have the answer? They might, but it’s still a bit of a work in progress. As Kevin calls it, it’s a “Javascript wormhole”, a method to tunnel through pages when a service is called and closed when done. There’s even a suggestion of how it might flow, using iframes and callbacks to make it happen. There are still issues surrounding it (not just in its creation, but in its use), but things are looking brighter.

Nokia and Backbase cooperate on Mobile AJAX

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Ajax, Mobile — Chris Cornutt at 8:10 am on Wednesday, July 26, 2006

According to this post, Backbase and Nokia are collaborating together on a study of current and potential Ajax use on mobile devices.

In 5 to 10 year consumers are expected to browse the Internet increasingly via mobile devices, and less often via desktop PCs. Mobile AJAX can significantly increase the user experience of mobile web applications, but there are still several areas that need need further research.

They mention that Nokia has already placed themselves well in the market, pushing their web browser onto their S60 devices. Unfortunately, there are also several limitations that come along with these devices, including small screens and slow connections.

The goal of the project is to look for creative and innovative solutions to the issues they’re finding within the limits of the technology available today. Other companies are also helping out, including Mozilla and Opera.

Mike Potter Builds a Flash-y Ajax Site

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Ajax, PHP, Flash — Chris Cornutt at 3:19 pm on Tuesday, July 25, 2006

On his blog today, Mike Potter shares an application and a tutorial that he’s worked up a simple Ajax-based site integrating Ajax, JSON, PHP, and Flex.

With 90% of this being done with open source software (the only piece that is not open source, but is free (in terms of cost), is the Flex SDK), I’ve created a site that tries to mimics the experience of Google Finance, a great site that combines Ajax, and Flash together to provide a great user experience.

His posted the full tutorial explaining how it all works in PDF format off his blog, and has also created a zipped up version of all of the source code behind it. He also includes, in the post, some of the helpful hints he learned while working with the Spry Ajax framework:

  • Easier to modify the HTML output by Flex than reference the object in your own HTML
  • It’s easier not to mix things with the Flex/Ajax bridge, just use Flex Builder
  • Write functions that closely couple your Flex application to your HTML page
  • The ActionScript 3 JSON library doesn’t like new lines or carriage returns in the JSON data

Biggest AJAX problem

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Editorial, Ajax — Chris Cornutt at 7:51 am on Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Spend any time with any language out there (Javascript, PHP, ASP, etc) and you’ll run into problems. Most of these can be resolved with a few tweaks here and there, but sometimes, things can get the best of you. Ajax code isn’t immune either, and with the addition of an outside content source, things can get pretty hectic pretty quickly. Remus Stratulat found this out firsthand when he had to track down a memory leak in his code - resulting in Firefox swallowing up 700MB of memory.

AJAX is becoming the new “de facto” standard in the web application industry. If you ask a JavaScript developer about what is the biggest problem of JavaScript programming it will probably tell you it’s browsers’ incompatibilities. In my opinion there is a worse problem then hacking your way around bugs and differences. That problem is represented by memory leaks.

He notes that, most of the time, Javascript can clean up after itself, freeing up variables and resources for other scripts to use. Unfortunately, Ajax causes a chink in the page’s armor - a way to let content in that could sometimes destroy the rest of the page (or just start clogging up the RAM on the machine until it grinds to a halt).

Checking your code is always a must, of course, but is there a way that problems like this can be handled at a more basic level?

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