Mike Potter Builds a Flash-y Ajax Site
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
