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PHPClasses.org Ajax Upgrade

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Usability, PHP — Michael Mahemoff at 8:54 pm on Tuesday, August 1, 2006

PHPClasses.org, a useful tool for locating PHP classes, has upgraded its search. There are a couple of Ajax goodies. Search results appear as a set of tabs - Packages, Reviews, Forum, etc, and the results for each tab are obtained via remote calls. Likewise for result pagination. There’s also a Suggestion/Auto-Completion feature in the search bar - a site like this is probably a good place for Suggestions, to help explore all the library code out there without knowing precise terms to search for.

The idea is to provide a better organization of the search results. It
is an alternative to the traditional search result pages that present
pages from all site sections in mixed in a single listing.

AJAX is used to retrieve the results from different sections when the
users click on the respective section tab.

The search form also provides auto-completion support. It uses AJAX to
query the site server database and retrieve the top ten most searched
keywords that begin with the first letters typed by the user.

The site search also uses an animation Javascript class to add a nice
touch of style using fade effects to the AJAX based page updates of the
search results and progress feedback messages.

The PHP and Javascript components used in the site to implement these
AJAX and DHTML features are available as Open Source as mentioned in
this PHPClasses site blog post.

Read more about the PHPClasses.org upgrade in Manuel Lemos’s announcement.

Breaking User Interfaces for Fun and Profit

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, JavaScript, Usability, UI — Chris Cornutt at 7:26 am on Tuesday, July 25, 2006

For all of the good uses of Ajax out there, there are still some really really (*really*) bad ones that come to mind. Unfortunately, some site developers just don’t quite know when to stop, and this post on SitePoint.com today (by Alex Walker) points out just such a perpetrator - Art.com.

Art.com is a large, commerical art site selling prints to the public—over 300,000 of them, framed, mounted or otherwise. Their display pages are a model of efficient elegance—not dissimilar in style to Flickr in some ways—generally letting the artwork speak for itself.

But apparently, there wasn’t enough ‘wow-factor’. “We’re paying these developers—get them to come up with something that’s cool or hot or sick or whatever it is the kids want to be these days”.

So, what exactly is it that makes their implementation a pain? Try something out - go to this page and try to use the drop-down list. Fun, huh? It’s a good idea to break a web standard and use a custom solution when all someone wants is a simple option. Plus, the grow effect causes some distortion in Firefox (and other issues, try dragging the window too. and don’t get me started on what happens if Javascript is disabled) .

Okay, so we can all agree that Ajax is cool, and yes, there are some cool user interface additions that can be made with its help, but if you make a drop-down box, make it work like a drop-down box. Web users look for interface items they know and like to use them - don’t mess with that.

Advanced Box Model Testing

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Usability, CSS, Testing — Chris Cornutt at 9:49 am on Monday, July 24, 2006

From Qooxdoo.org, there are two new posts spotlighting something that developer after developer have struggled with at least once in their work - the differences between box models in the major browsers. They explore these differences in a two part series of posts.

In part one, they focus on the differences in the “border-box” model in Firefox, IE, Opera, Konqueror, and Safari. A sample page was created and screenshots were taken (both in standard and quirks mode). Their findings show that there was only one, in this test case, that rendered the example correctly in both modes - Konqueror. Others came close, but had to switch to a “context-box” model to render correctly both ways.

Their other findings in this first test include the differences between versions of Internet Explorer, problems with Firefox’s “box-sizing” rule, and Opera issues.

In part two of the series, they take the test up to the next level, testing this time for some overflow problems within the same tests as before.

The results for this test were similar - Konqueror was a clear winner for consistency between modes. Opera sees consistent errors between the two modes, and Internet Explorer doesnt even render the boxes in one mode. Firefox also sees some differences, with version 1.0 getting a failing grade for this test of the “content-box” settings.

Examples and screenshots of this second test are also included.

Interview with Jakob Nielsen

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Usability, Interview — Chris Cornutt at 8:45 am on Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Over on SitePoint.com, there’s a new interview posted with usability guru Jakob Nielsen talking about some of his thoughts on Ajax, usability and advertising, and ad formats on the web.

The questions range from “What do you think of the current implementations of AJAX
(Google Maps, Writely, Google Suggest, Zimbra, etc.) on the Web today?” to “When a company finally is ready to invest in promotions, what’s your opinion of the usability of the syndicated ad formats, like Google AdSense, that are so popular on the Web today?” His opinions on Ajax are interesting though:

(When asked about current implementations of Ajax) They are irrelevant for the vast majority of business web sites. (And by “business web site” I also mean sites for government agencies and non-profits.)

A business site will profit much more from writing better headlines than from sticking a programming trick on its pages. […] It’s important to remember that most web sites are not used repeatedly. Usually, users will visit a given page only once. This means that the efficiency of any given operation takes a back seat to the discoverability and learnability of the feature.

He does, however, see hope on the horizion that Ajax definitely has potential to enhance just about any site - just not with the ways it’s being used now.

Ajax as a Remedy for the Cacheability-Personalization Dilemma

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Programming, Usability — Chris Cornutt at 7:41 am on Thursday, July 13, 2006

In his latest post from his blog today, Michael Mahemoff looks at a dilema that faces many an Ajax-enabled site out there trying to keep things lively and fresh - how can you personalize content *and* make the pages cacheable and bookmarkable?

Making it happen is actually somewhat simple, but there are a few things to consider first. The pages need to stick with clean URLs (it makes search engines happy), the pages need to be different for each user, and personalized URLs should still be consistent (to aid in sharing/usability).

The solution?

Create pages generically (same version for all users), and in this generic version, embed a remoting call which will customize the page for the current user. Serve http://example.com/fightclub to everyone. Then everyone’s browser makes a further call to grab custom content (Multi-Stage Download).

Check out the full post for complete details.

London Tube Route Finder

Filed under: Web 2.0 News, Front Page, Showcase, Usability — Michael Mahemoff at 3:16 pm on Monday, June 26, 2006

David Tran has spent the past couple of months producing a route finder for the London Tube. The site showcases several Ajax features:

  • Autocomplete suggestions as you type in the station names (though it’s apparently capped to 3 suggestions).
  • A very web 2.0 feature - vote on each suggested route with a :-) or :-(.
  • Google Maps popup to show where the station is.
  • And of course, no page refresh - route info updates via web remoting.

Aptly enough, it’s Rails that lies under the covers.

David’s looking for feedback on this project.