IIRC, this hack doesn't work in older versions of IE unless you remove the
type="text/javascript"
attribute.
(see http://openly.oclc.org/jake/instant.html )
this is one example of the few examples of a choice you have to make
between having something work and having your page pass strict
validation.
Eric
At 2:59 PM -0400 5/14/07, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
For what it's worth, I've used that same weird SCRIPT hack to insert
dynamically generated code onto my OPAC screen for other purposes too.
It was initially suggested to me by Dave Pattern. It's a useful hack.
Jonathan
Altay Guvench wrote:
Hi Godmar-
Tim asked me to join the list and discussion on the LibraryThing widgets.
You're right that, with Ajax, we're bound by the same-origin restriction.
But we can dynamically change the page content after loading, by
eschewing
traditional Ajax. New content is delivered through dynamically-inserted
<script> tags. For example, you can set an onclick that adds a tag like
this to the <head>:
<script src="http://www.libarything.com/get_content.php?tag=foo";
type="text/javascript"></script>
Server-side, get_content.php generates the response on the fly, e.g.
echo "
document.getElementById('tagbrowser').innerHTML = 'books tagged
foo'". As
long as the response header in get_content is set to javascript, the
browser
should interpret it correctly.
As for the hardwired DOM finagling you saw in Danbury's OPAC, in most
cases,
the table[3] stuff isn't necessary. Typically, a library will simply
edit
their OPAC's html template to include empty widget divs ( e.g. <div
id="ltfl_tagbrowse" class='ltfl'></div> ) wherever they'd like the
widgets.
Then a single script tag finds those divs and inserts the contents
onload.
However, there were some permissions issues with the Danbury OPAC that
didn't allow for this. (They could only edit the OPAC footer.) The
workaround was to dynamically insert the LTFL <div>s using custom
javascript
in the footer. That said, like I mentioned, this isn't necessary in most
cases. We've tested it in a few systems, and generally speaking, our
widgets are DOM-agnostic.
Altay
--
Eric Hellman, Director OCLC Openly
Informatics Division
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 2 Broad St., Suite 208
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://openly.oclc.org/1cate/ 1 Click Access To Everything
