I am seriously considering converting a site I am working on to use ajax. If it helps to see what I am talking about see http://tetratech.info/demo/
Some people say using frames/flash/ajax destroys the functionality of the back/forward buttons in the browser. (which I basically agree with) The way this site works, it also damages the effectiveness of the back/forward buttons. Most user clicks update the current page, so if you want to go back, you have to go back through several iterations of the same page you are on. Using post also gives scary messages to the user when you go back to a page that was posted. This detracts from using back/forward also. The three options I though of were to 1) switch from post to get This still makes using back/forward cumbersome. 2) build my own back/forward links Dumb, dumb, dumb 3) use ajax to update the current page, but use regular links for site navigation. I think option 3 is what I want to do. The pages I want to use ajax on either have simple forms to update information or links that show additional information on the same page. I think I can keep my existing backend and simply add an option to not display headers/navigation/footers (Just the stuff that is updating.) Then I would have some javascript that would rewrite the links/forms to pull/update the content ajax style. Now, that probably isn't asking much, and I could probably do it myself. (with respect to doing it myself, I don't know much javascript. just tinkering now and again. It might take a while.) I don't want to learn all the browser inconsistancies with respect to javascript. So I think I want to use a small toolkit. Having briefly looked over some of the ajax stuff mentioned previously on this list, mootools looks potential. To those who have used mootools or similar toolkits. Can it do what I am asking? (or am I barking up the wrong tree altogether?) Requirements: 1) I don't have to use its php/other backend. I only need JS. 2) It can search through a portion of the DOM and update links/forms with JS (or at least make it easier) 3) It submits asynchronous post/get and returns the result to me. 4) It is easy to update/add/remove sections of html. Thanks, Orson _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
