Web Info & Tutorials

Mark Finkle has posted about new datasources for XUL templating which links to a nice tutorial.

I hope to see more XUL/like features finding their way into the Open Web.

Take a look at some of the examples:

Using vbox to use fun box model stuff and create a simple vertical box:

The example below shows how we might set other attributes of a button using a datasource. Of course, this assumes that the datasource supplies the appropriate resources. If a particular one is not found, the value of the attribute will be set to an empty string:

Using rules:

Adobe adding the Ext framework to ColdFusion 8 was a great idea as it allowed CF developers to leverage some of the best UI components out there. The main downside is that it's using Ext v1.0, two releases past what's currently available. With Ext 2.0 out and tearing it up, it's no wonder that CF developers are trying to find ways of leveraging it via their favorite server-side language, CFML.

Dan Vega, has started this effort by wrapping the Ext window class within a tag that can be used within CFML:

So all of your friends are on ColdFusion 8 and you're jealous of them. I don't blame you at all because CF8 is awesome but like you our production servers are still on 7. One of the cool new things about ColdFusion 8 is all the new Ajax UI stuff. One new feature I really like is cfwindow. CFWindow allows you to create a popup like dialog without actually creating a browser popup window. To me this is a more effective and stylish way of displaying popup content.

Apart from the fact that creating these wrappers will allow you to use Ext v2.0, it also provides CF developers who have not upgraded to ColdFusion 8 a path to use these same UI controls. No more CF envy!!

Dan has created a nice document and demo page for all to use as a starting point.

Hopefully we'll see more wrappers from Dan soon.

Buxfer is added individualized direction site, a la Mint.

Todd Ritter reports:

Buxfer has a some engrossing features that evolve it from the others. While it offers auto-syncing of dealings aggregation with your banks and distribute cards, budgeting, and cost analysis, Buxfer also has threesome key characteristics:

1. Shared Finances - Buxfer allows you to create groups and distribute limited assets to those groups to guardian who owes or receives money. For example, you could create a “Cable Bill” assemble and distribute yourself and your roommates to the assemble to road who has ambiguous over the change for the Super Deluxe Sports Package.
2. Google Gears - By using Buxfer’s Google Gears support, you crapper ready every of your clannish business accumulation on your possess computer, instead of Buxfer’s servers. The another individualized direction sites accumulation your aggregation on their servers, thusly discover of your control.
3. Mobile Access - Buxfer has a ambulatory sound programme and an iPhone-specific programme for accessing your statement remotely. You crapper also ingest Twitter or SMS to intend statement balances or to be notified of baritone balances, super withdrawals, etc.

Buxfer uses a perverted Prototype, and looks evenhandedly Gmail-y with the crowning correct flushed ‘Loading…’ and such. It looks nice.

Michael Schwarz is moving on from his Ajax.NET library, and suggests that you go back to the mothership and use ASP.Net Ajax and the PageMethods feature.

History

I'm happy to see that Ajax.NET Professional is used about 13.3% when using .NET related web applications. Starting with my first post Using a HttpHandler and Attributes to call C# methods in JavaScript in February 2005 the AJAX hype started around the world. Two months later I renamed the project to Ajax.NET and added nearly all features that are the most used until today. In May 2005 Windows Mobile support has been added and Ajax.NET was the only .NET framework that was able to run AJAX requests on mobile devices. In the end of 2005 I was invited to the PDC 05 in Los Angeles where I could meet Brian Goldfarb and Jonathan Hawkins to see how Microsoft is working on AJAX in ASP.NET (Atlas). I meet some other .NET developers and had great ideas on how AJAX will change web applications. In October I published a new product called Ajax.NET Professional which was doing the same but contains several other security features. Because of a change in the JavaScript source I changed the name from Ajax.NET.

Now

Today I have my eyes on new technologies that will change client application development (web applications). To see any feedback of my MVP award for 2008 I'd like to concentrate more on those topics. I'm still using AJAX in nearly all my web applications, but the future will bring more important features.

Some of the users of the library are talking about stepping up to the plate to try to continue Ajax.NET itself, so we will see.

Neil Mix is artful and inactivity for someone to go beyond DOM:

Here’s the difficulty as I wager it: the UI I’ve coded, what you wager on the screen, is a alikeness (some would call it a transformation) of the accumulation movement in module in my JavaScript objects. So ground is it that every instance the accumulation changes I hit to go manipulate something in the DOM? Shouldn’t that meet hap automagically?

Why should I hit to twine my nous around digit UI representations, the markup and the DOM? Markup is cushy to feature but captures a diminutive split of the UI gestalt. The DOM captures everything else, but sits in memory. Can’t it every meet be markup, so that I don’t hit to pay so such instance visualizing accumulation structures whose exclusive state is either in cipher or in Firebug?

Neil is hunting to wheel backwards and wager how we crapper locate pieces unitedly to intend to a meliorate place. I conceive that 2008 is the assemblage for this. We are sight some flush Ajax applications which requirement more than ultimate XHR requests, and see the discompose that ensues. There is shack for solutions that nicely bond the computer and the computer in a sharp way.