AJAX web applications, made famous by GMail and Google Maps, seem to be the flavour of the month in some circles. Using a combination of HTML/XHTML, XML, CSS, DOM scripting via JavaScript, and XMLHttpRequest (for exchanging data with a server asynchronously), AJAX allows you to do many interactive things with your website, making it appear almost like a native application running on your system. Incidentally, in case you were wondering, AJAX is an acronym for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML".
If you are looking for a tutorial on Ajax, you might want to try the following online articles from IBM:
* Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
* Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Making asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
* Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced requests and Responses in Ajax
Free AJAX Toolkits, Frameworks, Libraries and Source Code
Google Web Toolkit - Build AJAX applications in the Java language
Google Web Toolkit helps you in developing AJAX web applications like Google Maps and Gmail by taking care of many of the browser dependencies under the hood. Your applications are built using Java, and the toolkit translates it into JavaScript and HTML that works across a number of browsers, including IE, Firefox, Opera, Mozilla and Safari. You can also intermix JavaScript into your code. Other features include the ability to create widgets and lay out widgets, debug your applications using advanced Java debugging facilities, simple remote procedure calls (RPCs), automatic management of the browser's back button, etc.
Yahoo! User Interface Library
Yahoo! supplies a number of utilities and controls for use in your AJAX and DHTML web applications. They are released under a BSD licence. The library is written in JavaScript. The library features a calendar, containers (which includes tooltips, dialogs, etc), menus, sliders, treeviews, autocomplete, a drag and drop utility, an animation utility, CSS fonts, CSS page grids, and so on.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library features a variety of patterns, which are defined by them as optimal solutions to common problems. Each problem comes with text describing the solution. Among the many patterns described are animation transitions, collapse transitions (such as when you want to collapse an item on a page), dim transitions, expand transitions, fade-in transitions, self-healing transitions, slide transitions, spotlight transitions, page grids, tool tips, hover, etc.
Microsoft ASP.NET Atlas
Microsoft's Atlas is primarily for developers to create ASP.NET pages that use AJAX. You will need to have either Visual Studio 2005 or have the free version of Visual Studio 2005 Express.
ZK Ajax but no JavaScript
ZK allows you to create your Ajax applications using XUL and XHTML components and manipulate them by listening to events triggered by visitors to your site. Your application runs on the server side with only the visual user interface at the client side (browser). Scripting is done with Java. ZK is relased under the GPL.
Dojo, the JavaScript Toolkit
Dojo is a library for JavaScript that may help speed up your development of JavaScript web applications by providing components that you can use to add functionality to your web pages and make them more responsive and usable. It supports Safari 2.0.x+, Opera 8.5+, Firefox 1.0+ (as well as Mozilla), Konqueror 3.5+ as well as Internet Explorer 5.5+ (Windows).Labels: AJAX, Free, Library, Resource, Source Code, Tools |
