WebDev3000 » AJAX

ScriptArtist

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:20:57 +0000

Sometimes, I really think about starting a career in programming, and the only reason for this is my laziness. Just think about this – when I write stuff, I have to write it all by myself, and I only quote various sources from time to time. On the other hand, programmers have sooo many code generators at their disposal that sometimes, creating a fully featured application is more about messing with a code generator and then checking the resulting code, rather than writing a lot of code by yourself…

While ScriptArtist may not be free, I chose to tell you about it today because it has a decent price, a lot of useful features, and – don’t laugh – I really love its name. Sure, branding may not be everything, but it’s something that matters more and more these days…

… and if you didn’t feel like clicking the link above, no problem – here’s a short excerpt of the official mumbo-jumbo: “ScriptArtist is a powerful PHP and AJAX code generator that allows you easily to generate the PHP scripts connected through MySql database. ScriptArtist helps you save a lot of developing times to create the completed CRUD operations (Create, Read, Update, & Delete), easily generates web forms (email or contact form) retrieved information from either database fields or user-defined fields and many more.”

For the full features list, you should take a look here. Speaking for myself, everything looks fine. If you’re planning to try this PHP/AJAX generator, you should know that it works on XP/2003/Vista, requiring IE 6 or later, while your server should have PHP 5/MySQL 5 or later, no matter if it’s a Linux- or Windows-based one. That’s all, folks – enjoy ScriptArtist!

Sudo Slider

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:12:44 +0000

Since weekend is coming, I think that some CMS or shopping cart wouldn’t be a good idea. At least when I think about myself, I usually enjoy some light work during weekends, nothing special, as it happens with most of my friends. The web designers that I can call “friends” usually go in the woods during weekends, but when they don’t, they usually avoid work, that’s certain. If things are so boring for them and they end up facing some script, I know they would surely enjoy something like Sudo Slider…

But what is this thing called “Sudo Slider,” you will ask, right? Based on Easy Slider, Sudo Slider is a jQuery slider plugin packing quite a few interesting features. To make a longer story short, I think it’s enough to say that this piece of code will help you to display any HTML content via Ajax, displaying the items with fade or slide effects. Even better, you can use multiple sliders in one page and you get support for forward-back browsing, so you can easily bookmark every item.

Before giving Sudo Slider a try on your website, I think best thing to do is take a look at the demo. This 10kb plugin may be unobtrusive, but it’s surely faster to click the link above than make it work on your pages, right? That’s all, folks – have a nice weekend and be sure to enjoy Sudo Slider!

Compatibility: all major browsers

Sexy.js

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:38:05 +0000

Those who claim that intelligence is sexy may be right, after all. Why? I never thought about programming/code to be sexy, and I wasn’t expecting to see a jQuery library with such a smart branding as Sexy.js. Now, they only need a theme song… and I can’t suggest anything else but ZZ Top’s Legs, since I think it goes perfectly with the home page of this product!

Sexy.js is a chainable library that allows you to easily manage script dependencies and write “sexy” code. While I would really like to see a nice video presentation of this lightweight JavaScript library, all I could find was this slideshow. Don’t get me wrong, this slideshow is nicely put together, but this piece of code surely deserves more!

Dual licensed under the MIT or GPL v2 licenses, Sexy.js can easily turn “ugly” code into “sexy” one, providing enhanced sequential Ajax (Sajax) functionality and coming in two versions – as a jQuery plugin, or standalone. Obviously, there’s no special requirement for it, since all major browsers can easily handle JavaScript. For a demo, take a look at this page. Enjoy!

WPtouch

Adrian — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:14:49 +0000

If you encountered difficulties reading your WordPress based website or blog on your mobile device, WPtouch is the solution. WPtouch is a lightweight, fast-loading, feature-rich and highly-customized “theme application” which includes an admin interface to let you customize many aspects of your site’s presentation. Also included on the admin panel is a compatibility suite which will help with setting up pages automatically display supported WordPress archive and links functions, as well as help with detecting supported or conflicting plugins.

With WPtouch you will get all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtouch redesigned the WordPress admin panel offering many customization features. This way your WordPress website or blog will be rendered fast and the loading time of pages will be decreased. WPtouch offers support for FlickrRSS plugin and Blip.it video plugin. Also the Ajax comments are posted in real time.

If your users don’t like the WPtouch theme they can choose your site’s regular appearance. This can be done using an option in the footer. WPtouch offers a little snippet of code for the switch link into your current theme which will be shown only to mobile visitors, giving them control to choose between the two site views easily. Also WPtouch give you the ability to turn advanced javascript effects & ajax on/off

Before you install this plugin, make sure you have FTP access to install the theme plugin folder. The installlation is very easy: search for ‘WPtouch’ in the add new section of WordPress under Plugins. Simply install, activate and you’re done!

Chyrp

Adrian — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:16:39 +0000

One of the easiest ways to communicate in these days is to post your thoughts through your blog. Chyrp was designed to be lightweight while retaining functionality. . Chyrp has a great standard theme and robust module engine. You can personalize and modify it any way you want.

One of the best feature besides its simplicity is the Feathers system. This system allows Chyrp to do anything you want. You can just stick to the default Text feather (running a regular blog) but you can also post anything and everything.

Feathers add new post types to Chyrp. Post types determine what kind of media you can display in your blog. You can also add multiple extensions. Extensions add functionality (ex. audio clips, video, photos) to Chyrp. It can be a module, a feather, a theme, or a localization.

Chyrp is driven by PHP (PHP 5 >= 5.1.3) and MYSQL (MYSQL 4.1+) or SQLite (SQLite 3+). The installation is simple. Download the script, unzip it and upload it to your server. Create the MYSQL database with a username and password. The final step is to run the installer.

Chyrp is a powerful application and is perfect for tumblelogs. Unfortunately Chyrp does not have the capability of automatically posting content based on new items added to RSS feeds.

Kish Multi

Adrian — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:30:00 +0000

If you have multiple blogs, you need a simple tool to maintain all of them very simple and easy. Kish Multi is a perfect tool for you. It helps you to maintain multiple blogs from a single blog. Kish Multi uses Ajax, this way there is only one page to load.

With Kish Multi you can write new posts for all your blogs. This means you can write text with TinyMCE editor, assign categories, upload images, add videos, add tags, schedule posts and assign categories.

You can also moderate comments on all blogs managed by this plugin. You can reply to a comment, mark a comment as spam and pending. An additional feature which is not available with the default wordpress installation is reply via email. All the comment reply sends and email to the author of the parent comment.. With Kish Multi you can also cross post a post from one blog to other blogs.

If you are using All in one seo plugin, you can add the custom title, description and keywords into the fields provided.

The installation is very simple. Download the plugin, unzip the files and upload them to the plugins directory. Don’t forget to make the upload directory inside the uploadify folder. The images are temporarily uploaded to this folder

Scripts Used – JQuery, Uploadify

Compatibility: Requires WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher

UIZE

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:07:51 +0000

As I confessed some time ago, I am a lazy person, although sometimes I even surprise myself by being completely the opposite. Anyway, if I would be actively involved into Web development, I am sure that finding the right plugins and frameworks to work with would be one of my top priorities. Sure, the reason is that having ready-to-roll pieces of code around would allow me to get the job done faster… and continue to enjoy my laziness, of course!

UIZE is a pretty strange name, at least until you read the magic words on the official site, these being “you eyes,” how you pronounce it according to its creators. This is a open source JavaScript framework able to deliver a lot of power in a object oriented environment that supports widgets, DOM, AJAX, templates, and then some.

Provided under the terms of the GNU GPL license, UIZE is currently being used on Zazzle, and that should say it all. Currently, UIZE implements JavaScript Inheritance, JavaScript Events, JavaScript Modules, JavaScript Libraries, JavaScript Templates, JavaScript Widgets, JavaScript Localization, JavaScript Documentation, JavaScript Code Compression, JavaScript Build Scripts, as well as many others, and its development is still far from being over.

Since the official site provides a lot of information on it, I’ll leave you enjoy UIZE and move on, but fiiirst…

Compatibility: most sources claim UIZE is fully compatible with IE, Opera, and Firefox, but I am sure Google Chrome or Maxthon users won’t have any problems, either (anyway, no matter what browser you may be using, JavaScript must be enabled)

Rialto

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:59:13 +0000

As far as most people know, Rialto is the most notorious bridge in Venice. If you missed seeing it so far, go ahead and do it, it’s surely an objective a serious tourist must see, but if you’re a programmer… there’s a different Rialto waiting for you, and it’s even much easier to reach!

In our case, Rialto comes from “Rich Internet Application Toolkit,” being a cross-browser, AJAX-based JavaScript widgets library that can be easily encapsulated in .NET, Python, PHP, JSP or JSF graphic components. Its obvious purpose is to make things more straightforward for programmers, allowing development of rich Internet applications without having to write or even understand DHTML, AJAX or DOM code.

Unfortunately, the main target of this library is the corporate environment, so if you’re into designing such Web apps and you need forms, resizable columns, pop ups and so on… Rialto may be the right choice!

Compatibility: I guess that apps built using Rialto should work on any major browser, as long as JavaScript is enabled, and I am sure there’s no serious corporation in this world using Flock, Maxthon, or Google Chrome… or at least not yet!

Clean AJAX

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:15:48 +0000

Since I confessed my laziness already, today I will take one more step forward and tell you that I hate cleaning up. Don’t get me wrong – I love having everything in order, only that I can’t stand moving things around, wiping the dust, and so on. A direct consequence of this fact is that I only go through my stuff once in a while, because I am very good at keeping things shiny and in place, at least once I got all the way through the painful cleaning process…

… but I am sure you’re asking yourselves about the purpose of that whole story, right? OK, here it goes: “Clean is an open source engine for AJAX, that provides a high level interface to work with the AJAX technology.” Got it now? Good!

Keeping an eye on AJAX issues, Clean AJAX can be easily plugged in any page/DHTML framework, being based on successful design patterns, inspired by the Java Message Service API. Its main advantages are the fact that you can use it with virtually any server-side language, installing and having it ready to roll is very easy, learning it won’t take thousands of hours, and being completely based on client side JavaScript code also comes with its advantages… and disadvantages, of course.

The features list is pretty long, including a high level of abstraction, cache/history control, garbage collection, transition effects, multiple requests handle, and so on. Feelin’ ready for a little test drive with it? Go ahead, then, it’s open source and waiting for you!

Compatibility: according to the official page, Clean AJAX-powered code should run properly in IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, but I am sure it won’t have problems in browsers based on the ones above, like Maxthon, Avant, or Flock

JBEdit

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:22:48 +0000

Considering all the stuff we see around, the idea of a completely online OS gets closer and closer to reality, although I wouldn’t ever use such a thing and allow it to handle all my personal data as I do with the current OS I have (I use the good old Windows XP most of the time, by the way). These being said, it wasn’t such a big surprise to bump into JBEdit, but the surprise to find it was as sweet as always in such situations…

Sure, if I would see some Flash-powered online video editor, that wouldn’t be such a big thing, but JBEdit is an AJAX piece of code, based on jQuery! The editing capabilities rely on the server, and this is great, only that the features available aren’t exactly what you will usually get from a desktop program from the same category.

Basically, JBEdit allows you to extract a selection from a movie and tag it, and while the official project page seems to be down, you can get the code from SourceForge and play with it as you wish, since it comes under the terms of the GPL license, so it may be of some use to you – at least that’s what I hope…

Compatibility: any JavaScript-capable browser, of course – if you see something’s wrong in a certain browser, be sure to drop a comment below!