playing with ajax

Since I’ve started working on weSpendMoney I’ve been fiddling more and more with Ajax. It’s no suprise because since Google started using it in Gmail and Google Maps, the popularity among developers and companies skirocketed and besides, it gives me with the means to build a gui which provides a more user friendly experience and eliminate waiting times (or at least hide them).

The RubyOnRails framework already comes with the prototype library and several ajax helpers so it’s more easy for the developer to work it them and there’s also rjs templates which generates javascript using ruby code.

There’s a nice tutorial for beginners on this subject at RubyNoob!

But I’ve also gave Rico a try, it’s another open-source JavaScript library (there’s so many of them now) that provides full Ajax support, drag ‘n drop management, rounded corners (yay!) and some essential cinematic effects. I think it’s worth trying out and the examples are simple to understand, many books also have examples in Rico.

Of course with all these Ajax effects I needed some activity indicators, It’s a good thing I found out this page which has a nice gallery of them. Someone actually made a generator for this, very neat.

Finally, there’s a great site which has many tutorials, links, discussions and resources on the subject, go on hover to Ajax Lessons for some learning.