2ni’s Blog

This year the gigathlon takes place on July 7 and 8. They will equip some teams with GPS transmitters.

And guess what? Yeah right. We will display them on map.search.ch in real time! We are implementing an auto-tracking tool right now, which means, that you can choose the team you’d like to track and our application will automatically update the position of the teams and move the map to your favorite team while it is progressing in its course.

The first output looks very promising, have a look at the screenshot:

Technorati Tags: gigathlon, map.search.ch, race, track, search.ch

Berni and Jürg talking about SEO and backbuttons.
Both presentations are available online.

- indexer are lazy and do not handle js
- standard seo stuff can be found at Jürgs presentation of last week.
- possible ajax usage:
  - ajax as add-on (autocomplete, ...)
  - ajax as one-page website
- test your page from the point of view of a search engine (act like it)
  - lynx, wget, ...
  - no js, no cookies
  - check your logs with search engine user agents.
- page which should be in index
  - unique url
  - use default html links
  - getable without js, cookies
  - valid xhtml
  - page title
  - keyword (3-5%)
  - link building
- Problem with ajax: No (perma) url!
- (Berni takes over)
- Problems occur with user habits: backbutton, bookmarks, mail links, reloads, opening in tab / new window...
- "Principle of Least Surprise"
- Global naming leads to global network effects 
- reload trick: use fragment identifier (# - Part in uri), usually used for in page navigation
  - window.location.replace(window.location.search + '#' + state);
  - replace import for history issues
  - check state regularly (in application)
  - state has all to allow view
  - does not contain session or random id's
  - issues: no history entries, click sound in IE when state changes occur
  - you can store states in hidden fields as well (state will be lost in shift+reload)
  - alternatives: sessioncookie or flash storage (solves reload problem)
- simulate clic link without moving away from page
  - iframe (ie 5.5+, firefox)
  - hash in uri (firefox, safari)
  - must implement both
  - iframe must be created in html, title defines entry in history
  - use different approaches for different browser (no way around)
- open in new window
  - use normal link in href, use onclick event for interaction
- use GET for caching, POST for not caching states

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub, speech, swiss, zurich

Wow. Didn’t know, that the lake of zurich is already on swim temperature mode! We have several places, where the temperature of lakes and rivers is shown in the map.

Technorati Tags: map.search.ch, search.ch, zurich

nexbyte.ch talking about compatibility, optimization, benefits and some future notes of ajax applications.

- compatibility of browsers
  - xmlhttprequest: does not work on al browsers
  - activexobject: IE only
- differences between xml and json
  - xml ~ 40% larger
  - json takes more time to load than xml (when loading data into dom)
  - data access with js fast
  - dataloading in js slower
  - dataloading with xml fast
- use browser specific features for optimization
- compatible vector applications
  - firefox, safari: canvas
  - ie 5.0: vml
  - firefox &lgt; 1.5, ie &lgt; 5: DHTML (simulated vector functions)
  - Netscape 4: image (simulated vector functions)
- benefits
  - beside standard points:
  - less server requests
  - compare with desktop applications (license, maintenance, ...)
  - demo: webstamp private uses small ajax parts (especially the admin part)
  - read data only once: store the data on the client side in an js-array or similar
    (the data has not to be loaded a second time from the server if used)
- communication + debugging
  - check for
    - verify data from the client (should not be api where everybody can edit database)
    - block data sets (multiple users)
    - protect private data
    - error handling
    - asynchronous function
    - data can only be loaded from same domain
    - check for browser compatibility
    - encoding!
  - use firefox and live HTTP Headers or firebug
- ajax changes the internet
  - ajax technologies are known and use base technologies
  - emotional advantages
  - desktop similar
  - speed of websites better
  - browser gets more and more important, os loses its importance
- Showing live application of their actual development called sessionizer.
  See session from a user using a website afterwards. Cool!

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub, swiss, zurich

We don’t use java either. Might be still of interest for some of you
So now, Christoph, your words.
Again my short notes about the speech and what I can understand as non-java human:

- (getting slowly hungry now, but food is @ 12h30 only)
- how has ajax been intergrated in the infrastructure?
- co-existence between Ajax and "heavy" and j2ee
- j2ee supports servlert, jsp, ... which are page-reload based
- complete ajax realization very complex
- looking for optimized solution
- plugin concept with ajax servlet (client lib + server lib) and jsf plugin
- form and server state must be synchron!
- demo: human resources planning of Coop (50'000 employees, max 1000 clients for the server)
- the idea: they have a heavy administration web page which takes a long time start-up time.
  Using ajax should help to make the page more dynamic to work with.
- what they had to do:
  - feature delocalization (website, js, plugins, jsf components, web container, EJB container, ...)
  - define page as model
- (again the problem of too small font-sizes when showing realtime code examples,
   as Luc correctly mentioned in his small moderation  )

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub, speech, swiss, zurich

Does anybody know what the red bullet means at my plazes icon:

Something like: “Other people at the same place?”

Technorati Tags: plazes

The talk is about “new generation of webapps with web 2.0 and ajax”. The talk is in english this time
He will show some demos, instead of “just” pp slides. Cool! He has 2 screens for this purpose. The big screen for the demos.
Again my notes about the speech:

- 15min over, I don't get his points so far...
- he talks about web2.0, the history of ajax, mashups and other bingo-words...
- his slides, about what he is talking most of the time so far is on the small screen? 
- (where are his demos, most of his speech time is already over???)
- ibm does apparently some stuff with ajax, what I heard so far:
  - looking for creational tools for ajax
  - more?
- (I think, I stop writing now...)
- (30min over, ok he mentioned the demo again... Hope is all around)
- (35min over, more demo mentions. Still now demo though)
- qedwiki, about end-user programming
- qed = "quick and easily done"
- "QEDwiki is targeted at people who want to make Web applications without the aid of professional programmers. It uses AJAX scripting and a wiki on a server to collect and share information, such as RSS and Atom feeds" (from link above)
- (I think there was some kind of demo now, as he switched to main screen. Not sure though.)
- more about qed
- (45min over, idea of qedwiki sounds relatively cool, but still missing the demo, stopped really listening)

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub, swiss, zurich

I’m not really in the .NET world, but anyway. Let’s see what I get from the speech. (and no he is not the swiss soccer player)

- an example on ASP.NET 2.0 with and without ajax
- (demo already on the screen  )
- he first shows the example as a demo, how it should look like at the end
- he shows requests between client and server, using firefox extensions tamper
- editing code online. Unfortunately the font size is a little small for the audience. Probably good starting example for .NET developers.

- seems to be easy to add "standard" ajax features, but getting much more difficult for advanced stuff.

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub, speech, swiss, zurich

The “Showdown of technologies”. “Battle” between both… Chris = Ajax, Andrey = Flash!
My notes:

- "skip intro" vs. "globale Bewegung, die das Web komplett revolutioniert"?
- Points: 0, 1, 2 (2 = best)
                                       Flash               Ajax
Suchmaschinen (SEO)                    0                   2
Accessibility (Barrierefreiheit)       2                   2
Permalinks / Backbutton                1                   2
Sprechende Urls                        1                   2
Microformats / Semantics               0                   2
Fallback (Alternative Versionen)       0                   2
Cookies                                2                   1
Online / Offline                       1                   0

Bitmap grafics                         2                   2
Image manipulations                    2                   1
Vector images                          2                   1
Audio / Video / Streaming              2                   0
Micro / Cam                            2                   0
Gaming / Conference / Sockets          2                   1

Community vs. Enterprise support       1                   1
OpenSource vs. company dependent       1                   1
Available brainpower                   1                   2

Libraries, Components                  2                   1
Documentation                          2                   1
IDE, editors                           2                   1
Debugging                              0                   2

large xml documents                    2                   0
large text content                     0                   2
large media files                      1                   1
startup time                           1                   2

license                                1                   2
cross browser                          1                   0
cross domain                           2                   1
integration                            1                   2

Total                                  37                  37

Comments:
- Ajax
  - website must work without js as well!
  - permalinks with ajax possible, some tricks avaialable
  - fallback and seo about the same from tech point of view
  - cookies length constraints from browsers
  - rather new movement, a lot of libraries which do something, no or view documentation
  - debugging very good, as standard technology with browser and development extensions
  - ie mojo has speedoptimized startup code
  - cross browsing is tricky, so you might use available libraries
  - cross domain is "hacky" -> use flash for it

- Flash
  - flash is evil for searchengines
  - in own environment for accesibility
  - microformats is a html thing
  - flash-plugin for cookies with 100k storage
  - flash has good stuff for all the multimedia stuff
  - flash has very good documentation and coding frameworks
  - plugin available for almost every browser
  - "which client is allowed to do what" is defined and very good solved

- Conclusion
  - ajax can not replace flash / flash can not replace ajax
  - both technologies helpful to enhance websites
  - ajax is still evolving... browsers as well (http://whatwg.org)
  - flash for multimedia, mobile, desktop
  - flash for ajax
    - solving cross domain (xmlhttprequest over flash)
    - socket bridge
  - interesting platform for rich internet applications

Technorati Tags: ajax, bestofswissweb, conference, euroajax, swiss, zurich

A little more overview about ajax now, with some international ajax showcases.
My notes:

- ajax is not specially with xml and javascript is not a must
- ajax = dhtml + xhr
- invented by microsoft
- in ie since 1997
- transport: html, xml, json, js or anything else willing to parse
- Example gmail
  - ui, chat, autosave, login with ajax
  - ie login
  - first gzipped source of 153k!
  - complete addressbook of ~ 350k, not zipped
- Example google calendar
  - ie quick add
- Example google suggest
  - search term completion
- Example ajax login
  - username pw verification ad hoc
  - ev. confusing
- Example google spreasheet
  - ie concurrent users
  - polling for changes to serverfarm at google without ajax!
- Where is ajax reasonable?
  - form validations
  - spellchecking as you type
  - auto-completion for very large sets only
  - tree navigations (big ones)
- What to remember
  - back button must work us usual (web 1.0)
  - accessibility (non-js, ...)
  - indexing
  - bookmarks
  - networking traffic (keepalive, gzip, ...)

Technorati Tags: ajax, conference, euroajax, internetefficiencyclub