NYCPHP Meetup

[tedd]

At 9:47 AM -0400 9/5/07, Gary Mort wrote:
>tedd wrote:
>>Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't ajax (and ahah) only a 
>>means to communicate with the server without causing a refresh? 
>>Does ajax provide something beyond that?
>
>Ajax changes the way you program. Consider the following:
>You have a form with 100 fields of information, 1 of which must be 
>unique in your database.
>
>-snip-
>
>With Ajax:
>You can check that unique field at the moment they enter it, so they 
>can pick one at the time.  And you can check that field when they 
>try to submit it and keep them from submitting a non unique value(in 
>case someone claimed it while they filled in the info).  You STILL 
>need to perform the final submit check, but you reduce user 
>irritation by minimizing attempts at loading bad data.

Yes, I can still do that with just javascript and notify the user of 
an incorrect entry immediately using onBlur. I do it all the time.

>Also, the classic Ajax example.  Go the newegg.com and start 
>searching for something.  It generates a drop down list dynamically 
>of potential matches.  Without AJAX and with a database of thousands 
>of keywords, you will need to perform fuzzy searches and deal with 
>users mis-spelling keywords.

Been there, done that and even have an example. But it is still 
nothing more than communication between client/server without a 
refresh.

>With Ajax, you can get correct keywords and don't need fuzzy searches.

I can get specific or fuzzy searches with Ajax, but it is still just 
communication.

>Ajax allows you to move certain lookups from popup windows, which 
>are annoying and frequently blocked, to the main window itself.

Okay, this is where I'm missing the point. Are you saying that you 
can have communication between windows on the client side? I would 
like to see that.

>Imagine you want to select a user from a list of 1000 users.  An old 
>way of doing it could be to list the letters of the Alphabet, and 
>have clicking on them popup a window with just the users who have a 
>lastname starting with that letter.  Than you select the user and 
>the popup closes, using javascript to load the field.
>
>With Ajax, instead you can do that sort of lookup in the browser itself.
>
>All of this is due to being able to "communicate with the server 
>without causing a browser refresh"  Basically, Ajax can turn 
>traditional client lite/server heavy applications into client 
>heavy/server lite applications.

Now, I'm back to square one (I guess I should have read everything 
before I started writing).

That's been my point -- ajax is only performing communication between 
the server and the client without a refresh. I've been asking, is 
that all there is?

Cheers,

tedd
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