How-To On Ajax Code To Show Movies and Slide Shows

An anonymous reader writes "Sites like Flikr and YouTube show just the tip of the full potential for media on the Web. An IBM DeveloperWorks article provides some easy implementations of video and image browsing that you can use in your own project. Learn how to combine media with technologies such as PHP and Ajax to create a compelling experience. All Sample code is made available, and if you're into Mashups the site's Mashup resource space should have everything you need to create a Mashup of your own."

Great, more Ajax

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

I suppose the 12 year olds creating Geocities pages have grown up and want to incorporate all the extravagant flash into their more grown up web pages.
We really need to get back to simple, clean cut pages that display the information and resources that your site is offering. The trend towards flashier
page is rapidly decreasing the utility of the web while increasing overhead and security issues. Simple can be beautiful, and it is almost always useful.

Re:Great, more Ajax

[whiskey6]

See, this is where I disagree with you. What we don't need more of are these clean, simple sites that you long for. Clean cut is great, but clean a shave is far better, as demonstrated on this flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14815126@N03/show/ [flickr.com] (NSFW) What's not to like?

Re:Great, more Ajax

[Bonewalker]

It is my understanding that Ajax is really about bringing new/fresh data based on things like user-input without having to reload the page, thus making the web experience much faster and more user-friendly. So, it would seem to me that it doesn't necessarily mean the page(s) or site(s) can't be simple and useful regardless of whether or not they incorporate Ajax. Am I wrong on this analysis?

Re:Great, more Ajax

[Anonymous Coward]

why was this modded insightful? i think it's just a bitter, poorly thought out response. what's so bloody horrible about using AJAX in a context like this? it makes perfect sense, especially if you actually spend some time to extend things to allow say, photo commenting w/dynamic updates....as a photographer i see a lot of use for something like that - say if i wanted to keep clients updated throughout the day on an important shoot..they'd see the freshest updates and we could comment back and forth on particular images. it would certainly save me time in the evening. in fact, it has - i've already written something more fleshed out than the example that does just what i spoke about...and it's saved me a lot of time(which makes me money) and has made some of my toughest clients infinitely happy. now they can play backseat driver without me having to be involved while they're shouting directions. so to speak.

and not everyone wants the web to go back to 1992...simple is often pointless, especially if commerce is involved. you think the old saying a picture is worth 1000 words is a joke? that's why people add "flash", because it sells. but you of course cannot be swayed by flash and bling, i'm sure...right?

and also, it's not like this example is horribly insecure, or resource intensive....so what are you really going on about? it's nonsense at +4

take some antidepressants and go outside...geez

Re:Great, more Ajax

[chris_7d0h]

Asynchronous Javascript and XML (or in practice XmlHttpRequests using any kind of text based wire format) are a nice addition and if used as pure decorators on top of sites driven by server side markup generation, then it is a good thing. The issue I and others have is that what "Ajax" seems to also imply when applied by sites in practice is a heavy reliance on a lot of client side DOM manipulations.

A site designed around the notion that as long as "Firefox and IE" can morph the bootstrap HTML page through an infinite number of morphs to something completely different, then the site is good. Those kinds of sites are neigh impossible to use via Wget, perl, lynx or any client not having:

1) A Javascript engine
2) A DOM engine
3) a special variant of A and B combined in such a way that they replicate the same quirks (attributes and behavior) inherent in IE and Mozilla.

So to sum it up, I don't think anyone has anything negative to say about requesting data fragments as an alternative to doing full posts/gets to the server. It's when people are being forced to one of a select few specific applications in order to use the web that irritation starts surfacing.

Re:Great, more Ajax

[Talchas]

Besides the issues others have mentioned, many AJAXy sites play havoc with the back button, and very few support open in new tab or open in new window. The same issues can lead to problems with bookmarks.

Re:Great, more Ajax

[Anonymous Coward]

The theme in this discussion is that "Ajax" can be OK, if used extremely carefully. The reason there is so much hate for Javascript/Ajax is that most (99%+) uses of Javascript/Ajax are completely incorrect and broken (especially with regards to usability). For every "correct" implementation such as Google Maps, there are another 10000+ websites which have broken implementations or very poor design.

Data and layout separation are very important, and this is often overlooked with Ajax/Javascript code. If Ajax is reading data from an XML document that is constantly updated, you still have a form of data/layout separation. But a lot of websites have inlined Javascript DOM code which writes the HTML document in-place using Javascript. Therefore no data/layout separation exists. The site either works or it doesn't depending on whether you have a bloated and "expensive" (system resources) Javascript engine. Breakage of the back/forward buttons on a browser is also a huge problem with people using Javascript and Ajax. These buttons are VITAL to web usability.

As for Flash, there is nothing positive to say for it. It COMPLETELY breaks usability, has huge overhead and is proprietary. The real problem is recreating GUI components instead of using native controls/buttons/etc to the parent system. Content/layout separation barely exists - and even then, no one adheres to this separation. Back/forward buttons are broken. Standard accessibility features are non-existent and do not tie in with the rest of the operating system. There is no need for Flash at the moment except for embedded video... something HTML5 will fix. Hopefully from this date forward, the need for Flash will be non-existent.

Most people can't even get basic HTML/CSS web usability right. If you can't understand web usability in terms of HTML/CSS, you have *NO* hope at getting it right with Javascript/Flash. You'll just dig yourself into a deeper hole.

Re:Confusing parser error...

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

But this is a how-to that tells you how to write AJAX code, such that said AJAX code will be able to show movies and slide shows...

I speak for many when I say: I sincerely hope not.

Compelling, indeed

[noidentity]

The first thing a site with unnecessary video or Flash compels me to do is leave.