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For most of us, visual presentation has a greater immediate impact than text or numbers alone. Graphs are effectively used in presentations for that very reason: they quickly convey that Column A is larger than Column B, or that Line 1 has outperformed Line 2. They allow us to easily grasp the overall concept before drilling down into the details. When done well, they allow us to convey complexity with ease (see Tufte, Edward).

When a search engine visually presents the results in a manner that allows me to quickly grasp the depth of the search, quite naturally it catches my eye. Grokker.com is a search application that displays the results both in an outline view and a map view. The user can toggle back and forth between the two views before selecting their preference for viewing the results.

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Prototype 1.5.1 is now out. Looks like they put quite a bit more stuff in there than you would expect for a minor version number, in terms of bug fixes and new features. From their highlight list:

• Incredible Selector speedup and full CSS3 support.
• Full JSON encoding and decoding support and options for improved security.
• Optimized Element#get/setStyle for cross-browser compatibility and speed.
• Various String method enhancements and fixes.
• The new Form#request method simplifies the common case of submitting a serialized form with XMLHttpRequest.
• Many form serialization fixes-if you had troubles before, now they’ve been squashed.

It also looks like that whole JQuery/Prototype kerfuffle about a lack of good documentation has born fruit. Documentation is being written and updated on a far more regular basis.

Technorati : ajax, announcement, prototype

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I conducted an informal survey a while back on which Ajax-based apps people actually used. I got back a good number of responses and the results are in. With the exception of a smattering of applications such as GMail and Yahoo! Mail, far and away the most popular type of Ajax-based app was the RSS Reader. When you think about it, it is an online application designed to perform what is essentially an online activity: reading blogs. Mail, on the other hand, has lots of offline aspects to it (attachments, a history of offline reading, etc.).

I guess this result isn’t too surprising, but I’m not sure what it says about the future of Web 2.0, all online apps. Do we all have to be weaned from our dependence on offline apps? Is this a thing “the kids” will be embracing, and not us elders? Or will we have to wait until there is truly robust online/offline functionality in Ajax/Web 2.0 apps, through platforms like Adobe’s Apollo and the mysterious (does it even exist as more than an announcement and a slide show) Project Flair from Sun?

Technorati : ajax, rss, web20

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This is an item from back in March, entitled Ajax and XML: Five Ajax anti-patterns. The material isn’t rocket science, but every so often it is good to be reminded of how not to do Ajax.

The five anti-patterns are

1. Polling on a timer when you don’t need to
2. Not inspecting the return results in the callback (of an XHR)
3. Passing complex XML when HTML would be better
4. Passing XML when you should pass JavaScript code
5. Doing too much on the server

A useful warning on the behavior of timers, familiar to most experienced Javascript developers, but useful nonetheless:

The window.setInterval() method tells the page to call back a particular function on a particular interval — say, every second. Most browsers talk a good game when it comes to these timers, but they rarely deliver, primarily because the JavaScript language is single threaded. If you ask for a second, you might get the callback at 1 second or 1.2 seconds or 9 seconds or any other time.

Give it a read. To be honest, I have seen a number of inappropriate uses of polling on some public web sites, so it may seem like a dope slap obvious kind of thing to me and you, but plenty of people fall for it.

Technorati : ajax, anti-patterns, best practices

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There I was the other day, skimming through the New York Times online when I mistakenly double clicked on a word (which is why I shouldn’t continually mess with my mouse settings, but that’s another post). The next thing I knew, a popup window appeared displaying a definition of the very word I had double clicked. Disconcerting at first but with a closer look I realized  that the New York Times has given me a reference search tool right at my fingertips.

Putting it to work, this time intentionally, my double clicking on “hubris” returned the following:

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