Topics Covered

PRACTICAL AND COOL STUFF

The courseware covers fun as well as useful Ajax techniques

  • How drag-and-drop works -- like Google Maps
  • How to build a word processor -- like Google's Writely (AKA "Docs")
  • How to cache external web pages-- like Google's Web Accelerator
  • How asynchronous actions differ from synchronous actions
  • How to load external data from remote web pages
  • How to dynamically change parts of a web page without reloading the whole thing
  • How to use web services that return simple comma-delimited values -- like Yahoo! Finance
  • How to format outgoing SOAP envelopes and understand incoming SOAP envelopes
  • How to use web services with SOAP with an example from Google's search API
  • How to use web services that return JSON data with an example from Yahoo's search API
  • How to use JavaScript's XML methods to dynamically add elments and text to a web page

Scripts Used in the Courseware

FUN AND ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES!

The Ajax courseware is intended to teach students how to implement the most commonly seen features in Ajax programming. By the end of the class, students will be able to understand and write code similar to the examples below.


Dynamically Changing the HTML on a Page

Using the "style" and "innerHTML" CSS properties, students learn how to control CSS styles for static HTML, including visibility and positioning.

Using Keypresses to Create a Text Editor

Students will learn the differences between events tied to keystrokes, and use those events to implement a basic word processor.

Using Mouse Events to Drag-and-Drop Images

When the mouse moves, the browser fires off events to trigger your JavaScript code. This can be used to implement a drag-and-drop feature.

Selective Changes to a Web Page

Instead of reloading a whole page, it makes more sense to update a single part of the page. Check out this stock price: $xxx


Changing XML with JavaScript

XML is becoming the preferred format for input to, and output from, web applications. The Ajax courseware shows how to use JavaScript to extract information from XML. We use an example that gets longitude and latitude information for a particular city:

Dynamically Changing a Web Page Using its XML DOM

The new XHTML standard means that properly formed web pages are also valid XML documents. We use JavaScript to capture the XML in your page and update it.

SOAP and Web Services

Web services are remote programs that receive XML inputs and provide results as XML output. The courseware illustrates calling Googles search API using SOAP envelopes. To see what an outgoing SOAP envelope looks like, type a search phrase:

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is an alternative format for retrieving data from web services. Here's what the same search for Britney Spears looks like as JSON output:

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Testimonial:

"This courseware was much better than others I've used. It was easy to summarize the bullet points on a page in my own words. It wasn't full of paragraphs of instructions and it wasn't just a bunch of code samples. The pictures and diagrams helped."
-Stephen Fraga, Ajax instructor