Rob Gonda's Blog - ajax

jQuery 1.2.6 out and it's even faster

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:40:00 -0400

1.2.6 is now out and the events handling functionality is 103% faster:

CSS Selectors are 13% faster
.offset() is 21% faster
The DImensions plugin is now part of the core
toggle() can now accept more functions
attr() has had an overhaul
You can now unbind bound toggle() and one() functions
.index() supports jQuery collections
jQuery.makeArray can convert ANYTHING into an array
beforeSend() can cancel AJAX calls
You can now define your own animation speeds with the jQuery.fx.speeds object

Aptana Jaxer: server-side Ajax

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:08:00 -0400

Aptana released Jaxer: the first ever Ajax server... you got that right, server-side Ajax ... the concept is pretty interesting, a server-side API that wraps for client-side Ajax app to better optimize it and allows you to interface with the file system and database.... Oh, wait a minute, isn't this really similar to AIR? AIR also extends for your JavaScript libraries to allow file system and database access, except that AIR is a client desktop runtime and Jaxer is a server runtime... nevertheless, they solve the same problem... They allow you to leverage existing JavaScript skills to integrate seamlessly with components that will allow you to deploy full apps without the need of any traditional server-side programming language.

I always thought Aptana was just a nice Eclipse plugin, but this is pretty innovative. It integrates for your Apache web server as a simple extension (no IIS for now), it deploys as a war file for your Apache Tomcat Java server, or even runs in Amazon EC2 ...

I personally haven't tried it, and I have no complaints about ColdFusion, .NET, PHP, or Ruby processing my server requests, in fact, I believe they would be much more robust and reliable than server-side JavaScript, however, this looks great for small and light applications. I'm sure that's their first niche since the only two supported databases are sqlite and mysql, it's a good indicative ...

Anyone see a good immediate use for this new technology?

Speaking at the NYCFUG

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:51:00 -0400

I will be speaking at the New York ColdFusion User Group this Wednesday, April 16, with the topic of "AJAXify Your ColdFusion Applications". I promise it will be fun, a good learning experience, and perhaps we may even go out afterwards and have some drinks.

There will be tons of nice give-aways:
1 x Ticket to CFUNITED ($999 Value!)
2 x jQuery Reference Guide
2 x Learning jQuery: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques
2 x Tickets to Flex Camp Wall Street
1 x FusionDebug License....

They're all excellent... I love jQuery and CFUnited is the most popular CF event of the year .... hope to see many familiar faces, so don't miss it.

ColdFusion 8.0.1 Ajax Improvements

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:29:00 -0400

Adobe ColdFusion 8 Update 1 (8.0.1) was released April 3rd (most of you knew already). The good and safe news is that it seems to work fine... nothing broke with the update.

What was updated? You can get the full list here, but I will concentrate only on the Ajax part.

The docs say "We have improved functionality in several areas including AJAX functions, CFPDF, and CFIMAGE. And we have updated several software libraries including Yahoo YUI, EXT JS, Spry, and the FCKEditor."

The FCKEditor component used in the cftextarea tag’s rich text editor has been updated to version 2.5. As a result, the rich text editor now supports Safari 3 and Opera 9.50 browsers. This is great news, but 2.5 was released 11/30/2007... 2.6 was just released, so they went with the latest stable, though it was pretty safe to try the 2.6 RC, which was released a while back.

Next, the Spry framework has been updated to version 1.6.... not too much to say there, I don't care much about it.

Now the important part, the Yahoo YUI Library used for some AJAX-based controls has been updated to version 2.3 and the Ext JS framework used for some AJAX-based controls has been updated to version 1.1.1... I assume they did this because Ext JS 2.0 (released in October 2007 btw) was a major update and it would have taken too much to adapt it? Adobe, trust me, I understand SDLC, but in today's world CF helps us keep up with rapid changing technology and it would be totally worth it ... you will have to upgrade it at some point .... hopefully 8.0.2 will incorporate the a much newer version of Ext.

ColdExt: Another ColdFusion wrapper for EXT

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:38:00 -0400

After blogging about Dan's great EXT cf wrapper, I ran across another one today: ColdExt.
It looks great as well, so how about Dan and Justin join efforts instead of doubling work...?

Ext 2.0 Beta 1

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:44:00 -0400

People, listen up ... Ext 2.0 Beta 1 was released today ... for those of you still not familiar with Ext, it is what powers the ColdFusion 8 Ajax UI: Windows, Menus, Grids, Trees, etc. With the 2.0 release you have an amazing power to build desktop-like apps on the Web .. Start Menu, Desktop Icons, Task Bar, Windows, ... you really have to check it out. It blew my mind .... Where to go from here?

ColdFusion is not dead (or even dying)

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 00:21:00 -0400

It's not dead (or even dying), it's just...
Not dead, just ... stealthy
Not dead, just ... getting the AJAX treatment
Not dead, just ... in an upgrade cycle

Read more at a new ComputerWorld rectifying story.

jQuery UI released

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:16:00 -0400

jQuery UI is a set of themable widgets and interactions, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications.

The core of the library revolves around different mouse interactions, namely drag and dropping, sorting, selecting, and resizing.

On top of the core interactions are built a number of reusable widgets, including accordions, date pickers, dialogs, sliders, table sorters, and tabs.

Finally, the library is finished off with a few effects that you can use to liven up your site, specifically magnifier and shadow.

» More Information

jQuery v1.2: Major new release, sneak peak at jQuery UI

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:01:00 -0400

[From Rey Bango's Blog]

Hot on the heels of the jQuery v1.1.4 release, John Resig and the jQuery team put the pedal to the metal and announced their newest release, jQuery v1.2.

This is a massive new release of jQuery that's been a long time in the making - and it's ready for your consumption!

This release is feature packed adding such new features as:

Following the tradition of "playing nice with other libraries", jQuery v1.2 now provides the ability to define a custom namespace for the events expando, thus adding one more method of ensuring that jQuery developers can successfully work in a multi-library environment. John Resig had this to say:

It's incredibly important for us, and our users, that the jQuery library work in any JavaScript environment. In jQuery 1.2 you can now depend on the fact that jQuery will protect itself from outside code influences, and libraries, even going so far as to protect itself from other versions of jQuery that might be running on the same page. Knowing that your copy of jQuery will always behave the way you expect it, no matter what the platform, is the cornerstone of the project.

Along those same lines of working for the community, the team has provided jQuery developers with an easy way to migrate into jQuery v1.2 by providing a compatibility plugin. With some functionality being removed in jQuery v1.2 release, including this plugin allows developers to have all of the features that were removed in the newest release.

The full release notes provide details about all of these new features.

You can get the latest release of JQuery below:

jQuery 1.2: (How To Upgrade)

jQuery Minified (14kb with Gzipping)
jQuery Packed (26kb)
jQuery Regular (77kb)

Plugins:

As if a new major release wasn't enough to whet your appetite, on Sunday, September 16th, the new jQuery UI effects library will be released to the public. The library will include:

Draggables
Droppables
Resizables
Shadows
Sliders
Sortables
Tabs
Accordions
Selectables
Trees
Modals

All completely documented, demoed, themed, and 100% Free Open Source Software.

Here's a sneak peak at what to expect:

Lead developer of jQuery UI, Paul Bakaus, had this to say:

We worked hard over the last three months to make UI a seamless, rock-solid solution for many interface situations. It's nearly there - featuring many core level modules, ready-to-go widgets and custom, unique themes. To make the experience even nicer, the team created a smart downloader, a playground with demo apps and tests and of course documentation. We are pretty excited about our release on Sunday - be sure not to miss it!

AjaxCFC Source Control Repo Moved

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:11:00 -0400

Since I just moved AjaxCFC to its own homepage, I moved the SVN repository from RIAForge and created a Trac project. If you had RIAForge's SVN mapped, please update your records: ajaxcfc.com/svn . I maintained the same structure and history, though I plan to restructure it very soon.

Please file any bug and enhancement request into the new trac site.

AjaxCFC & jQuery need Rey Bango

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:23:00 -0400

We all know, and if you didn't, you do now ... Rey Bango is a jQuery evangelist, now part of Ajaxian.com, and long time user of AjaxCFC ... Rey and I have previously discussed adding him to the AjaxCFC team, so I'm proud to announce, he's in ... Rey's first task will be to add jQuery 1.1.4 to the AjaxCFC build, which will go into the RIAForge repo. Some people have updated it manually, but it belongs in the core distribution as well ... jQuery 1.1.4 has massive speed improvements over 1.1.3 and 1.1.2, which is the latest in AjaxCFC's distro. I'll fix a couple of memory leak problems with the DWR version and release it soon, hopefully next week. Welcome Rey and stay tuned.

YUI 2.3 is out with Rich Text Editor, now what?

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 07:45:00 -0400

YUI 2.3 has been released with six new components, as well as a skinning architecture and a new look for the components. [from Ajaxian]

Features

Rich Text Editor: Cross-browser support has always been a major challenge for RTEs, and we think you’ll be impressed with how well this editor works across the various environments. You can instantiate it with just a few lines of code for simple implementations
Base CSS: Nate Koechley continues to extend and refine the YUI CSS foundation. Base CSS itself applies consistent and common style treatments for the foundation
YUILoader: A mechanism for loading YUI components (and/or your own custom components) on the page via client-side script.
ImageLoader: Allows you to defer the loading of some images to speed initial rendering time on your pages.
ColorPicker: The Color Picker provides a powerful UI widget for color selection, featuring HSV, RGB, and Hex input/output and a web-safe color-selection swatch.
YUI Test Utility: YUI Test introduces a flexible unit-testing framework for the YUI ecosystem and serves as the foundation for our own unit-test battery.
Skins

Now, we all know that CF8 was release this week; it's dhtml goodies are based on YUI & Ext, and it the Rich Text Editing functionality on the fckEditor ... perhaps 8.0.1 should allow you to choose the Rich Text Editor implementation and allow to use the native YUI .... how's with me?

CF8 + Ajax need compression!

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:54:00 -0400

As you probably know, ColdFusion 8 came out today and it has tons of Ajax/DHTML goodies. It's based on YUI+EXT, which is a great, powerful, scaleable, documented solution... but it weights just too much. A simple cfwindow requires about a 360k JavaScript download ...

I checked the source code, and it's mostly minimized, which means it's hard to reduce the code-base even more... however, you can gzip it. Most/All modern browsers support gzip data, and the difference is huge.

With Apache you can use mod_gzip, but with IIS is slightly more difficult. The best solution IMO is to install a 3rd party tool such as port80 httpZip.

Check out the following comparisons.

CFWINDOW

UNCOMPRESSED

26 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

372244 total bytes
8114 request bytes
364130 response bytes
the average request was 312 bytes
the average response was 14005 bytes

entire session took 7.641 seconds
on average, responses took 0.336 seconds

COMPRESSED

26 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

116218 total bytes
7985 request bytes
108233 response bytes
the average request was 307 bytes
the average response was 4162 bytes

entire session took 3.672 seconds
on average, responses took 0.144 seconds

CFLAYOUT

<cflayout type="border">

<cflayoutarea position="top" title="Top Layout Area">
This is the top layout area.
</cflayoutarea>

<cflayoutarea position="center">
This is the center layout area.
</cflayoutarea>

<cflayoutarea position="bottom" title="Bottom Layout Area">
This is the bottom layout area.
</cflayoutarea>

</cflayout>

UNCOMPRESSED

15 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

357131 total bytes
4584 request bytes
352547 response bytes
the average request was 305 bytes
the average response was 23503 bytes

entire session took 3.609 seconds
on average, responses took 0.223 seconds

COMPRESSED

15 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

102840 total bytes
4645 request bytes
98195 response bytes
the average request was 309 bytes
the average response was 6546 bytes

entire session took 2.64 seconds
on average, responses took 0.165 seconds

CFMENU

8 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

215463 total bytes
2366 request bytes
213097 response bytes
the average request was 295 bytes
the average response was 26637 bytes

entire session took 2.438 seconds
on average, responses took 0.289 seconds

8 requests
0 cached files
0 errors

54543 total bytes
2399 request bytes
52144 response bytes
the average request was 299 bytes
the average response was 6518 bytes

entire session took 1.562 seconds
on average, responses took 0.168 seconds

Pretty impressive huh?

So in conclusion, you must compression your scripts to make it half-decent for your users... ColdFusion provided a very powerful tool, now it's up to you to make the best of it.

RIA traffic debugging

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:57:00 -0400

Quick note on debugging a Rich Internet Application. As you probably know, RIAs usually don't refresh and communicate to the server in the background. You can't easily see the traffic, so I usually recommend using Firebug for Firefox, Live HTTP Headers, Fiddler, and my recommendation, Service Capture.... Well, there's a new kid on the block ... not so new perhaps, but I just finally tried it and I'm loving it. Charles is another http/amf monitoring application with many more capabilities than service capture ... actually, forget about the capabilities, the fact that I can open it with Firefox with no problems should be enough ... but if that's not enough, you can see the traffic is a structured view instead of sequential, which allows you to see the requests by domain, then folder, then file, and it even groups all the flash remoting calls together ... it's a beautiful thing. In addition it does have more capabilities such as seeing cookies, request / response sizes, mirror responses to disk, analyze cache, bandwidth throttle, spoof dns, and port forwarding. I'm very impressed.

jQuery and AjaxCFC News

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:50:00 -0400

jQuery 1.1.3.1: 800%+ Faster, still 20KB

Improved speeds, with DOM traversal over 800% faster than in 1.1.2.
A re-written event system, with more graceful handling of keyboard events.
A re-written effects system (with an accompanying fx test suite), featuring faster execution and better cross-platform support.

Guess who's getting an upgrade soon?