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Adding Ajax
book

Adding Ajax

by Shelley Powers
June 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
400 pages
9h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Adding Ajax

Designing a Framework for Your Site

The most important decision facing you now is whether to add Ajax to existing pages or to start from scratch. This book is based on an assumption that web developers begin by introducing Ajax into existing pages and applications rather than scrapping a site and starting anew. In other words, the client-side functionality is adapted, and the server-side component of the site is left as-is, more or less.

The next step in the decision process is to determine the extent of the Ajax modifications. If you're changing a static web page form to one that uses script and XMLHttpRequest to support in-page edits, your use of the new technologies is relatively isolated and will have little impact on the overall site application.

However, if you're adding a site-wide help system, a new dynamic menu, or an in-place search feature, all of your pages will be impacted, and you might want to consider some additional architecture changes, such as splitting out your header and all the script into separate files that can be included in all of your pages. This approach allows you to make sure all of the appropriate JavaScript libraries are included, and allows you to isolate objects like event handlers.

Many of the new content management systems are based on a modular approach that allows you to reuse the sidebar, headers, and footers as much as possible. If your site doesn't use a modular system and the pages are managed manually, you might want to add this to your to-do ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596529369Supplemental ContentErrata Page