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R
emember the first time you saw Google Maps? If you’re like me,
after you’d spent a good amount of time clicking and dragging the
map around or zooming in on a satellite view, you did a right-click
to confirm your suspicion that it was done with Flash. Wrong! The magic of
Google Maps (
http://maps.google.com), as well as other sophisticated
sites like Flickr (
http://flickr.com) and Yahoo! Tech (http://tech
.yahoo.com
), all rely on a relatively new technology known as Ajax. Ajax
combines advanced JavaScript coding, Document Object Model (DOM)
manipulation, and XML data to allow partial page refreshes without long
waits for a new page of HTML to arrive from the server.
Ajax is highly touted as a key component of the next-generation Inter-
net, known in designer circles as Web 2.0. To make it possible for more
and more people to integrate Ajax techniques into their sites, numerous
implementations have been developed. One such implementation, Spry,
was developed by Adobe and released for use by the general public. The
Dreamweaver engineers took Spry to the next level and developed a series
of objects and features to make it easy for designers to incorporate the
advanced functionality of Ajax into their sites.
This chapter explores the relationship between Ajax, Spry, and the new
Spry tools in Dreamweaver. After an overview that provides the back-
ground you’ll need on Ajax and Spr