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Ajax Design Patterns
book

Ajax Design Patterns

by Michael Mahemoff
June 2006
Intermediate to advanced
655 pages
18h 26m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Ajax Design Patterns

Chapter 5. Display Manipulation

FOR AN END USER, THE MOST OBVIOUS THING ABOUT AJAX IS ITS VISUAL APPEARANCE. AJAX APPS TEND to look richer, and the interface tends to update smoothly, more like a desktop app than a conventional web app. This chapter describes the two main technologies for updating the user interface. Display Morphing focuses on changes to a single element, while Page Rearrangement involves changes to the page structure. Along the way, we’ll look at the Document Object Model (DOM). DOM manipulation is key to many of the Ajax Patterns.

Display Morphing

⊙⊙⊙ Display, DOM, Graphics, GUI, Morph, Page, Paint, Reference, Rich

Display Morphing
Figure 5-1. Display Morphing

Goal Story

Stuart is answering a question in an online quiz, with a countdown box showing how much time remains. The countdown label changes each second, and the color gradually shifts from green to red as the countdown proceeds.

Problem

How can you dynamically update display elements?

Forces

  • As the user’s task and context changes, applications need to present different types of information.

  • As information the user is working on changes, information being displayed becomes stale.

  • Stale information is a big problem in conventional web apps. Because the information cannot change until it’s out of date, you sometimes see disclaimers such as “May Be Out of Date” or instructions like “Click to Refresh.”

  • Submitting and redrawing the entire ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596101805Errata Page