Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Introducing Adobe’s Spry Framework

You’ve already seen Spry in action in Chapters Chapter 4 and Chapter 12, where you learned about the Spry Menu Bar and Spry Validation widgets. But what exactly is Spry? It isn’t just a Dreamweaver tool; it’s a technology developed by Adobe, distributed freely and independently on the Adobe Labs website (http://tinyurl.com/22da4k).

It’s officially called the “Spry Framework for Ajax,” and it’s a collection of JavaScript programs that let you, the web designer, offer your visitors sophisticated control of a web page through widgets, effects, and data sets. A widget includes web page elements like menu bars, form validation messages, or sets of tabbed panels that makes a site easier to use. For example, the Spry Menu Bar widget adds links to a compact navigation bar, so visitors can easily find their way around your site.

A Spry effect is a visual treat that doesn’t necessarily improve how a web page works but adds cool eye candy. You can use a Spry effect to fade page elements in and out of view, for example.

Finally, a Spry data set is a presentation format that’s more interactive than a standard HTML table. Imagine you have a table listing products your company sells. The table displays one product per row, with columns for the product’s name, price, and availability. A visitor can sort a Spry data table by any of these columns, simply by clicking the name of the column. And that all happens without the browser ever having to reload the web page. ...