I’ve been developing for the web for a while now, and many technologies fly by.
First there was the ASP.NET craze. Some say it’s an improvement on ASP, others say its not worth the hassle. I couldn’t really care about ASP.NET, it’s there, but there are other languages just as, if not more capable, including the original, ASP. In fact, you can still do pretty much most tasks in ASP (VBScript), or PHP. It’s my view at this time that .Net might be getting things done “differently”, or “faster”, but it’s just another reason for Microsoft to fatten its bottom line, and therefore not worth looking at until I have a need for it.
Moving on, A creative use for AJAX, no browser required.
AJAX is a new browsing technology, being used on many sites, and basically, its content that can be refreshed or reloaded without the need of reloading the entire page, thus saving bandwidth and processing power for other tasks. Sounds good in theory, but most people have broadband nowadays, and most sites are optimized to load quickly on most connections, so theres not much of a point in using it for every day use, perhaps the better uses are in forms with long lists, such as Countries, and so on.
Google defines AJAX as:
A scripting technique for silently loading new data from the server. Although AJAX scripts commonly use the soon to be standardized XMLHttpRequest object, they could also use a hidden iframe or frame. An AJAX script is useless by itself. It also requires a DOM Scripting component to embed the received data in the document.
So, as you can see, basically is javascript changing the content on a page by making silent requests, sounds more like a great way to silently load trojans into users browsers.
My creative use for AJAX.
We recently moved into a new house, and the outside of the house has a few odd spiders here and there, some are small, tiny, redback looking spiders, others, H-U-G-E palm sized huntsmans, and so on. In a effort to rid the outside of the property of these pests that like to venture inside every now and then, we purchased some of the “Mortein” outdoor product, that is supposed to last “6 months” (we’ll put that to the test). Today we sprayed around the windows of the property, and hopefully that will deter them for “Up to 6 months”. One climbed inside tonight, only a small, cricket looking spider, and was crawling across the roof.
My partner in all her wisdom forgot to get Surface spray, so that the spider crawling across the roof could be taken care of. The next best chemical I could find to get him off the roof, and give him a knock on the head with a shoe was, “AJAX”, “Spray and Wipe”, was on top of the fridge in the kitchen. Fantastic I thought, let’s spray him with this, get him blind and irritated, and then, we’ll squish him.
So, with some creative “scripting”, AJAX was creatively applied to the spider, silently loading him onto the floor, where a shoe was presented to his head with some force.
There you have it, a creative use for “AJAX”, No browser required.
Clean up your AJAX code, it's a mess, with AJAX