Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Ajax Technology

Web Applications Building Got More Fun through Ajax Technology


Web applications are fun to build. They are like the fancy sportscar of Web sites. Web applications allow the designer and developer to get together and solve a problem for their customers that the customers might not have even know they had. That’s how the blogging tools like MovableType and Blogger came about after all. I mean, before Blogger, did you know you needed an online tool to build your Web site blog?

But most Web applications are slow and tedious. Even the fastest of them has lots of free time for your customers to go get a coffee, work on their dog training, or (worst of all) head off to a faster Web site. It’s that dreaded hourglass! You click a link and the hourglass appears as the Web application consults the server and the server thinks about what it’s going to send back to you.

Ajax is Here to Change That

Ajax (sometimes called Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a way of programming for the Web that gets rid of the hourglass. Data, content, and design are merged together into a seamless whole. When your customer clicks on something on an Ajax driven application, there is very little lag time. The page simply displays what they’re asking for. If you don’t believe me, try out Google Maps for a few seconds. Scroll around and watch as the map updates almost before your eyes. There is very little lag and you don’t have to wait for pages to refresh or reload.

What is Ajax?

Ajax is a way of developing Web applications that combines:

  • XHTML and CSS standards based presentation

  • Interaction with the page through the DOM

  • Data interchange with XML and XSLT

  • Asynchronous data retrieval with XMLHttpRequest

  • JavaScript to tie it all together

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Yahoo SearchMonkey Apps


Yahoo SearchMonkey Apps – Accept Challenge

Yahoo started a SearchMonkey Developer Challenge last week (Last on June 14, 08 Saturday). It was really a great challenging competition for developers to prove themselves and to earn an existing price by Yahoo. Yahoo accepted applications code from applicants on four different categories which are:
  1. Best Enhanced Result
  2. Best Infobar
  3. Most Innovative Use of Structured Data
  4. Best Data Service

Yahoo declared a $2,500 prize for each category which describes all enteries had a chance to win a grand prize of $10,000 by taking participates in all categories. After completion of the challenge Yahoo leaked out few interesting enteries which deserve to get prizes like Wikipedia Infobar and IMDB Enhanced Results all these applications had been added in Yahoo! Search Gallery.

Still, results are pending due to review on other applications as well but we hope for a better future of winning participant of each category.

Good Luck and happy continued developing!