Anyone interesting in learning “The Facts about AJAX?”

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

I have been working with AJAX recently and I was wondering if any of the CAOSters are interested in a talk on AJAX?  I would be happy to give one but preparing a new talk can be a lot of work and I don’t want to do it if fewer than a dozen people are interested.

My plan would be to discuss the primary AJAX technologies from the ground up providing an introduction to HTTP, JavaScript, the DOM, XML, and XHTML.  Then I would discuss (with practical examples and code) how these technologies work together to form AJAX.  If there is time and interest, I could finish with introductions to some other web technologies that are gaining popularity such as web-services, CSS, and XSLT.

The presentation would probably be scheduled for the week after spring break.  Please post if you would be interested.  

Just so you know, I do not have any particular credentials in AJAX development but I have extensive knowledge of all the individual technologies and am getting pretty good at making them work together.  Here is an example of a Reversi/Othello-like game I am currently working on for fun.
http://lamonica.info/games/reversa/

[Tyler]

I would be interested.  I can only go however if it's at night or on a weekend.  I'm in Belleville and have the full-time job thing going on.

[Peter Motyka]

I'd love to see your slides/notes!

[EvilAndrew]

The presentation would be at night.  I have to work durring the day too. Although I work a lot closer than you do. ;-)

[rajiv]

I am interested .
I would appreciate if you could add
microsoft's "atlas" to your discussion.
Have you picked a date ?

[Sukumar]

Iam interested. Any day would be fine except sunday.

[Bryan]

if you include something about designing to fully utilize AJAX technology or how it compares form a usability aspect, I'm there.

[Justin Camerer]

do it.

[Peter Motyka]

if you include something about designing to fully utilize AJAX technology or how it compares form a usability aspect, I'm there.

The HCI aspects of AJAX-oriented web applications are huge.  I'm personally a fan of page regions/components being able to asynchronously refresh content without having to send the entire page into a full refresh cycle.  A great example of this type of stuff is http://protopage.com/.

I would appreciate if you could add microsoft's "atlas" to your discussion.

I really shouldn't chime up here since I can't attend the talk, but it seems touching on Atlas could potentially obscure the underlying technology stack of AJAX.  I'd equate this to rushing into Struts without an adequate understanding of MVC.  It would be neat to see AJAX examples that were platform/language agnostic.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

Concerning HCI. I intend to address the technical aspects of AJAX in a sort â€Ã...“Everything you need to know to do your own AJAXâ€Ã, approach.  Thus, I will probably avoid any discussion of HCI and even aesthetics.  

However, it is easy to get carried away with AJAX and make your site not-usable.  For example, you could host your entire site from one webpage and just load different data for each thing your user requests.  This would be cool AJAX but when a user went to bookmark something he/she liked the bookmark would not work because the same URL would point to everything.

So, if you are interested in HCI with AJAX there is definitely some room for discussion along these lines.  Perhaps we can end the talk with such a discussion or schedule a follow-up presentation about â€Ã...“Good AJAX Design.â€Ã, for people who have seen the first presentation and are now ready to move forward.  I am really not qualified to teach HCI, but perhaps there is an SIUE alum out there who would volunteer.

As for Atlas.  I have looked at the project and it looks interesting.  However, I think that if you learn the basics of AJAX then toolboxes like Atlas will be easy to pickup.  Additionally, I will be primarily focusing on the use open-source tools so that anyone can use what they learn from this discussion and not just those people with access to Visual Studio 2005.

On the plus side. It sounds like there is interest in this presentation.  Does anyone know what nights usually work best for CAOS Events?  I have a regular commitment on Thursday nights, but the other days are usually OK.

[Steve Bory]

I don't know about the rest of the group, but Tuesday and Thursday nights are definately a no for me.  Any other night of the week would be awesome.  I am definately looking forward to this.  I have been meaning to read up on the subject, but due to lack of time have not.  Great idea for a discussion though!

[rajiv]

With Spring break starting next week, how about 5:00p.m to.. this Friday ?

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

I have to stick with my "...the week after spring break..." statement.  I will need time to create some clean demos,  flush out my outline, and maybe make some power-point slides.  :-x

Hopefully, interest will not wane over the break.

[Tyler]

If it's a weekday then it would have to be 6 or later for me.

[JR]

you know ill be there.

[Kaitlyn Schmidt]

I'll be there so long as it's on a Tuesday or Thursday after 7:00pm.  I'm booked otherwise...   Thanks for offering this!  :-D I hope I can make whatever you pick!
-Kate

[Bryan]

Kate you may want to take your email out of your profile or replace the @ with _@_   Currently it's a nice spam target.

[Kaitlyn Schmidt]

Thanks!  That was really silly of me, eh?

[Bryan]

now are you worried someone might mistake someone named Kaitlyn as being a boy?  :-P

[Tyler]

A girl in the forum??  

Everyone get their cobwebs off of their showers and find the toothbrush buried in computer parts. :shocking:

[Sheila Shahpari]

tfizzle wrote:
A girl in the forum??

Everyone get their cobwebs off of their showers and find the toothbrush buried in computer parts.

Pay no attention to those dumb boys..

lamonica wrote:
I have been working with AJAX recently and I was wondering if any of the CAOSters be interested in a talk on AJAX?  

Sounds pretty hip to me - Thursday/Friday nights are best for me, but I could probably make it whenever.

[Tyler]

SlartyBartfast wrote:

Pay no attention to those dumb boys..

I think that's our problem.  :lol:

[rajiv]

Here is an Ajax implimentation (Framework / dll ) that might be of interest to .Net lovers .
http://ajax.schwarz-interactive.de/csharpsample/default.aspx

The source code has migrated to "BorgWorx" eversince Atlas appeared on microsoft's website.

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

So far, Tuesday the 14th has the most votes.  Because that is so soon I will need to reserve a room equally soon.  If it is still the leader tomorrow I will reserve the room and kill off the poll. So please vote if you have not already.

Vote Here!
 

[R. Andrew Lamonica]

The votes are in and Tuesday the 14th won.  I will post an official anouncement soon.  But for now, I have reserved the EB Auditorium for 8:00pm on Tuesday after break.  I hope everyone who wants to learn AJAX can make it.