Re: [mh] AJAX working

[Matthew W. <mat...@us...>]

Brent,

I think that using an "off-the-shelf" library is a better idea than trying
to do it all from scratch.  That way, as you suggest later, we can take
advantage of some nice companion libraries.  As well, it should (hopefully)
allow us to put more effort into mh specific things.  40K is much more than
your custom library, but as AJAX requires a pretty modern browser, then 40K
isn't that much.  As well, I assume that we would have one copy of the
library in a standard location within the mh web hierarchy, so it should be
cached by the browser.

I actually implemented an AJAX-like web interface for the DSC5401.  Look at
mh/web/bin/DSC5401*.  It works by using a frameset with a 0 sized frame that
autorefreshes and loads in new javascript to update the alarm indicators.
The neat thing is that it works on Audrey.  The bad part is that it is
kludgey, ugly and hard to expand to other uses.  I would definitely
appreciate having access to a standard AJAX library so I can avoid these
types of things in the future when developing stuff for more modern browsers.

I'm definitely not an expert in AJAX and don't know the
advantages/disadvantages of the different libraries that are available.  You
mention Prototype and it seems to pass my first test - it appears in the
first page of a web search for "AJAX library" :-).  If you think that it's
the right choice, and no one offers a opposing opinion, then I say we go
with it.  I can help out by getting the library into the repository.

Matt

Brent DeShazer wrote:
> I guess before I go to much further with this I'd be interested if anyone
> has any opinions about using a custom-designed AJAX library for MH like I'm
> doing or whether we should use something like Prototype
> (http://prototype.conio.net/). My MHajax.js file is 1870 bytes right now
> before any optimizations, whereas I think the optomized Prototype library is
> around 40K+. Quite a difference in size but of course quite a difference in
> functionality as well. Also, using Prototype would allow us to eventually
> use some of the neat interface design libraries like Rico
> (http://openrico.org/ - cool stuff).
> 
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