Ajax Design and Architecture

Ajax applications have unique design and architectural challenges and opportunities. This presentation will show you how to take advantage of the Ajax's strengths, and work around its quirks.

We'll start with an overview of Ajax, and then dive right into an extended example where we add Ajax to an existing web application. Along the way we'll cover several tools that we use to aid in Ajax development: The JavaScript Shell, Firebug, and the Web Developer's Toolbar. We'll also look at two popular JavaScript Ajax libraries: Prototype and Scriptaculous.

With the example application under our belts, we'll move to a discussion of Ajax architectural questions, including:

How do I select an Ajax library?
What format data should my Ajax calls use: XML, JSON, HTML, or other?
How do I handle the back button and deep linking in Ajax?
Prior exposure to Ajax and JavaScript is useful but not required.

About Glenn Vanderburg

Glenn Vanderburg is a principal at Relevance, where he is focused on cutting-edge software development technologies and techniques. He brings more than 20 years of experience developing software across a wide range of domains, and using a variety of tools and technologies. Glenn is always searching for ways to improve the state of software development, and was an early adopter and proponent of Ruby, Rails, and agile practices.

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