Hit songs about drop menus!

Whenever I hear that Rihanna song, "Umbrella," I immediately start thinking css drop menus.

"L-I , L-I, L-I, L-I,
A A A A"

I just immediately pictures this in my head:
<li><a>
<li><a>
<li><a>
<li><a>

lol

Well anyways, I checked out the backbase framework for ajax. I haven't accomplished a WHOLE lot with it, but I can say that it is a wonderful client-side solution for things like pop-up calendar date selectors, and customize input selectors and things. I was able to use it to asynchronously import a form into a part of a webpage, and then process the information in that form asynchronously. That was nice, and very simple!!

I think for simple, small websites, backbase will be a wonderful solution. I'll admit, after my frustrations experimenting with IceFaces, I don't want to even TRY to play with backbase's implementation of JSF with ajax components... It's not fun!

And besides, let's face it, AJAX isn't all it's cracked up to be. So, only a portion of your page updates instead of the whole thing - is that really worth losing basic browser functionality such as bookmarking and back button??

-Lance
freelance-webs.com

First day of JOSUG

Today's JOSUG meeting has just started, Im sitting in this class as I typed this very blog entry. I'm disappointed that I'll need to leave by 10:30am for my 11am class; today we're covering AJAX technology which really gets my attention.

We'll see where this goes =)

Shorthand Steps:

• create an XMLHttpRequest
• worry about browser creation
• open() to inititialze connection
• requester.open("POST" , "/actionPage");
  
• send() to send actual data
• Event listener determines when the object has finished processing
• Set up a function to handle when readyState is changed to 4

Possible AJAX frameworks:

• Backbase
• works independent to whatever server side technology you use
• has a JSF implementation as well for JSF developers
• Dojo
• Rico