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AJAX-S, release 2!

Published on Friday, November 18th, 2005

After the feedback I got on my initial AJAX-S release, I’ve compiled it and added new functionality and fixes. In release 2 you will find these beauties:

Incremental rendering.
Printable version.
Support for non-JavaScript users.
Keyboard events fixed so you will stay in the presentation.

Sure, the print design isn’t exactly ground-breaking, but that’s where you come in! Download AJAX-S and test it out with your presentation material and needs, and style it up with your own design. Let me know how it goes!

Go view the updated demo now, ok?

Posted in CSS, Developing, HTML/XHTML | 17 comments

17 comments

Jonathan
November 18th, 2005 at 3:55

Very cool, Robert.
Steve Williams
November 18th, 2005 at 10:40

Still no go for Safari… off to launch Camino
Steve Williams
November 18th, 2005 at 10:51

Being a Safari user by default (Camino hasn’t won me over yet - but it is *very* good) I feel AJAX-S needs a fallback to display in browsers that don’t support the calls you’re making - is that easy to achieve?

Thank you so much for posting this - it’s exactly what I need to break the initial XML / XSLT barrier
Chris
November 18th, 2005 at 11:15

Hi Robert,
AJAX-S is pretty cool and works well with Firefox 1.5RC2. But How’s the non-JS-Version supposed to work? Is it the same as the Printable - because this is the only thing I see if I disable JS in Firefox.
Robert Nyman - author
November 18th, 2005 at 11:20

Jonathan,

Thank you!

Steve-o,

Yes, I’m sorry about Safari. But since the whole point of AJAX-S is to have the data separated in its own layer, the only fallback I can give for Safari users is to go to the printable version then.

I’ve updated the demo and zip versions so you’ll get a question if you want to go to the printable page if you don’t have support for the XSLTProcessor object.

However, I do believe Safari is bound to add support for XSLT usage on the fly.

And for every person I can convince about the greatness of XML/XSLT, I’m happy!

Chris,

Yes, you’re right. The printable and the non-JavaScript version are the same one. I made that decision to still just keep the data in one file, instead of having to enter the content in an HTML too. It would lose the point of separation then.
Steve Williams
November 18th, 2005 at 12:46

That’s perfect, thanks
Michael Odden
November 18th, 2005 at 14:01

It’s a very nice presentation tool, and I’m going to try it myself in some upcoming presentations.

Just a little feature-request:
The incremental rendering part, let’s take your demo as example: Page 6 in your demo (the one demonstrating i.r.) the content overflows so the last bullet is out of view. Why don’t do a check of the location of the element, and scroll to the next incremental element?

Good work, Robert!
Steve Williams
November 19th, 2005 at 1:11

I don’t recall you saying anything about AJAX-S performing dynamic text resizing in your posts? Just spotted it in the javascript - neat
Robert Nyman - author
November 19th, 2005 at 13:40

Michael,

Thank you!
Valid feedback, so I’ve updated the zip file and the demo. However, with the font scaling and such, one should really try to avoid to have as much content so there’s any need for a vertical scroll.

Steve,

Yeah, nifty, isn’t it?
Robert Nyman - author
November 19th, 2005 at 15:57

Also updated with a different look for active increment, past increment and coming increment, and a setting if one wants the first or last increment to be selected when backing from an upcoming page.
Michael Odden
November 19th, 2005 at 22:29

Nice =)
Yeah, I know.
I thought about sending a second comment right after the first one to mention that =), but I decided since the current AJAX-s did have the posibility to overflow with scroll, this would be a nice feature in those cases anyway.
Scott Rudy
November 21st, 2005 at 21:04

Pretty darn sweet, but I found a bug. I didn’t realize at first that I was to click through the presentation. So I placed focus on the drop down and proceeded to tap the down arrow (using IE 6). When I went through slides 6-9 the bullets were being highlighted instead of my expected result, advancing to the next page. Again, great work! Cheers, Scott
Robert Nyman - author
November 22nd, 2005 at 11:53

Michael,

Yeah, absolutely, I agree. I mean, why not?

Scott,

Thanks!
You’re correct, and that keyboard glitch has been fixed in the online demo and the zip file. Please try it again.
lallous
November 24th, 2005 at 13:08

Hello Robert,

Nice work!

–
Elias
Robert Nyman - author
November 24th, 2005 at 13:12

Elias,

Thanks!
Antonio S. Ando
December 10th, 2005 at 0:17

Congratulations Robert! Will use it for teaching presentations.
Must to show you an enhanced version.
Please reply as possible.
Best regards from Brasil.
Robert Nyman - author
December 10th, 2005 at 12:57

Antonio,

Thank you!
Feel free to send it to me; contact information can be found in the About the author page.

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