CSS Reference. Mega Drop Down Menu w/ CSS. Overview of Popular JavaScript Frameworks - ASP.NET AJAX. This is the fifth and final istallment in the JavaScript frameworks overview series. For the past several weeks, we've been reviewing the top dozen frameworks in use in order to simplify the decision of choosing a framework. The problem isn't a lack of good choices, but rather an abundance of them! In the previous four installments, we covered: Part 1: Prototype, script.aculo.us, MooTools Part 2: JQuery, Yahoo! UI Library (YUI), MochiKit Part 3: Dojo, Rialto, Spry Part 4: qooxdoo, and SproutCore This week's article is dedicated entirely to Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX Framework, because there's so much to cover. ASP.NET AJAX Links Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX was created to assist developers in the rapid creation of efficient and interactive Web applications, much like SproutCore. Many of the ASP.NET controls have Ajax built-in so that callbacks aren't required to update their contents, reducing JavaScript code.
Server Controls The ScriptManager Control The UpdatePanel Control The Timer Control. An Introduction to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Digg This Add to del.icio.us JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON for short, is a lightweight data-interchange format which may prove to be a viable alternative to XML for IT developers. The purpose of a data-interchange format is to transfer information between potentially incompatible technologies.
For example, the sender may be a Java application running on Unix and the receiver could be a Visual Basic program running on Windows. In this instance one would require a standardized format to send the data because the applications could not communicate directly with each other. Change is in the Air While XML was meant to transfer data between applications, its format was derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which bears a closer resemblance to HTML than to any programming language. Language Overview JSON's raison d'être is to encapsulate an object in a meaningful and standardized way that can be easily understood by humans, as well as being rapidly parsed by machines.
Cross-browser JSON Serialization in JavaScript. In this article we will examine the benefits of object serialization, the current browser implementations, and develop some code that could help your Ajax-based projects. Assume we have a fairly complex JavaScript object defined using literal notation: We can access any of the object properties in a variety of ways: obj1.s1; // returns "text string" obj1["n1"]; // returns 12345 obj1.a1[6][1]; // returns 21 obj1["o1"]["b"]["c"]; // returns 42 This object can also be passed to JavaScript functions and methods rather than specifying individual arguments. However, what if we need to store this object in a cookie? Serialization is the process of turning any object into a string.De-serialization turns that string back into a native object.
Perhaps the best string notation we can use in JavaScript is JSON — JavaScript Object Notation. There are two JSON methods in JavaScript: Unfortunately, very few browsers provide these methods. Var JSON = JSON || {}; The code examines the object type. Working with AJAX and the Prototype JavaScript Library. Working with AJAX and the Prototype JavaScript Library(Page 1 of 4 ) Before I continue exploring the neat features that come packaged with Prototype, let me recapitulate briefly the topics that I discussed in the previous article.
In that way you will understand more easily the group of themes that I plan to cover in this tutorial. As you'll certainly remember, in the first part of the series I started explaining how to use some of the most popular functions included with this library. I touched on the $, $A, and $H functions, as well as an additional one, called $F. If you're anything like me, you found the $ function extremely versatile for retrieving and manipulating multiple elements of the same web document. Of course the set of helpful functions that I mentioned above are simply a small sample of all that Prototype can do for you, which implies that there's still a long way to go when it comes to exploring its remarkable capabilities.