O'Reilly News & Commentary

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

By Allen Noren
November 4, 2009

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

50 Most Usable RIAs

By Theresa Neil
September 4, 2009

We applied two simple criteria to identify the 50 most usable RIAs: Number 1: Does it adhere to the 10 basic usability principles? Number 2:Is it really rich? Developing a product with Ajax, Flex, or Silverlight doesn't inherently make it rich. A usable RIA will embody these six principles: Make it Direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay in the Page, Provide an Invitation, Use Transitions, React Immediately.

Yes, you can now use quite a bit of SVG in the Internet Explorer too. With Ample SDK.

By Sergey Ilinsky
July 31, 2009

The Scalable Vector Graphics technology, SVG in short, seems to be experiencing nowadays its second (or third?) birth on the web. The browser vendors are investing heavily into lifting up what they initially prototyped long time before. This is true of Opera, Firefox, Safari and Chrome, but there is no clear indication on the plans to supporting SVG from the major browser vendor - Microsoft. True, Microsoft has recently made a vague statement on its commitment to support the standards and the thrilling web-as-a-platform thing aka HTML5, but in what extent and when? And what shall we do until that time has come, or until the older IE browser park has updated?

Using Ajax and Search Referrer Info to Help Users Navigate Your Site

By Kyle Dent
July 22, 2009

Using the referrer URL to detect what brought users to your site can let you help them find what they're looking for. The almost magical asynchronicity of Ajax lets you provide additional content for users from search engines. It requires only minor changes to your site and doesn't affect the experience for others.

jQuery/Server Side Tip on Detecting Ajax Calls

By Raymond Camden
April 9, 2009

Can we detect when a request is made to our server via an Ajax-based call as opposed to a 'normal' request? In this entry I talk about how you can accomplish such a task with jQuery and ColdFusion.

Analysis 2009: Internet Explorer Fades, Firefox Stays the Course, Google Chrome Surges

By Kurt Cagle
January 7, 2009

Poor IE. Like the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield, it seems to have a hard time getting much respect these days. Within Microsoft it has long been the unwanted stepchild - ignored when Microsoft shifted gears towards server-side technologies in...

New Book: Head First Ajax

By O'Reilly Media
September 15, 2008

Head First Ajax gives you an up-to-date perspective that lets you see exactly what you can do -- and has been done -- with Ajax. Using the unique and highly effective visual format that makes Head First titles popular, this book offers a big picture overview to introduce Ajax, and then explores the use of individual Ajax components -- including the JavaScript event model, DOM, XML, JSON, and more -- as it progresses. Learn more.

Seeking Ubiquity

By Kurt Cagle
September 9, 2008

Ubiquity, the open source add-on currently in alpha and being produced by the Mozilla team for Firefox, is intended to make such a command line possible. The idea behind ubiquity is to take advantage of both the internal storage capability and online communications in order to let users both create local "scripts" written in JavaScript that can be invoked to perform certain actions and to create a centralized (and vetted) library of such scripts online that people can load to accomplish nearly any task.

Harmony comes to JavaScript, but Not Everyone's Singing

By Kurt Cagle
August 19, 2008

A long and contentious struggle came to an end this week as ECMA Technical Committee 39, responsible for the development and maintenance of ECMAScript (known universally everywhere else as JavaScript), voted to establish ECMAScript 3.1 as the next "trunk" branch for the venerable web browser language, rather than the more ambitious (and contentious ECMAScript 4.0). While the breaking of the deadlock is a momentous achievement, not everyone is happy with it.

Powering Up Ajax Development Techniques

By O'Reilly Media
June 20, 2008

Dojo: The Definitive Guide — This comprehensive guide to Dojo includes a hard-hitting reference to help you build rich and responsive web applications with complex layouts and form controls closely resembling those found in the most advanced desktop applications. If you're a DHTML-toting web developer, you need to read this book.

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