stretch eZp to have google-like functionality?

Wednesday 23 February 2005 7:15:57 pm

http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php

This essay with nice diagrams explains recent web applications developed at google, and describes that it constitutes a new approach with promising applications across the web.

Please check it out and see if any aspects would be useful to incorporate into eZpublish's development framework.

"Ajax isn't a technology. It's really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:

* standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
* dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
* data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
* asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
* and JavaScript binding everything together.

Take a look at Google Suggest. Watch the way the suggested terms update as you type, almost instantly. Now look at Google Maps. Zoom in. Use your cursor to grab the map and scroll around a bit. Again, everything happens almost instantly, with no waiting for pages to reload.

An Ajax application eliminates the start-stop-start-stop nature of interaction on the Web by introducing an intermediary (an Ajax engine) between the user and the server. It seems like adding a layer to the application would make it less responsive, but the opposite is true.

Instead of loading a webpage, at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine--written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user's behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user's interaction with the application to happen asynchronously, independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something...

Google is making a huge investment in developing the Ajax approach. All of the major products Google has introduced over the last year--Orkut, Gmail, the latest beta version of Google Groups, Google Suggest, and Google Maps-- are Ajax applications. (For more on the technical nuts and bolts of these Ajax implementations, check out these excellent analyses of Gmail, Google Suggest, and Google Maps."

Thursday 24 February 2005 1:00:53 am

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (http://whatwg.org) "a loose unofficial collaboration of Web browser manufacturers and interested parties who wish to develop new technologies designed to allow authors to write and deploy Applications over the World Wide Web" develops three specs (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/) wtih a similar target:

"<b>Web Applications 1.0</b>

Extensions to HTML to make it more suitable for application development.

<b>Web Forms 2.0</b>

This specification defines Web Forms 2.0, an extension to the forms features found in HTML 4.01's forms chapter. Web Forms 2.0 applies to both HTML and XHTML user agents, and provides new strongly-typed input fields, new attributes for defining constraints, a repeating model for declarative repeating of form sections, new DOM interfaces, new DOM events for validation and dependency tracking, and XML submission and initialization of forms. This specification also standardises and codifies existing practice in areas that have not been previously documented.

HTML4, XHTML1.1 and the DOM are thus extended in a manner which has a clear migration path from existing HTML forms, leveraging the knowledge authors have built up with their experience with HTML so far.

<b>Web Controls 1.0</b>

Some DOM and CSS extensions to create new form controls and widgets"

Probably it will last some time till they implement it in their browsers - but I think, it ist worth to observe the developement - and be fast when it comes to prepare eZ publish

Thursday 24 February 2005 2:09:49 am

Duuh. I missed the issue of caching it between reloads, that's a non trivial problem indeed. I'll give it some thought myself ;-).

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