Andre’s Blog

November 14th, 2006

Inadequate use of usability engineering methods in software development projects have been estimated to cost the US economy about $30 billion per year in lost productivity.

Nielsen, August 28, 1997

Wow…makes you wonder eh.  Ajax can help combat this problem, but only if applied carefully using sound usability techniques not just more cow bell!

This and more usability quotes here.

Technorati Tags: usability, quotes, economy, cost, ajax, ux, nielsen

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November 9th, 2006

I’m a little behind on the blog post but so I’ll just point you to Alexei’s post and the press release on the Nitobi Ajax Grid for .Net. 

AjaxWorld magazine also has coverage.

Here’s a screen shot:

Thanks for your hard work Joel, have a good time in Panama.

Technorati Tags: ajax, grid. .net, visualstudio, nitobi, component

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November 1st, 2006

The esteemed Cote, an analyst at Redmonk, hosted us on the Redmonk Radio podcast this halloween.  Although the conversation really isn’t that spooky or have anything to do with pumpkins it’s a great conversation about enterprise AJAX and usable web apps.

In this episode, Coté talks with André Charland, Dave Johnson, and Alexei White all of Nitobi. We discuss Nitobi’s RIA components, the world of AJAX and RIA, evolving the web, and the general state of the AJAX/RIA space at the moment.

You can download the episode mp3 by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: ajax. cote, redmonk, ria, podcast, nitobi, enterpriseajax

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October 30th, 2006

It seems like just yesterday we released our ColdFusion support, and now Joel and Alexei have just got out the Beta 2 for the .Net Grid!

The new Grid beta supports ASP.NET 1.1, 2.0 and Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 design times. You can bind to datatables or datasets easily, and even handle editing and saving.

Design time support includes easy drag and drop from the toolbox to your webpage, and you can configure databinding, and many other attributes from the properties editor.

To get your hands on it:

To grab the download, log into your customer center account or get it off our trial download page here: http://www.nitobi.com/download/

For a demo go here: http://www.nitobi.com/products/grid/demos

Nice work Joel!  We’re going to have an exciting fall as we complete our product suite.

Technorati Tags: ajax, grid, datagrid, .net, visualstudio, .net1.1, .net2, nitobi, component

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October 30th, 2006

So we’ve been working with the crew at Elastic Path since late summer on a very cool application of Ajax to improve the conversion rates of their eCommerce platform for online shoppers. The goal was to reduce shopping cart abandonment by streamlining the check out process.

“As the moniker implies, Elastic Path announces a single-screen type
check out tool to combat the scourge of modern retailing – shopping
cart abandonment. Indeed, MarketingSherpa indicates nearly three out of
every five online shoppers abandon their shopping cart before finishing
the order.” More in Dave O’s post about it here.

So we worked with them to build a single page shopping cart and check out process, the feature is now appropriately named One Page. Now an online shopper can get through the entire check out process from one screen, as opposed to the usual 3-4 painful page reloads and tedious forms to fill out. We’ve provided all the basic ecommerce check out features in an easier to use format, such as contact and address info, shipping options and payment details. We’ve used a lot of nice real-time form validation such as email address and phone number checking. Then we’ve added some really slick functionality like in-line card editing, this allows a shopper to change their order details like quantity, size, color or other optins right from the check out screen and see the total update automagically.

There’s lots of Ajax goodies that we’ve put together to make this UI really shine. Some of the patterns include: accordion widgets, real-time form field validation, data upates, real-time calculations, subtle transition and fade effects. The whole is UI was built leveraging components from our Ajax framework and I’m excited to get it out in the wild. Performance and page weight (load time) was a huge factor for project success as this is a forward facing public web app as oppose to behind the firewall. eCommerce shoppers aren’t nearly as tolerant as corporate intranet users;-)

Jason and the Elastic Path crew are down in SF at the Mid-Market eTail conference this week, and Jason has the latest iteration of OnePage on his laptop, so if you’re in the area stop by their booth for a demo! Also they’ve put together a really slick One Page PDF Data Sheet here.

Screencast coming soon:)

Technorati Tags: ajax, ecommerce, elasticpath, ux, conversion, shoppingcart, abandonment, nitobi, service

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October 17th, 2006

If you follow my blog you probably know I’m far from a one technology zealot and like to see complimentary technologies playing together for a better end user experience.   We started working on the integration of Ajax vs and Flex a few months back when Adobe first released the FABridge.

Well we’re at it again:)  Dave just put this up:

A Flex/Ajax dashboard to show how Flex and Ajax can work together to make a very compelling user-interface for something like a corporate information dashboard. You can check it out the demo here and an article about the demo here.

Using the FABridge along with the Nitobi Ajax Grid and Adobe Flex Charting, we have created a scenario where one can view monthly sales data and then see the sales details for the month in both a tabular format in a grid and visually represented in a Flex chart.

Hint: Try editing the price data in the right hand grid and watch the chart auto-magically update on the page withough a refresh!

So as you can see in this demo we’ve clearly hit that wall with Ajax, we just couldn’t do that dynamic visualization of data in Ajax.  And as Ryan Stewart points out:

It’s one thing to build part of your application in Ajax, but trying to
present data graphically can be a nightmare. This not only presents it
graphically, but in a way that Ajax users should appreciate – with
transitions and animations that add subtle enhancements to the
application.

Now based on my initial comment about Flex/Flash playing with Ajax you may want to bark up and say: “Hey! Now that you have Flash 9 on the client why no go all the way Flex?”.  Simple, I’m too damn lazy!  I have hundreds if not thousands of existing web app screens built in HTML (ASP, JSP, CFM, PHP, etc) that I’m trying incrementally improve the user experience on using Ajax, and in fact of some of it was already Ajax.  Also, I may even be a bit to lazy to learn Flex, MXML and AS3 although it’s quite user friendly and powerful within Flex Builder.  I’m sure I’m not alone in having these massive “legacy” web apps that I can’t just re-write from scratch just because Flex is more powerful for RIA development.  Why not? Because that would take a long time cost a lot of money and my boss just won’t let me;-)  But now that I have my users happy using Flash 9 maybe I can think about using Flex when we do re-write, but that might not be for another 10 yrs:P  Maybe I’ll have another project sooner that I can use Flex on, who knows?  So whether you’re pro Flex or not we can start see some incremental usage and wider adoption this way, which is great IMO.

Technorati Tags: ajax, flex, fabridge, dashboard, demo, nitobi, adobe, davejohnosn, ryanstewart, ria, flexchart

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October 17th, 2006

The team here at Nitobi has been working super hard over the last couple of weeks to get out some point releases of Grid and Combo. Thanks for all your hard work everyone!

Updates to Nitobi Ajax Grid:

Nitobi Grid V3.23 (October 13, 2006)

• Coldfusion MX Edition released.
• WAR file in J2EE version http://www.nitobi.com/news/?a=41fixed.
• Added Value attribute to the columndefinition.
• Added onCellUpdateEvent to Column.
• Added ImageUrl to Image Editor
• Improved overall rendering speed.
• Reduced the total JavaScript file size.
• CssStyle and Value attributes support binding expressions.
• attachEvents and detachEvents methods made public.
• Fixed slow editing in Internet Explorer.
• getHandler can now be set on the lookup editor.
• Mousewheel support added for scrolling.
• Asynchronous property changed to “async” for HttpRequest class.
• Improved instantiation speed.
• The block selection now collapses when clicked on.
• Block selection speed improved.
• Selection release fixed in Firefox.
• Repaired some problems in Classic ASP samples

Updates in Ajax ComboBox 3.5:

Nitobi ComboBox V3.5 (October 13, 2006)

• Coldfusion MX edition added
• ASP.NET 2.0 Support added
  • VB.NET 2.0 Support
  • C# 2.0 Support
• Visual Studio 2005 Support added
• New samples for all platforms.
• Listbox can appear above or below the textbox depending on screen position.
• Support for % width textbox and listboxes
• Various rendering glitches in Firefox and Internet Explorer resolved
• Support for menu objects in the dropdown (see new sample)
• Added support for horizontal scrolling when many columns are present.
• When no dataisland is supplied in the page, and an initial search value is defined, the combo only does one AJAX call to the server.
• Width of textbox, combo, and list can be specified as %.
• List columns can be specified as % and the wildcard asterisk (*) can be used (derived from HTML table syntax and behaviour).
• If there is no space to the left or bottom of the combo, the list will move to one or both of the top, or the left to ensure the list stays in view.
• HTTP Request method can no be specified as either POST or GET.
• Better fuzzy matching introduced. The server can send back any data that may not necessarily match on the client. This allows for more custom, fuzzy matching using the backend.
• Better control of horizontal scrollbar. Content in the list can scroll or clip
• Paging functionality added to the Smartsearch and Freeform modes in a similar fashion to how it currently works in the Classic mode.
• Better support for ASHX. Ability to serve data from ASHX pages for improved performance.
• Documentation is now online.
• Absolute control of the list x andy coordinates.
• Bug Fixes:

• When TypeAhead matches a search item and the user loses focus by clicking the mouse elsewhere, the item is considered selected. If TypeAhead makes no match, then no row is selected, and the custom text can be retrieved.
• Fixed memory leaks relating to searching and paging.
• If initial search finds no match, the initial search text is left in the textbox.
• Fixed 404 errors resulting from javascript:void images.
• TextBox can be disabled in Firefox.
• Horizontal scrollbar fixed in Firefox. The scrollbar is on the inside of the container now (ensures that the width of the list is always maintained).
• Compatibility with other components fixed.
• Numerous other minor bugfixes.

Technorati Tags: ajax, nitobi, grid, datagrid, combobox, autocomplete, autosuggest, release

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October 16th, 2006

Now ColdFusion developers can get access to the same enterprise Ajax components that we’ve been providing to Java, PHP and ASP developers:)  Alexei’s been the driving force in getting our ColdFusion offering to market.  More here:

What we’ve done (to be specific) is provide a direct conversion of the server-side Nitobi XML API in the form of a basic CFTEMPLATE include. This provides a global set of functions for reading and writing to our XML schema. Since this is new territory for us, we wanted to try a very basic implementation of this API to guage response and collect feedback before producing a Coldfusion module or CFC. We’ll be releasing a CFC (Coldfusion Component) some time in late November or December pending feedback from customers.

If you’re looking for where to download our Coldfusion components go to

• Free trial downloads

Although it was technically possible for CF developers to use our Ajax Grid and ComboBox before, it was a lot harder. Now they can have the rich user interface up and running in their existing app much quick by building from a sample.

We have all the same demos as for other platforms that ship with with the free download.  We also have online demos you can kick the tires of immediately. 

• Ajax Grid Demos and Samples
  
• Ajax ComboBox Demos and Samples

The next thing we want to do in our never ending quest to make usable Ajax web apps easier to develop is provide a Dreamweaver plugin for Coldfusion and other developers.

Technorati Tags: ajax, nitobi, grid, combobox, autocomplete, cf, cfc, components, coldfusion

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October 3rd, 2006

Dave and I just got to our _lovely_ hotel room in Silicon Valley/Santa Clara for the AjaxWorld Conference & Expo. We’re pretty exhausted, but managed to get some Pizza which ate while watching oh so uplifting news:S

Anyway, Dave’s talking about “Ajax Debugging and Quality Assurance” at 11:30, once you’ve moved passed the Ajax 101 which you should’ve by now you’ll need to know about the tools and techniques that he’ll be discussing. Some of the tools of particular interest include: FireBug, JSUnit, Selenium and CruiseControl.

I’m leading a BOF about Usability at some point…but I’m not entirely sure when. I’ll post again as soon as I know.

Birds of a Feather Sessions:And then, for good measure, AJAXWorld 2006 also offers a welter of BOFs led by some of the industry’s biggest names:
Usability BOF – Andre Charland
JSON BOF – Douglas Crockford
Dojo BOF – Dylan Scheimann
Open AJAX BOF – Jon Ferraiolo
jMaki BOF – Greg Murray
Ruby on Rails BOF- Thomas Fucchs
Rico BOF – Bill Scott

AJAX World Conference & Expo Speakers and Agenda Announced @ AJAXWORLD MAGAZINE

Dave and I will try to get a podcast in while we’re down here, so stay tuned. I’m down in Santa Clara after this for the Open Ajax Alliance meetings until Saturday morning. If you’re around drop me an email or give me a ring.

technorati tags:ajaxworld, ajaxworld2006, ajaxworld06, davejohnson, andrecharland, usability, debugging, ajax, qa, performance, jsunit, selenium, firebug, bof, presentation, santaclara, siliconvalley, nitobi

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September 27th, 2006

So first off we launched our site (www.openajax.org) last week! Which we’re all very excited about:) Right now we have over 50 member companies, and this is growing substantially. Jon Ferraiolo told us today that he’s received more than 50 emails in the last business days since the new site went live. A good sign. With the new site we also received a donation, the domain OpenAjax.org which is much cleaner and easier to remember than www.openajaxalliance.org, yah! It was pretty loose to joing at first, all you had to do was email and Jon, have a chat and he’d determine if it made sense. Now you have sign an agreement that mostly has to do with IPR issues and the steeting committee has to approve you, so we’re getting serious.

Microsoft still hasn’t joined, maybe they never will:( One can imagine they have some reservations abuut jumping with IBM and a bunch of open source projects with out considering it carefully. Mind you Atlas has a kind of interesting license, from an MS perspective anyway. Still I think it’s important for them and the rest of the group that they get on board, come we’re all grown ups!

We’ve also published an Ajax white paper which is a great semi technical resource to get up to speed on what Ajax is, what it can do for you and how to go about doing it. Check it out here or download the PDF here.

The white paper is nice but it’s mostly a marketing piece and something for the media and analysts to grab onto. The actual work product is the OpenAjax Hub which is an open source project, that will facilitate different Ajax frameworks, JavaScript libraries and components to work together in the same app or on the same page. Of the 50 some companies involved in the effort there’s only a handful of people writing code, but I’m sure this will change with the first check-ins to SourceForge. The goal is to have something usable by early 2007!

So what is Nitobi’s involvement? Well, I’m on the marketing committee with Alexei, Dave’s working with Declarative Markup and James is working on interoperability stuff. Unfortunately none of us have all the time we’d like to have to devote to this valuable industry effort…but that’s what the way things roll sometimes. So what do we do? Well for staters we have conference calls every 2 weeks, where we discuss what we do and what we have to. They’re pretty typical committee conference calls, you never get as much done as you want to or think you could but things are moving along. The tech committees actually write code and discuss interop and architecture issues, the maketing folks have come up with website, white paper and press releases. So not bad. But we are not a standards body so don’t expect any;-)

We’re having our second face-to-face meeting next week at the Sun offices in Santa Clara, right after AjaxWorld. This will be my first and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in person.

Just wanted to give a special mention to Jon from IBM, as I think he’s done a tremendous job getting things done and managing the whole committee process. Neither of which are small feats!

technorati tags:openajax, openajaxalliance, ajax, nitobi

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