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Archive for October, 2006

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links for 2006-10-22

October 21st, 2006

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links for 2006-10-20

October 19th, 2006

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links for 2006-10-19

October 18th, 2006

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links for 2006-10-18

October 17th, 2006

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RIA Executive Dashboard with Flex “and” Ajax

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

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX | No Comments »

Nitobi Ajax Grid and Combo Updates

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

    Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX | No Comments »

    Ajax Components for ColdFusion from Nitobi!

    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

    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. 

    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

    Posted in AJAX | 2 Comments »

    links for 2006-10-15

    October 14th, 2006

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    links for 2006-10-13

    October 12th, 2006

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    links for 2006-10-11

    October 10th, 2006

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