Adam howitt Duo Consulting 7/7/20061223PN How to Design a large AJAX Application Introduction I'll cover the process I have developed in the course of implementing two AJAX applications as a developer for Duo Consulting in Chicago. This approach has made it easier for me to work with the design team, produce estimates for this type of project and communicate what is involved each step of the way to the project managers for scheduling purposes Background experimenting with AJAX requests to handle tasks that really shouldnt trigger sun I re-designed WalkJog Run to utilize the Google maps API over a year ago and beg complete page request. Shortly after that one of our clients, Chicago Park District wanted to redesign their seasonal registration application to maximize the number of people who could register for their seasonal programs and make it easier for people to use the site. After a detailed discovery phase we proposed an AJAX browser interface to make it simpler to drilldown through their online offerings and ultimately to locate a program and register. Inspired by the iPod menu concept, we developed and built ar applicationwhich served 3000 orders in the first 3 minutes of summer registration Since then I worked on a second application which sits on top of the custom CMs we implement for clients to allow them to generate Microsoft Word proposals to send to clients from the data that drives the website without cutting and pasting. This application was built on the prototype AJAX library but uses the same design principles Why use AJAX? AJAX isn't just a new buzzword or a cream cleanser from Procter& Gamble. It's a great leap forward(and a small step back) for usability. Like flash, when it is used correctly and appropriately it can dramatically enhance the user experience by making web applications respond faster and make interactions less jarring than having a page reload AJAX also offers a performance benefit for your web server since you begin serving smaller chunks of pages instead of complete pages every time. For Cold Fusion this also means only the business logic pertaining to the requested chunk needs to be recalculated instead of the logic for a whole page so your application server will get some relief. Ihttp://www.duoconsulting.com/ http://www.walkiogrun.net shttp://www.google.com/apis/maps/ http://duoconsulting.com/experience/chicago-park-district-registration/index.cfm http://programs.chicagoparkdistrictcom/programbrowserl http://www.duocms.com httpgeneratorduodesign.com:sElecttheproposalgeneratoronceyouhaveloggedinwiththeusername demo(@duoconsulting com and password demo 1/8Adam Howitt Duo Consulting 7/7/2006 12:23 PM How to Design a large AJAX Application Introduction I’ll cover the process I have developed in the course of implementing two AJAX applications as a developer for Duo Consulting 1 in Chicago. This approach has made it easier for me to work with the design team, produce estimates for this type of project and communicate what is involved each step of the way to the project managers for scheduling purposes. Background I re-designed WalkJogRun 2 to utilize the Google maps API 3 over a year ago and begun experimenting with AJAX requests to handle tasks that really shouldn’t trigger a complete page request. Shortly after that one of our clients, Chicago Park District4 , wanted to redesign their seasonal registration application to maximize the number of people who could register for their seasonal programs and make it easier for people to use the site. After a detailed discovery phase we proposed an AJAX “browser interface” to make it simpler to drilldown through their online offerings and ultimately to locate a program and register. Inspired by the iPod menu concept, we developed and built an application5 which served 3000 orders in the first 3 minutes of summer registration. Since then I worked on a second application which sits on top of the custom CMS6 we implement for clients to allow them to generate Microsoft Word proposals7 to send to clients from the data that drives the website without cutting and pasting. This application was built on the prototype AJAX library but uses the same design principles. Why use AJAX? AJAX isn’t just a new buzzword or a cream cleanser from Procter & Gamble. It’s a great leap forward (and a small step back) for usability. Like flash, when it is used correctly and appropriately it can dramatically enhance the user experience by making web applications respond faster and make interactions less jarring than having a page reload. AJAX also offers a performance benefit for your web server since you begin serving smaller chunks of pages instead of complete pages every time. For ColdFusion this also means only the business logic pertaining to the requested chunk needs to be recalculated instead of the logic for a whole page so your application server will get some relief. 1 http://www.duoconsulting.com/ 2 http://www.walkjogrun.net 3 http://www.google.com/apis/maps/ 4 http://duoconsulting.com/experience/chicago-park-district-registration/index.cfm 5 http://programs.chicagoparkdistrict.com/programBrowser/ 6 http://www.duocms.com 7 http://generator.duodesign.com : Select the proposal generator once you have logged in with the username demo@duoconsulting.com and password demo 1/8