Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ajax

Can you help me find a particular Javascript charting library website?

chocolate_butch — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:25:22 -0800

Can you help me find a website about a charting library that I saw recently? I'll be darned if I can find this particular web based charting library, that I believe was javascript based. Here is what I can recall about the website:

- I visited the site in the last 90 days.

it was unlike any other charting site that I had seen before.

- There was a 3-d animated chart on the starting page that resembled the ripples in the surface of water after a droplet hit it.

- each page in the site had large explanatory text on primary color background. pages were rather spare content-wise.

- the site presented the information more like a series of slides that demonstrated the capabilities of the library. Like a ppt slide deck.

- the charting feature may have been part of a larger "ajax" library.

- 3d charts could be animated to spin around like Matrix "bullet-time". IIRC zoom in/out may have also been possible.

- I may have found it either via the blue, reddit or delicious.com/popular . A search through my history is turning up nothing, I think I was on a different computer.

- I recall seeing x-y charts, x-y-z charts, and pie and exploded-pie charts.

Does that ring a bell with anyone?

Firefox and ASP.Net 1.1 and Ajax and Validators, oh my!

antifuse — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:20:32 -0800

How can I get Ajax and client side validators working with my ASP.Net 1.1 application in Firefox? Ok, long story short - I've got an ASP.Net 1.1 website, which uses Validator controls and Ajax (ajax.dll, v5.7.22.2)... All of these elements of the site were chosen/implemented before I got here, and before anybody asks, no, it's not within our budget (timewise) to upgrade even to ASP.Net 2.0, let alone the latest and greatest of everything.

The site works fine in IE (of course), but in Firefox (or Chrome... Haven't tried Opera or Safari) I've found that ASP renders the site without any javascript code for the validators, nor does it render the site with any javascript code for the ajax methods that I call.

I've checked, and our web.config is setup to treat Firefox as an "uplevel" browser... And it *does* seem to be using the correct HtmlWriter (ie my pages on FFox are rendered with spans and divs). I've tried creating a PageClient alias using an IE7 user agent in the web.config, and forcing the page to use that PageClient. NOTHING seems to let it generate the Ajax and validator javascript. My research on the net seems to be pointing towards validators simply not ever able to work with ASP.Net 1.1 and Firefox... And I presume that whatever the validators do, the Ajax library is doing as well... But I'm really really really hoping there's a workaround for this. It'll be extremely embarrassing to have to tell the client in this day and age "Sorry, we don't support non-IE browsers with this release".

Great destinations, routes and experiences in and around Toronto.

maudlin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:54:55 -0800

I want to go to there, but I need your advice on where "there" is. Starting point: Toronto. Range: any land within 100 km (60-ish miles) of High Park, but I can go further for something really special. Means of transport: my trusty steed. Time frame: now until November-ish. I'm looking for great routes or awesome destinations, urban, rural or suburban, like the best roti in Scarborough, a tiny potter's studio somewhere in Peel, or a gorgeous path by some body of water that isn't Lake Ontario. I want to go somewhere to do something neat, like picking apples or riding horses. And this is not Torontofilter or bikefilter. I'm looking for creative ideas from anyone, anywhere. If you're from the GTA or any place within reach, what places, routes and experiences would you recommend? For example:

- A great view or nearly-secret thing that few other people know about. I never got around to the secret swing, and I regret it.
- The best [meal / farmer's market] in [area of your choice].
- Galleries are an obvious choice for me, but beyond that, is there, say, a raku studio nearby that gives demos or classes?
- Some place I should go to with my camera or sketchpad, or else.
- Where is a movie or tv show being filmed right now? I don't care about star-stalking, but am curious about the ebb and flow of work on site.

If you're not from around here, what kind of place or experience do you have in your neck of the woods that I should try to find locally?

Restrictions: very few.

- These have to be day trips, thus my soft limit of 100 km (200 km round trip). However, if need be, I can justify taking a train partway to get to someplace great and back in one day.
- I favour free or cheap over expensive, but can justify spending some money on an awesome experience.
- I can carry a fair amount on my bike, but there are limits, so I don't think I'll be furniture shopping any time soon.

Otherwise, suggest away!

Point me to the web...

gjc — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:48:24 -0800

Are there any Access-like tools for building data access pages in a web+sql format? Here's the thing. I have a few databases that I've done up in Access. That's great for when I have my computer.

But my needs are becoming such that I would like to have access to the data on any machine.

(I've searched the archives and saw a great many other answers, but none seemed to address what I'm looking for, or at least in a way I understood.)

I'm good on the server and the web space and the backend. What I'm looking for is basically something that works like Access's form builder: I drop the elements in and fill in the logic as need be. Publish it to the server, and disco.

I really don't want to run a "product" (like a CMS, or a knowledgebase, or forum software) where I'd have to wrestle with it to get it to do what I want. I would also prefer something that doesn't require oddball things to be installed on the client or on the server, like .net or frontpage extensions.

Partially because I don't really know what I'm doing (and that's OK, it's just for personal use/learning), and partially because that's just how my thought processes work- I like the idea of dropping pre-built elements in and making the connections work. And because the idea of writing html for a bunch of buttons and text boxes seems daunting.

I've tried all manner of searching, and while I know such a tool *has* to exist, I'm clearly not searching the right way.

Extra points for fancy ajaxy web 2.0 coolness. Thanks!

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at?

jackson5 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:15:45 -0800

Which forums do the best web programmers hang out at? Long story short: I've got a web site that already does over 1 million pageviews per month. I've got a great idea to take it to the next level, but I'm looking for someone who can handle the coding and technical aspects in exchange for an equity stake.

I'm wanting to bring aboard a great programmer who doesn't necessarily need the work but will be motivated by the equity.

Which forums would you recommend I post on to find this person?

Also, if there's anyone interested here, let me know.

How does AJAX work with non-fixed-length HTTP responses?

xbonesgt — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:47:37 -0800

AskMe Programming Squad: Need some help with AJAX and a slightly unusual method of communicating with a remote server. I've been told to investigate the replacing of our product's current Java-based client with a Web-based one. Most of it is pretty straightforward, but I need some help to determine whether our existing client's method of communication with the backend can be replicated with AJAX.

The existing client communicates with the backend via HTTP, using two different threads:

Client thread #1 opens up a socket and sends out a series of POST requests which tell the backend what to do. Each request gets replied to with a standard HTTP 200 (or 403 or whatever) response.

Client thread #2, upon program startup, opens up another socket and sends a single GET request. As events occur on the backend, chunks of data get sent to the client as part of the response to this request. The client doesn't wait for this data in the form of a completed HTTP response, but basically does a select() on the socket and waits until it receives anything.

Thread #1 is easy to implement on the client-side using AJAX. I've done that a few times before. My question is, is it possible to do the same thing for thread #2? I've only used AJAX to fetch HTML documents or DOM elements or whatever from a remote server; this sort of open-ended stuff would be new to me. Changing the communication scheme isn't possible for a couple of reasons; I need to work with what I have.

thanks in advance for any help!

Turning a complex Excel spreadsheet with VBA functions into an online app

Mokusatsu — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:06:36 -0800

I want to build a web app based on an Excel spreadsheet using VBA and some Excel Solve functionality. Should I try to build my own online spreadsheet? Or is Microsoft about to release some nifty online development components compatible with Excel and VBA? I have implemented a fairly comprehensive spreadsheet for generating financial plans based on some inputs about investments, personal profile, risk tolerance, financial goals etc. The spreadsheet used the Solve functionality of Excel and some VBA to iterate through Solves in one place. Other than that, there is mostly just a lot of text and simple calculations involving cells.

Now I want to make this into a web application with a spreadsheet interface that allows some dynamic updating of data (not formulae), and maybe a questionnaire front-end instead of simple spreadsheet input. My question is - should I try to invent my own web app spreadsheet (possibly using components) and separate out the complex algorithmic components which would be too cumbersome to re-invent in my spreadsheet? Or is likely Microsoft will Excel-compatible web app components for development and if I wait, I could save myself re-inventing the wheel?

If I don't wait for Microsoft, what are the best tools for creating a web app (it need not be Windows server based).

uploading/downloading huge files

Zed_Lopez — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:10:28 -0800

How to code a Perl web app to upload/download HUGE files? A straight HTTP upload/download for my app is untenable because I'm dealing with files of hundreds of megs each. I'd like to see a solution that would offer progress bars, and (more importantly) the ability to restart incomplete uploads or downloads.

The existing app is Apache 1.3/mod_perl/perl 5.8. Uploads require a login; downloads don't, but are limited inasmuch as they're keyed by UUIDs that are only considered valid in a short time-window. (I don't want the downloaders to see the real filename or location, but I suppose could make a link named for the UUID that gets deleted after its valid lifetime if I pursue an FTPish solution.)

I'm open to ditching doing the uploading and downloading in the browser if need be and requiring users to install client software to upload/download, but the download solution would need to be simple, easy, and available for all of Windows, Mac, and Linux. The upload solution would need to be simple and available for Windows.

But ideally, something AJAXy on the client-side and Perl (or plays-well-with-Perl) on the server-side can save the day and allow me to stick with the browser. I haven't done anything like this before. Anyone have any suggestions?

(3d-party hosting isn't an option.)

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: Best practices?

odinsdream — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:29:50 -0800

CSS, JQuery, PHP and Caching: What are the best practices for creating dynamic CSS with JQuery and PHP? Examples inside. I'm using PHP to dynamically create links and their associated CSS. I'm doing it dynamically because the number and positioning of these links is dependent on the selected month.

PHP inserts these CSS declarations into the HEAD tag. This seems to work fine on Firefox, but IE apparently caches the HEAD tag. This is a problem when navigating to pages for other months since the number of days will change.

Since I'm also using JQuery for the first time in this project, I wonder if I wouldn't be better off setting the CSS with that, rather than with PHP. The problem with this would be that I'm now mixing math and functions between the PHP sections of the site and the javascript sections. Is there a better way?

An example can be seen here. Source code for the same is available here.

The hover links over each day in each graph are created with a PHP loop based on the number of days in the month. The CSS to position them properly above each day is also created with a PHP loop.

The problem arises if a user selects an old month with a different number of days. Since IE caches the head tag the user only sees 20 day hover links, rather than 30 or 31.

Online documentation, tutorials or book references are very much welcome. Also, if I'm just completely going in the wrong direction please let me know.

Flash for the win?

SirStan — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:17:08 -0800

Meeting question, take II. Full screen sentance display in a presentation room. I posted a question a few days ago regarding a meeting that our non-profit is running, but I ran off before I could interact with responses.

The basic premise here is I will have (n+1) laptops, where the +1 is dedicated to displaying data, and the n laptops will interface somehow to the +1.

What I am trying to achieve is this: A laptop somehow will display things on the screen in say a 20pt font. It will keep three things on the screen, the newest replacing the oldest.

The n laptops (which will be 1-3) will wirelessly network to the projector laptop, and feed it data.

In my mind I am thinking something like the Apple OSX RSS screensaver, but even stupider (no flying effects). A flash based RSS reader that runs full screen would be perfect. I would write a small webbased front end for the field PC's with XAMPP or something, and make a custom RSS feed.

Basically, I can totally manage the data collection -- but I dont have a working knowledge of anything to make the front end work. Even a simple AJAXY webpage setup might work; but I dont know what to search for to find such a system that would achieve what I am looking for.

Thoughts? I can make everything except the "show three sentances on the screen from a database/xml/rss/etc file"...

Help me awesome my website.

By The Grace of God — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:48:59 -0800

Looking for swanky cool whizzey bangey mouse-interaction thingummies to do to my business website. I love it when you mouse on things and they do stuff! Especially when the stuff is useful, like accordion menus. Looking for the most graceful, easy to understand and re-style stuff, preferably ajax. These are to be integrated into a very simple and clean design, so keep that in mind. Free, open source please.

How to choose client side technologies for a new web project.

Good Brain — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:13:04 -0800

Why shouldn't we use Flash? Why should we use AJAX (DHTML/Javascript)? Should we support IE6? I'm wrestling with these questions for a new web product, and I'd like insight from others. This is for a consumer oriented web app (as opposed to B2B). A richly interactive UI is considered essential. It may well be that Flash is the only way to achieve what is being imagined, but I personally think AJAX could provide a very satisfactory experience. We also have the question of whether to support IE6.

I think the top arguments for Flash are:

Most capable.

Single platform to target (acknowledging performance differences between OSs)

Likely highest productivity (richer development tools, better testing frameworks, not having to worry as much about multiple browser versions)

Better integration with client OS for things like drag and drop, file uploads, etc

Am I wrong about any of these?

The thing is, I think these things have been true for quite a while, and yet Google chose AJAX for Gmail and Google Maps, Yahoo for their remade mail client & Flickr, which started out being mostly Flash has now converted most of it to AJAX.

The main downside I see for Flash could be equally true for AJAX:

bookmarkability/sharability is hindered since displayed URL likely doesn't recreate the current view.

The other issues are harder for me to quantify:

Flash isn't "cool"

Flash isn't open

What else should I be thinking about? How have you made your decisions? Real numbers would be appreciated (are adobe's estimates of Flash penetration anything close to accurate?)

There is also the issue of IE6 support. Numbers aren't declining quickly enough, and it seems likely that the holdouts are computers in businesses. Our app isn't going to be "work related" for most people, but the reality is, people use such apps from work all the time. We don't want people to be unable to use our app from work. On the other hand, using Flash would help work around a lot of IE6 issues.

Backup web interface?

Aanidaani — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:55:23 -0800

I recently got a new web host that I'm going to use for backup and I'm looking for a free AJAX web interface / CMS to manipulate files online. See inside... Essentially I'm trying to create my own hosted version of an online backup service like Dropbox or Mozy. I found a cheap host that gives me a lot of bandwidth/storage and I'd like to find a good web interface that I can use to access and manipulate my files when I'm not at home. Does anyone know of an open-source (or otherwise free) CMS that I can use for this?

Also, are there any programs (again preferably open-source) that I can download to regularly back up files to my server? I use Windows, OSX, and Linux. For Linux and OSX I know I can use a variant of Rsync, but I'm at a loss for Windows.

How do I rewrite this script to make it do what I want it to do?

iconomy — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:53:18 -0800

Can you help me? I'd like to use this mootools script on a contact via email form on a site I'm designing for a friend, and I need to know if something about it can be changed. As it is now, when a trigger word is typed, all the words typed so far in the field disappear and you have to start all over again. How can I change it so that all text typed in the box remains even when Event is triggered? Is it possible? If so and you care to explain, please pretend as if you're talking to a moran.

How to make spreadsheet dynamically sortable web table?

Malad — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:01:35 -0800

I want to take an Excel spreadsheet and just make it a dynamically sortable table I can put in a webpage or blog. I want people to be able to click a column, and have the table be sorted by that column. Best solutions? Also, if the table included locations, is it possible to make them selectable, and have the selected locations display on Google maps? Thanks.

See me, field me

trim17 — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:37:07 -0800

WebDesignFilter: How can I show certain elements of a form depending on the value of a radio button? I'm creating a form for a small-time personal project, and I absolutely love Fling Media's contact form. It uses the Yahoo UI toolkit to great effect to get a dynamically updated form depending on the type of contact you want. Are there any simpler implementations of this effect? I just want to show a certain set of fields when one option is selected and a different set when another is selected. I'd like to do it dynamically too, without having to load a new page. No fancy effects required.

Where does the DTD go?

josephtate — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:08:43 -0800

For the web developers in the house: when viewing the generated code for a web page, the Document Type Definition is missing. Where does it go? I'm developing a web application for browsing network device information (on routers, switches, wireless APs, etc.). In debugging a jQuery problem in IE7, I was looking at the app's generated code, the source code after JavaScript has built the page and Ajax has populated it with data from a JSON object. So, long story short: in the generated code of this app and then in every other site I visited (in IE, Firefox, Safari), the Document Type Definition was missing--just gone (inspect the HTML for MeFi with Firebug and you'll see what I mean).

Where does the DTD go? and why? Any ideas?

ajax for image manipulation?

low affect — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:08:34 -0800

AJAXfilter: Is there a framework that would be good for building an app that can place, move, resize, and rotate images on a page ala blingee? Or, are there any similar almost-there open source projects?
Have you seen this ridiculous blingee website?

Help me AJAXify a portion of my project without overwhelming me.

odinsdream — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 08:41:58 -0800

Help me AJAX-ify a very simple web process in PHP. Links to very simple AJAX tutorials much appreciated. I've been reading up on AJAX technologies for a couple weeks. I've tried out a few, but I am still stuck with taking existing tutorials and modifying them slightly without really understanding behind-the-scenes. That is, I understand conceptually what the tutorials are showing me, but not very much programmatically. I'm fairly capable with PHP and HTML. I can read and write basic Javascript, but it seems like the AJAX technologies require a deeper level of understanding.

Having said that, all I'm really looking to do is rewrite a very simple portion of my project. Hopefully taking this small step will help me better understand what AJAX can really help me do long-term.

I have one PHP script, delete.php, which does an UPDATE SQL statement setting Deleted = True for a given ID, passed via HTML GET from other pages.

This seems like the perfect thing to AJAXify, but all of the tutorials I can find jump straight into Google Mashups, SOAP, JSON, XML, etc. I don't need these yet. What are some very basic tutorials that would help me replace my delete.php script with something more efficient?

jQuery vs. Scriptaculous

afx114 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:49:10 -0800

JavaScript: jQuery vs Scriptaculous - Which is currently the favorite amongst developers? I'm about to implement a JavaScript framework on a large project. I have years and years of experience with JavaScript, DOM, AJAX, etc, but this will be my first time using a JavaScript framework. Finally making the jump in the hopes that it will make my life easier.

Which of the big-boys are favorited amongst developers these days? It seems like it's currently down to jQuery vs Scriptaculous, but I'm open to other suggestions. I realize that it comes down largely to personal preference, but I'd mainly like to know the pluses, minuses, and differences between the two. Performance and Ease-of-Use are top priorities. Please no fanboy flamewars, thx. :)

Rails broke my AJAX!

Alterscape — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:25:04 -0800

Please help me get a Javascript embedded in an SVG talking to a Javascript embedded in an XHTML page, when they're both in a Ruby on Rails RHTML template. Works fine when the HTML page is a flatfile, not so well in RoR. I'm in the process of building a relatively simple AJAX (well, AJAS) script that loads the contents of an SVG document from a server-generated JSON file via an XMLHTTPRequest -- the page javascript loads the json, parses it into objects, and runs a series of calls on the SVG javascript to draw the proper image. I can't just move the javascript all into the SVG, because there are some other user-interface elements outside the SVG that need to pass data into it later, and the SVG script needs to call functions in the HTML too! I have a prototype built in a HTML flatfile running on an apache server where the functionality works as I want using the "window.funcCall()" function described in the inter-document communication section of the SVG.org wiki. However, when I move my code into a RoR view, the window.funcCall(data) call generates a javascript "function not found" error in FireBug.

I'm 99% sure that I've properly loaded all the related CSS and javascript files into my Rails application -- javascripts into public/javascripts/, etc. Other javascript functions on the page and in the SVG that don't rely on communication between the two function properly. The only potential issue I see is that I'm inserting the <> tag at the top of my RHTML template, which means the javascript isn't being loaded in the tag, which isn't xhtml compliant..

Any thoughts how to resolve this issue? I know I'm not using 100% correct Rails design patterns, and I do plan to refactor my code to make it more Rails-friendly, but I need to get the basic functionality working ASAP. I never imagined that integrating it into Rails would break things, since a RHTML file is rendered as just another HTML document to the browser?

Best cross-browser web-based text editor.

KirkJobSluder — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:28:50 -0800

I'm looking for a good cross-browser web-based text editor simliar to google docs but with a focus on text rather than RTF or ODF. Something like a server-based TextWrangler or Emacs. Some of the things I want include: * What you type is what you get text, with no mangling of HTML entites.
* Ability to organize documents by keywords.
* Download option.
* Standards-based cross-browser compatibility. Needs to work with Safari and Opera.

How can I integrate Google Docs to Microsoft Word 2007?

enriquem — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 18:51:05 -0800

How can I integrate Google Docs to Microsoft Word 2007? I love Google Docs...and I love Word 2007....the problem is, I cant integrate them to work together! Zoho has a plugin that does this, but I use Google Docs primarily as my Office 2.0 suite. Is there a way that I can work on Google Docs from Microsoft Word?

Best Ajax Vote Buttons

Dag Maggot — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:50:26 -0800

We are in the middle of a redesign of a community voting site - and we're lookng for examples of good voting buttons. Our site uses both up and down buttons, and there are often click mistakes, where someone upvotes instead of downvotes. I am interested in examples of novel UI or especially nicely done vote buttons.

Where do the experienced Javascript / AJAX developers hang out and discuss things on the net?

weston — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 09:32:26 -0800

Where do the experienced Javascript / AJAX developers hang out and discuss things on the net? comp.lang.javascript has been more or less helpful for me in the past. But I've recently found myself frustrated as I try to do more with Javascript and support more broswers. On a practical level, some of the recent questions I've needed help with have either been answered incorrectly or not answered at all. Some of this is stuff I'd really think people would be all over: for example, the reference implementation given for a JSON stringifier/parser at json.org doesn't work in Safari (because it uses the unimplemented-in-webkit hasOwnProperty method) and can choke in Moz if you feed it DOM nodes, so I was looking for other implementations. Nobody had anything to say, and I'm reasonably certain I hadn't engaged in some horrid netiquette faux pas. I also see an awful lot of newbie activity on c.l.j, which gives me a great chance to help other people out, but I wonder if it drives other developers away.

I'm finding more answers to questions on blogs via Google (some stuff on TrimPath, and from John Resig and Thomas Frank pointed me in the right direction). Are people really retreating from forums to individual blogs? If so, whose should I be following? If not, are there forums where the readership is more experienced and the discussion is better?