Datasheet

Ajax in Action
Undoubtedly, the Ajax “killer” application is Gmail, which allows users to edit and update their e-mails
and inbox without hundreds of page refreshes. Overnight, it convinced people who would use applica-
tions such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird on their own machines to use a web-based e-mail
system instead. Unfortunately, Gmail can’t easily be demonstrated without signing up, and currently
signups are available only to a limited amount of countries. So, let’s take a look at some other examples.
flickr
Yahoo’s flickr.com is a photo-organizing site that lets you “sort, store, search and share photos
online.” Previously, flickr had used Flash as the main tool behind its photo display interface, but in May
2005 it announced that it was moving over to using Dynamic HTML and Ajax (
http://blog.flickr
.com/flickrblog/2005/05/from_flash_to_a.html
). You have to sign up for an account to be able
to see the tool in action, but because it’s free and photo manipulation tools on web applications are a
great way of demonstrating Ajax techniques, you should look into it.
Once you’ve logged in, you can access the tool via the Organize menu by selecting the Organize All Your
Photos option (Figure 1-1). You can drag and drop photos into a single batch, and then you can rotate
them and amend their tags.
Figure 1-1: Organize your photos option.
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Chapter 1: Introducing Ajax
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