Datasheet

This is all done seamlessly using Ajax techniques. In addition, the “Send to Group,” “Add to Set,” and
“Blog this” buttons also perform their functionality right there on the page. flickr even talks about the
fact that the pages use an “old technology” to achieve this. The Dynamic HTML techniques replaced
Flash because Flash requires you to have the latest Macromedia plug-in installed and the wrapper for
Flash can take a long time to load. Users complained about this. Flash is a great application, but here
Ajax techniques prove more efficient.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a web-based tool for managing and tracking projects. You can find it at www.basecamphq
.com
. Once again, you have to sign up to use it, but there is a free sign-up option with a reasonable
range of capabilities included.
Basecamp employs Ajax when adding people to a company, adding companies to a project, adding/edit-
ing/deleting/reordering/completing to-do items, adding/editing/deleting/reordering to-do lists,
adding/editing/deleting time items, and renaming attachments to messages (Figure 1-2).
Figure 1-2: Adding people to a company.
When you click to add a person to the company, the dialog drops down smoothly without a screen
refresh. Also, the hints and tips panel disappears when you select the button “Don’t show this again.”
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Chapter 1: Introducing Ajax
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