Ajax: Creating Web Pages with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

Chapter 5. Ajax Using HTML and JavaScript Human beings, as well as other life forms, are made up of chemicals such as iron, nitrogen, and water. However, simply mixing everything together in a cauldron and giving it a quick stir won't result...

5.1. Hidden Frames and iframes Frames and iframes (in-line frames), for some reason, are one of those things that strike fear into the heart of web developers everywhere. It is one of those deep-seated fears, like tanning products are to a vampire...

5.2. Cross-Browser DOM Now that we have either classic frames or iframes, we have reached one of the most widespread reasons for their avoidance: the matter of access. Short of a crystal ball and tea leaves, or maybe two soup cans and a piece of s...

5.3. Tabular Information As stated previously, the first two types of web pages required both deal in some way with tabular information, either for display or for updates. When I was in high school, I took quite a few drafting classes, thinking t...

5.4. Forms This heading does say "Forms," which we briefly touched upon in the previous section, even if it was because we needed somewhere to cache information, such as the contents of the shopping cart. Because of this, and the fact ...

5.5. Advantages and Disadvantages The major advantage to developing an application using this technique is that there are very few browsers for which this method does not work, including older browsers. In fact, the only thing that some we...

5.6. Summary Although the technique is somewhat old-fashioned, it demonstrates, to a degree, how processing flows in an Ajax application. In addition, the "dark art" of communicating information between frames was covered. However, two i...