Facelift your application with AJAX
Mission Statement

Internet is flooding with information about AJAX. My goal is provide a one-stop shop for ASP.NET developers looking for AJAX solutions. Rome was not built in one day, I will dedicate my time and effort to finish this task over time :-) Your suggestions/comments are always welcome!
AJAX on the road

I presented "Facelift your application with AJAX" topic on following technical conference/code camps. If you are interested in invite me to your local code camp/technical conference, please let me know.

9/23/2007-9/26/2007
AJAXWORLD Conference, San Francisco, California
10/06/2007
Richmond Code Camp, Virginia
10/13/2007
Charleston Code Camp, South Carolina
10/20/2007
Charlotte Code Camp, North Carolina
AJAX or not?

Next Generation User Interface is an inevitable trend. If you don't surf on the top of the RIA(Rich Internet Application) wave, eventually you will buried under the wave. With Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe FLEX and many other RIA solutions, do we still need AJAX? The answer is "YES", the reasons are:

• It solves current business problems
• Platform independence
• Skill-set conformity
• Network effects

AJAX is going to co-exist with many other web technologies as long as javascript and xml still around. If you haven't yet get start with AJAX, do it now!
Business justifications for AJAXifying

If your application in need of following, very likely AJAX can solve your problems:

• Improvement for usability in general
• Improvement for interactive and productive interaction
• Reduce time spent completing a task
• Reduce number of steps to complete a task
• Reduce training cost for new user interface
• Reduce bandwidth consumed for the entire task
• Increase speed to market
• Keeping up with the Jones
The secret behind the smooth transaction

Transportation Mechanisms:
XMLHttpReqeust, Msxml*.XMLHTTP, Microsoft.XMLHTTP, JSON-RPC, XML-RPC
Supported formats
XML, JSON, Javascript Object, plain text, HTML
Clent side and Server side data storage
ASP.NET specific AJAX technologies
ICallbackEventHandler
Popular open source AJAX libraries for ASP.NET application

ASP.NET AJAX
Yahoo YUI
Script.aculo.us
Prototype
Rico
 Moo.fx
MochiKit
jQuery
Dojo
AJAX Library Comparision Matrix

With great deal number of free or commerical AJAX framework available in the market, please make sure your are comparing apple to apple

• Availability for your server side language & platform
• Database integration
• Number of UI Widgets
• Cross-browser compatibility
• Extensibility
• Open Source/License type/Cost
• Maturity of framework
• Security
• Documentation/vendor supports
Prepare your ASP.NET 2.0 application for AJAX

Masterpage
Use masterpage in various scope In masterpage, make title, header and boby tag runat server Put minimum common header in master page, use customized ClientID

Content page
Customized CSS, Javascript, body tag, page title, find control, add javascript attributes etc.

Stylesheet/Themes
Avoid common name in style sheet: header, title, h1, h3, page, menu, section, link etc
Use one universal stylesheet, many other separate stylesheet
AJAXifying UI Architect Guidelines
AJAX Security-Common attack techniques

Cross Site Scripting

Cross Site Request Forgery

DNS cache poisoning
Keep it secret, keep it safe-Common security techniques

Input value restriction
Same origin policy
Zones and Signed script
Embedding content
Safer cookie
Secure connections
SessionID as passport
Check referral
Make sure check the volunerbility of your application!
AJAX buzzword dictionary

AJAX
AJAXifying
AJAXian
Footprint
Callback
XMLHttp
XMLHttpRequest(XHR)
JSON
XML
YAML
DOM

Please email me if you know any other AJAX buzzword :-)
Copyright © 2008 Last modified Oct 18 2008