Apr
17Testing the Waters with Ajax

In a very limited fashion, we've started testing some new Ajax technology for the law library website. For now, we're using Adobe's Spry Framework for Ajax. The nice thing about this is that it's integrated with Adobe Dreamweaver 8, and it's pretty easy to implement simple controls.

The first place we used this was with a page of Photo Memories of Bob Oakley, which is a simplified version of one of the example photo galleries on the Adobe demo site. The other place is with the index pages for our library services and library policies. With this second example, the distinction between services and policies isn't always clear, so we present the two on the same page with tabs to toggle between the two. We may revise how we present the two online, but for now, this is a simple fix.

For a live example online, here's a collapsible panel with links to a few items on our site. Click the title of the tab to expand it to reveal items underneath. We want to use Ajax controls where it can help the user experience, not just "because it's cool."

The nice thing is that the coding is pretty simple, such as shown here: