E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Baby steps with Ajax

I've tiptoed into the Web 2.0 world by adding a couple small Ajax features to the blog.

First, there's now a "More" link at the top of my Random Bookmarks sidebar which fetches another seven random links from the server and plugs them into the page without reloading.

Second, I added a gratuitous animated roll-unroll toggle to the comment form, and made it closed by default. OK, that's not Ajax, that's just fluff.

I used the moo.fx and moo.ajax libraries to achieve these wondrous results.

I can see the user interface dilemmas multiplying before my eyes. As an experiment I've labeled the Ajaxy controls with a black diamond (◆). Snowsport connotations intentional --fast and fun but a little more dangerous.

I can also see how this would drive one to structure web apps as loosely coupled sets of web services which can be called either by a page rendering script on the server (assembling the various components for initial load) or by an Ajax call from the client (discretely updating individual components).

Very cool. Lots to think about.

Monday, February 27th, 2006
+ + +
4 comments

Some related posts: Meta-roundup of Javascript libraries • Good web hosting • dpaste.com update • STFU • Moving the blog to Django • Sort tables with sorttable.js • The Million Beta Homepage • Windows Live Local • Tantek on CSS hacks • The MySpace worm
• Comment from suzanne, later that day

so lovely! i'm very much liking the gracefulness and sense of dynamic that AJAX is adding to pages. very subtle and yet effective.

• Comment from miguev, 6 weeks later

Nice feature, but it makes Firefox to put CPU at 100% for at least 3 seconds. Expensive, isn't it?

• Comment from Paul, 6 weeks later

Hm. What Firefox version and platform? It certainly doesn't do that for me (FF 1.5, OS X).

• Comment from miguev, 6 weeks later

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; es-ES; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060324 Ubuntu/dapper Firefox/1.5.0.1

BTW, aKregator (embedded Konqueror) takes high CPU for a moment, but mush less than Firefox. I'll use aKregator in the future :-)

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