Post: General life update
So, no blog posts in over a week: what’s happened of note recently and what’s slated to happen in the near future? In rough chronological order:
- I’ve been devoting rather more of my life than is healthy to San Andreas: it’s more GTA as we know and love it, but now with bikes! Oh, and dual-wield pistols, they’re fun too.
- Molly (yes, the Molly) came over to England and stayed in Bath with my sister and her girlfriend: much hilarity apparently ensued, as Flickr appears to testify. Elly appears to have entertained her as she does best: with syrup sponge.
- I’ve got two May Balls today and tomorrow: Trinity and Queens’ respectively. Both look like being astoundingly good, although I thought “Click to Enter” pages were meant to be hideously outdated by now…
- I speculated before about whether Microsoft’s new XML-based formats were too good to be true. It seems they were, as eWeek reports that the license Microsoft are using is not GPL-compatible, claiming something about software patents. I can’t really claim to be surprised, I’m afraid.
- On a research-based note, I’m intrigued by AJAX: seems to me like an interesting sandwich (or trifle, if you will) of technologies with a lot of potential (think GMail). Can anyone recommend any good AJAX resources to look into for an interested developer (who harbours an inherent mistrust of Javascript left over from all those irritating “you can’t right-click here” and “browser-jiggling” scripts)?
Well, brain-dump over. Until next time, kiddies.
Resources on AJAX are pretty scarce at the moment – as for ‘modern’ JavaScript in general really. It’s one of the problems Jeremy Keith drew attention to at @media. He’s got a URL (domscripting.com) which he wants to do something with in future, though at the moment it’s a placeholder for his book (which isn’t out yet). When his book does come out, buy it. In the mean time, Stuart Langridge has a new book out which is highly recommended by everyone I’ve spoken too. I can’t say I know for sure about how much specific AJAX it covers, but it should probably everything you need to stop hating JavaScript.
My plan, when time arises, is to head along to one of the JavaScript meet-ups (optionally read as ‘piss up’) once I’ve got some grounding and then leech the knowledge of the more experienced).
You could do well to hunt out one of the “Live Search” examples, there are a few. It’s a pretty simple operation but will cover all the bases of asynchronous page updating (requesting data, getting data, inserting data). Dunstan might have such a tutorial from when he last redesigned.
Simon tech-edited the book that Ben mentions — I’ve had a flick through his copy and it does look very worthwhile. Good place to start whilst the AJAX resources are starting up. I imagine if you have a look at stuff tagged with ajax in del.icio.us then you might find some cool stuff as well.
I think Amazon knows that Simon helped out with that book: it’s offering me a link to “Browse our great selection of Special Offers or check out our Harry Potter store”…