Getting all AJAX-y On Me – Pretty Slick
Today I spent a lot of time getting the UI of the project I'm working on working nicer given the fake test data I've got in the system. It turned out to be the right thing to do as the amount of data slowed the page responsiveness significantly, and therefore sent me down the path of adding a calendar to the page to interact with the graph so that you can see a day's worth of data at a time.
When you're only looking at a day's worth of data, it's not bad. But what was most interesting to me was the JavaScript that drove the page. I've never been one for the whole Web 2.0 thing, but today I'm a believer. It's pretty amazing. The point is not to put computation in the page, but to have the user's event flow in the page. That way, you can fire off requests to the back-end for data, and populate it into the GUI components without having to reload the page. It really isn't that hard.
I know the little app isn't all that much, but if things work out, it's going to make a significant impression on the users, and it's really amazingly interactive. I have to say, it's something that I'm glad I'm doing. Nice addition to my tool chest.