An Ajax Approach to Active Client Pages
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If a user were using a slow Internet connection, he would have found that it takes time for him to have his web page displayed (downloaded) at his client computer. Nowadays, only the first page of his web site will take a long time to be downloaded; the rest of the pages will come very fast. Keep reading to learn how we can accomplish this trick. It's all thanks to Active Client Pages and the magic of AJAX.
Active Client Pages - Ajax Approach
Introduction
If you have a web site with an image gallery, and your users are using a slow Internet connection, the pictures will take a long time to be downloaded. But now, you can set things up so that only the first image (or first set of images) from your web site will take a while to be downloaded; the rest of your images will come very fast.
If you are working from a database at a server (web development) and your server is too busy because many people are using it, I have good news for you: you can have the database programming activity, which is supposed to happen at the server, be performed at the client's computer instead. Many professional web sites use server-side applications like PHP, ASP, JSP etc. to generate their pages. If you are good in JavaScript and do not want to pay more for hosting because of active server page technology, the time has come for you to pay less, and not use active server pages.
Web pages are becoming voluminous because authors like to make them active; because of this, the pages take time to be downloaded. But you can now have your web page downloaded in bits, thanks to Active Client Technology, discovered by Vlad Podvorny in the years 2002-2003 and Chuck Bradley in the year 2006, and enhanced by me, Chrysanthus Forcha in 2007. Both Vlad and Chuck gave the name Active Client Pages (ACP) to the discovery, even though they discovered it independently.
You need good knowledge of JavaScript, HTML and Perl in order to understand this four-part series.
How I became interested in Active Client Pages
I am a freelance computer programmer. One of my clients, whose users have slow Internet connections, asked me to do some simple web development for his transport company. He has inter-city buses and he wanted people to be able to register, pay their fare and choose their bus seats through the Internet. The problem I had was how to let the users complete their transactions quickly over the Internet, as they fill out the forms of the different pages.
So I went to the Internet to find an article or tutorial with the solution to the problem; this was in 2005. That was when I discovered Vlad's articles and his web site. Later, I started thinking about Active Client Pages and how they can be improved. I discovered Chuck's approach in 2007.
This Article
In this article I present my modified version of Chuck's approach. I call the modification The Ajax Approach, not the Modified Chuck's Approach. So, I will give you the Ajax Approach instead of Chuck's approach. I will also give you my enhancements to this approach. You can learn more about Chuck and his work using the following links:
http://www.warrocketajax.com/?p=6
http://www.warrocketajax.com/?p=7
http://www.warrocketajax.com/index.php?s=active+client+pages&sbutt=Go
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