“AJAX & Javascript” was definitely the area of most interest to me at Google’s I/O Web Developer Conference. Here at Small Box we utilize AJAX and Javascript to the best of our ability because it makes sites faster and can really make a great design shine with a more streamlined user experience. Almost all of our sites utilize a javascript library called Prototype, which the founders of ajaxian.com, Dion Almaer (now with Google) and Ben Galbraith, regarded in their presentation as the “granddaddy of AJAX”. This library offers an architecture to enable that quicker-feeling user experience and when used with script.aculo.us enables a site to have some pretty sweet effects.
Google announced at the conference that as of that day, Google Code will now be hosting that software for anyone to use for free. All this means is that when we develop a site using Prototype, we can load the script from Google instead of using a locally hosted version. Normally this is frowned upon because it creates an off-site loading dependency, but the point of their offering is that if multiple sites used the same hosted version of the script, it cuts down on load time for the end-user thanks to caching. This is especially helpful for larger scripts like these that must be loaded for the site to function properly.
After all of the sessions I attended on AJAX I definitely see using it even more in developing sites at Small Box.
that’s pretty awesome, the caching is a great idea if enough sites adopt it. Did Google say anything about whether they’ll do the same for other libraries like jQuery? It would be very unlike Google to only support one package.
I really wanted to go to Google I/O, but instead I was sent to WWDC in San Francisco through Ball State. You probably left a couple days before I got there.