A little known but cool feature of Internet Explorer is it’s support for XML data islands. Basically, you can embed some XML data in a page.

Website: http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2006/04/easy-xml/

I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of dojo.storage and a new web-based editor named Moxie.

Website: http://codinginparadise.org/weblog/2006/04/now-in-browser-near-you-offline-access.html

These are a couple AJAX patterns that Alexei and I put together for a an AJAX business case webinar we did with Jupiter Media a couple weeks ago.

Website: http://blogs.ebusiness-apps.com/andre/?p=130

Javeline DeskRun allows developers to deliver their Internet application to the Windows desktop, as a Native Windows Application. Applications can look and feel exactly like a native Windows application. DeskRun gives full access to the local file system and the system tray, and allows caching of data so the application can also be used without a connection to the internet.

Website: http://www.javeline.org/modules/products/deskrun.php

Flashbang on the Dojo IRC channel suggested I do a quick write-up of my experiences working with Prototype and Dojo. I’ve used Prototype for a couple of AJAX-heavy applications (for Cute Overload and American Idol) and am using Dojo for my current project.

Website: http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2006/04/comparison-of-dojo-and-prototype.html

This tutorial guides you through the development of a small human-resources application, first using conventional JavaServer Pages (JSP) based technology, and then migrating it to a highly interactive solution using Ajax.n

Website: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/j-dw-java-kickstart2-i.html?ca=drs-

The functions simply return a DOM node that you can append to whatever part of the document you like. Each function takes an number of arguments. The first argument can contain an object literal of attribute/value pairs if you need to specify attributes but if you don’t need attributes you can just leave it out. Otherwise it creates text nodes of any text you give it and appends any DOM nodes you give it. That’s it.

Website: http://www.vivabit.com/bollocks/2006/04/06/introducing-dom-builder

I’ve been doing a little bit of refactoring and code improvement on some of my pet Rails projects. One of the things that I’d previously not found a great way of testing was Rails 1.1′s RJS templates, Ruby generated JavaScript, a key part of Rails’ AJAX support. I’ve posted previously about what I’ve been attempting, and you can see from the example test that it’s not particularly pretty:

Website: http://www.oobaloo.co.uk/articles/2006/04/25/rjs-assertions

My version of the Lightbox technique includes functionality similar to that of the Greybox technique. That is, ThickBox can show html pages as well as images. The html that is shown inside ThickBox is pulled from the server using AJAX (really AXAH).

Website: http://codylindley.com/Javascript/257/thickbox-one-box-to-rule-them-all

Ok, so my little del.icio.us app (click link to read about how I added Ajax functionality to a simple Rails app) is pretty cool, but it was missing one big thing. When the user clicks the “Get Results” link she has no idea that the page is communicating with the server. While the communication doesn’t go on forever, an impatient user might click the link multiple times.

Website: http://www.rubynoob.com/articles/2006/04/24/howto-add-ajax-in-progress-indicators