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AJAX is a very useful concept which the web is really starting to experience the benefits from. Recently, developers have been able to do some amazing things with AJAX which in the past took a more complex programing language like C++ to create. Here are some scripts which show off the power of AJAX.
Fish Eye
If you ever used Apple’s OS X, one of the features that stands out is the fish eye effect on the Dock. Using the Dojo Tool Kit, you can create the same effect for your site very quickly. This effect is a great way to show off a menu create with just icons.
JQuery Spy
You may have used Bigspy, a feature on Digg’s Lab where the top stories are populated on the page in a vertical marquee fashion. This feature is written in Flash, but using this is a great way to keep track of the latest articles being read on your site, like Arsenal-Mania (http://arsenal-mania.com/spy/articles.html) has done.
Fancy Box
Fancy Box is another Apple inspired script. The script is very similar to Lightbox JS, which creates an overlay on your page. With Fancy Box, you can embed other sites, videos, and images into your site via links. To truly see the benefits of Fancy Box, check out the demo.
Dragable Boxes
If you have ever used iGoogle, you most likely have used the drag and drop feature to customize the layout of the page. Dragable Boxes provides this same feature for your site. The great thing about the script is that once the user closes the window, when they return, the boxes are in the same location. Adding this script into a site design would be great since the user can customize their layout the way they like it. Oh, and did I mention that each box is collapsible?
AJAX Poller
Polls are very nice to add to sites. They allow the user to interact with not only the site but other users. They also provide the developers of the site valuable information. The issue with polls are they can be ugly at times. AJAX Poller provides a nice animation feature to make a poll look a lot nicer. The animation is so smooth and quick, we would have sworn we were looking at a Flash based poll.
Bonus: Magnetic Words
Have you ever seen the magnets with words or part of a word on it? The ones where you put the words together to form a sentence, like telling your spouse to remember to pick up bread from the store? Well Magnetic Words is just like those magnets, but on a virtual refrigerator. This script really demonstrates how powerful AJAX can be, and how easy it is to recreate a real life scenario.
Topics: Ajax, Apple, Design, DHTML, Flash, jQuery, PHP, Web Development
