AJAX-S: An Ajax-based slideshow system

Robert Nyman’s AJAX-S is an Ajax-based slideshow system which, while being similar to Eric Meyer’s S5, is also quite different in some respects. The most obvious difference is that AJAX-S stores slideshow data in an XML file and uses Ajax to retrieve it.

With that comes a greater degree of separation between content and presentation. It currently also slightly limits the range of browsers that can run an AJAX-S slideshow, since it requires a web browser capable of doing XSL transformations. According to Robert, that means IE6 and Mozilla-based browsers. I can confirm that it works fine in Camino 1.0b1.

I have used S5 for a number of presentations and am happy with it, but having more options is always (well, almost always) a good thing. So I’ve you’re interested in this kind of thing, go give AJAX-S a try.

  • November 14, 2005
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Comments

1. November 14, 2005 by Joel Arvidsson

I know Nyman is a friend of yours, but this is just so useless. S5 with it's clones is working just fine and this one doesn't even work in Safari.

And why AJAX? Just makes it unresponsive and breaks browser compatibility.

2. November 14, 2005 by Roger Johansson

Joel: Robert is a friend of mine, yes, but that is not why I linked to this. AJAX-S uses a slightly different approach which I believe some will find useful, interesting, both, or neither.

3. November 14, 2005 by Joel Arvidsson

Roger: You wrote about misuse of AJAX yourself in Ajax Mistakes and AJAX-S makes most of the mistakes on that list - especially the first one; "Using Ajax for the sake of Ajax".

The lack off support for Safari is mostly Apples fault since they don't inlude an XSLT processor in their implementationi of ECMAScript. But to me that's just another argument for not using AJAX/XSL. While being a nice mix of interesting technologies I just don't see a realworld usage for this.

4. November 14, 2005 by Roger Johansson

Joel: I agree that this method has flaws, and it's not something I would choose over S5 at this point. In fact, it may never be. But I still find it worth taking a look at. I'll leave it to Robert to defend himself ;-).

5. November 15, 2005 by Robert Nyman

Joel,

First, I don't think it fair to make Roger responsible for everything in those web sites he links to. I've seen this criticism in comments to some of his other linking posts, and really, if you have an opinion, go the web site in question and express it there.

Second, while I'm happy to have Roger as a friend, I think he has got enough integrity to link to things he thinks are, and/or believes other would find, interesting, not out of being a good sport.

Third, in my opinion, this is not about a case of "Using Ajax for the sake of Ajax". It is about separation into different layers, offering greater reusage and flexibility, while also making sure that someone can create a presentation without altering the HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

It's also about the implications with what can be done with creating online tools to generate presentations, to only change the data layer for different presentations etc.

I also write more in one of my comments.

If you have any more opinions you would like to discuss, please do it as a comment to my post at my web site. I do think I'm pretty open to feedback and discussion, so you're more than welcome.

6. January 12, 2006 by sayed razool

i am having NOKIA 9300 communicator phone i'm having the gprs connection but when i'm opening rediffmail site when i'm logging in it's ok but when i click my inbox it's shows me your browser is not an ajax

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Roger Johansson is a Swedish web professional specialising in web standards, accessibility, and usability. More about me and this site.

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