webmonkey.com — Jay and Steve McDonald use a tiny bit of Flash to parse their AJAX XML instead of relying on javascript."try to go to the Fjax site and point to the Flash. You can't. It's not visible anywhere. That's completely different than how people are used to using Flash." ... not visible unless you have Flashblock installed.
Jun 22, 2006 View in Crawl 4
bengalbandwagonJun 23, 2006
I would have to guess that it degrades horribly considering that you have to have both the correct version of the Flash Player and javascript enabled. Therefore abandoning the ~10% of users who have javascript disabled and the ~3-5% of people who do not have at least Flash 7.
jimdiggityJun 23, 2006
Wow. Good job getting the name out there! PS You're cool.
magicjjJun 23, 2006
<a class="user" href="http://verens.com/archives/2005/08/12/ajax-in-ie-without-activex/http://verens.com/archives/2005/08/12/ajax-in-ie-without-activex/">http://verens.com/archives/2005/08/12/ajax-in-ie-without-activex/http://verens.com/archives/2005/08/12/ajax-in-ie-without-activex/</a>Long link, but take a look at it. This is a blog entry about how browsers with ActiveX disabled can't use AJAX. The solution? They made a new XMLHttpRequest function that uses iframes. It automatically creates an invisible iframe with the url, fetches the content, and takes off the iframe. The code is quite genius, though they have been having some problems using it with PHP. That doesn't affect me as I use ColdFusion.Jake
nacsJun 23, 2006
"If it still requires JavaScript to update the page, why use the Flash in the first place?"And here we have another moron who refuses to RTFA.The article says multiple times that the reason for using Flash is because it has a nice cross platform XML parsing engine. Although most browsers have a good XMLhttprequest function, not all have a full XML parsing suite. And the ones that do have it make it a pain to parse XML. By taking care of it in Flash this project is making that step a bit easier.
valkraiderJun 23, 2006
Flash sucks. I agree with parent post. My problems with Flash is that it allows so many "developers" to be complete and utter morons. 1. There is usually absolutely no non-flash interface, many sites I have had a hard time with don't even have basic contact information in a non-flash manner.2. Every retarded flash interface is different. This makes navigation different for each site - breaking a bit of the web paradigm consitency. Auto manufacturers and band websites seem to be the biggest offenders here... Everyone tries to be "edgy" and media intensive... It sucks, I just want to find information - not be "wowed" by your elite graphic skillz.3. Flash is nearly impossible to save content - for any reason. Like making a quote, or saving a clipping or whatever. Or cut and pasting an address for us in Google Maps or whatever. Flash makes this hard and sucky. Whether or not the technology allows for it 99% of annoying developers don't - so I blame Flash for not having the capabilities on by default...Flash is liked by weak minded developers who insist on forcing us all into their insane operating paradigm. It is annoying and unnecessary.
looklikecontestJun 23, 2006
Yeah, I get the same as andrew, seventoes and breebop. I've done a few of things like this before, and, while Flash usually does things indepently of the browser, that's NOT the case when it comes to XML parsing. Browsers restrict Flash in different ways when it comes to parsing input from servers.
djcontactJun 24, 2006
i myself am a web/flash design and have been working with Ajax lately, i can say that i like it a lot except for the fact that history (back button) doesn't seem to function properly unless you actual some huge javascript, but that's a different story.i never really thought of putting flash together with javascript and XML...this is something that i really want to read into...
djrubbishJun 25, 2006
zzz @ the flash haters. I liked the fjax engine. needs a little work but it's basically a sound idea.
kelterJun 28, 2006
Yup - it's old, it's new. Here's another view.<a class="user" href="http://incito.lt/index.php#gateways/go.php?to=products/swfjax">http://incito.lt/index.php#gateways/go.php?to=products/swfjax</a>
shadedechoAug 6, 2008
flXHR (flex-er) is the better FJAX (or FLAX, or whatever you want to call it). And it's more pronouncable! :)<a class="user" href="http://flxhr.flensed.com/">http://flxhr.flensed.com/</a>flXHR creates a completely API compatible drop-in replacement for the native XHR object, but powered with an automatically created and controlled invisible flash .swf, and leveraging Adobe's cross-domain security model with server opt-in control.This makes flXHR drop-dead easy (~3 lines of simple code) to adapt into any of the major JS frameworks (Dojo, Prototype, jQuery, etc) so a website doesn't have to change any code at all but can automatically get functionality like secure cross-domain communication with flXHR.