I’ve not made any updates lately because I’ve been learning AJAX coding techniques and I’ve been working instead on the hotfix parser. AJAX has a lot debate on what exactly it is (which is weird), but the definition used in the book that I’m reading (and on Wikipedia) is that it is essentially a client-side programming technique that permits the website designer to asynchronously load content from the website to the client browser.
This means more streamlined content display experiences than you would normally experience from a traditional webpage. An example would be Yahoo or Google Maps. Both use AJAX techniques to load map data without refreshing the entire page.
The purpose of this education is the realization that I load a significant amount of page overhead (a wrapper, if you will) around the DNB data and that I could improve the load speed if I could convert the page to an AJAX enabled app (allowing me to load content in to the browser and then “page” between it without refreshing the page.)
I figure that approximately 15-20% of my page is overhead (CSS stylesheet, template information, navigation, images, etc.) Cutting that data transfer out of each page change would be a pretty dramatic increase in my page efficiency (and make it more user friendly).
Granted, AJAX breaks the traditional BACK BUTTON functionality that we come to expect from our web browsers, but I think that’s a small price to pay.
Additionally, the hotfix parser has become much more appealing to me as a next project than the ESN parser. I’ve been doing a lot of Microsoft hotfix patch checking on a few customer’s Contact Center and CallPilot servers at work, and this effort would have been dramatically more efficient if I had this parser.
I’ve completed the client-side VBScript that will capture all of the data that I require. I’ve determined that Windows Installer is required to collect information about what programs are installed on a Server (not critical, but useful information) and even determined how to gracefully handle Windows Installer being missing (thus, preventing the collection of the Programs Installed info.)
Next is to start building the database tables and work on the server-side parser.
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It sounds fascinating– has it been hard to incorporate the new knowledge, or is it mostly a new perspective on stuff you already knew?
It’s been a challenge to build this knowledge set. I’ve taken to entertaining myself some nights rather than tackling this challenge. It draws out development time.