You waste your server resources for web applications? Why don’t accept the help of Google. Just a few days ago Google launched its Google App Engine. Being still in beta it allows you to upload your web application on the Google network and use their computational power. With a free account you are already able to use 500MB space, a CPU usage of 200,000,000 megacycles and a maximum of 10GB bandwidth per day. Also you get several other features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Great – Where do I have to sign in?

Google App Engine is still in beta. There were 10,000 beta accounts available but after ca. 3 hours they were all gone. Google already announced that more accounts will follow in the near future. So don’t hesitate to subscribe to the waitlist.

At first what does Ajax mean?

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications. Ajax is asynchronous, in so far as extra data is requested from the server and loaded in the background. This is intended to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, functionality and usability. Ajax function calls are usually made in Javascript using the XMLHttpRequest object. The asynchronous content doesn’t need to be formatted in XML.

Scripts for your Website

As quite every modern website makes use of at least a bit of Ajax you may want to have a few of those cool effects for your page. So I collected the best scripts for you. All of them are free to use and easy to install.

Lightbox 2 – Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

Thickbox 3.1 – ThickBox is a webpage UI dialog widget written in JavaScript on top of the jQuery library. Its function is to show a single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal.

Glider – This script makes it easy to create a sliding carousel component like the one seen at www.panic.com/coda.

TableOrganize – This script basically allows you to re-organize the rows or columns and browse the table using the up/down arrows.

Clickheat – ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones.

Reflection.js – allows you to add reflections to images on your webpages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean.

AjaxIM – ajax im (“asynchronous javascript and xml instant messenger”) is a browser-based instant messaging client. It uses AJAX to create a near real-time IM environment that can be used in conjunction with community, intranet, and social websites.

Relay – An Ajax directory manager that works and looks like the familiar one of windows and mac systems.

SWFUpload – is a small JavaScript/Flash library to get the best of both worlds. It features the great upload capabilities of Flash and the accessibility and ease of HTML/CSS.

NicEdit -NicEdit is a Lightweight, Cross Platform, Inline Content Editor to allow easy editing of web site content on the fly in the browser.

Vuzit – Vuzit is a web based document viewer you can embed in any web page. It’s fast and it’s free!

flot – Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming.

Control.Tabs – creates a tabbed interface from an unordered list of links/anchors that point to any elements on your page that have an id attribute.

IE7 – is a JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.

Resources for more scripts

Scripteka an extensive library of Prototype and Script.aculo.us based extensions/plugins.

At AjaxDaddy you can see Ajax examples, javascript scripts and web 2.0 demos in action.

MiniAjax, a showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts.

And have a look at more than 1000 Ajax examples at AjaxRain.com

Talking from web2.0, you think of fade effects, live form validation and other nice and often practical effects. But how are these things realized? Is it something that only professional programmer can assemble?

The only thing that would be helpful is a general understanding of Javascript and HTML. Many of the effects you may have in mind are realized by using open-source libraries or other freely available code snippets. You just have to integrate a few Javascripts and call a few functions to have a beautiful web2.0-ish effect for your website.

In my view the best library is script.aculo.us in connection with prototype.js. They are easy to understand, have a large documentation and a good community. Other libraries worth mentioning are jQuery, Dojo, MochiKit, mootools and YUI. After installing the libraries, it’s so easy to create. Make a few Ajax calls, fall back on entire functions, get some groove effects – and your code is much lighter than before! So why not try to use one of these libraries, after a bit practice you will thank yourself for taking this step.

But even if a library can’t provide you the effect you need, there always is a better way than writing everything on your own. Use some ready-made code snippets. You find them everywhere on the Internet. Snippets for some common problems are Lightbox and ThickBox, which make it possible to overlay an image or other content on the current page. Sometimes the snippets make use of a specific Javascript library. But be careful that not all libraries work well together.

To sum up, I can say that both JS libraries and code-snippets will save you a lot of time (and maybe money). So have a look at them and don’t let the complexity awe you.

Now, three years after the release of Firefox v1.0, the revolutionary browser has been downloaded over 400 million times!

When the first version of the browser hit the internet back in 2004, it took only 99 days for the Firefox to be downloaded by more than 25 million delighted users. After 1 year the number quadrupled and passed the 100 million downloads mark.

This time was the starting signal for a never-ending, striking success of a web browser – it is free, has tons of good extensions and themes, has a huge community and made us feel the web2.0!

On the 5th September Apple presented their new iPod touch to the press. It’s like an iPhone without the phone. But if that isn’t enough Steve Jobs showed the next generations of the iPod nano and the classical iPod.

iPod touch

The iPod touch is an iPod with a huge touchscreen and integrated Wi-Fi. So you can listen to your favorite music, watch Tv shows, see your photoalbums or even browse through in the internet (and watch videos on YouTube!). Also you can toggle to a Cover Flow mode as seen on the iPhone. Apple offers a 8GB version for 299$ and a 16GB version for 399$ (shipping starts 28th September).

image from engadget.

iPod nano

The third generation iPod of the successful nano series, lovingly called “fatty”, has a bigger screen and enabled video-playback. The nano is available in 5 colors (red, green, blue, silver and black) and 2 storage sizes – 4/8GB (149$/199$).

iPod classic

The normal iPod, now iPod classic comes in full metal design and all known features. The 2 versions, 80 and 160GB, are thinner and have a longer battery life than their predecessors.

iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store

A thing a lot of people have missed on the iPhone was the ability to directly download/buy songs via iTunes. Now Apple decided to open an iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for all iPhone and future owners of an iPod touch. The next time you dock your device to your PC/Mac all purchased titles are automatically synced with iTunes.

And finally Apple cuts the iPhone price from 599$ to 399$ for the 8GB variant. – Today Steve Jobs stated in a letter that every customer who bought the iPhone for the old price will receive 100$ in consideration of the high price cut.