About This Page

Adobe Spry Ajax - Flash Objects Loaded Dynamically

This web page was created in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 with the pre-packaged Spry AJAX included in Dreamweaver.

Other releases of AJAX are independent and perhaps less reliable.

AJAX empowers the simple web page to perform tasks normally associated with server side scripts. In this case, the web page reads in data from an XML file. (You can view the XML file here meshgraphics_portfolio.xml.) The XML data contains file addresses and description text for the Flash objects to be displayed in the slideshow.

The dynamic behaviours of the web page are handled by the AJAX, including event listeners for onclick behaviours and updating status objects, like current row selected, etc. The slideshow can be advanced by clicking the Previous/Next buttons or selecting a thumbnail image in the scrolling list. The Flash files are loaded at the time of selection. The new Flash object replaces the old one in the document object without requiring the browser to refresh.

Benefits

• There is a big saving in response time because the browser window does not have to be reloaded.
• The list of movies can be updated in the XML file without affecting the presentation of the web page. This is the design principal of separating content from presentation.
• RAD - Rapid Application Development - the middle layer of development tools (AJAX) relieves the web developer from writing pure Javascript.
• Cross-browser compatibility - many of the compatibility issues in Javascript are trapped and handled by AJAX.