AJAX Desktop Tutorial Overview
The purpose of this tutorial is to explain, step-by-step, how to create an AJAX desktop/homepage.
The homepage we will create will have most of the capabilities of established homepages like Netvibes, PageFlakes, etc.
Here’s what our AJAX Desktop will look like when we are done
Our goal is to get up and running quickly so we will not delve deep into each subject. At the end of the tutorial I’ve included a resource section for further reading.
Pre-requisites for this tutorial: I assume you know HTML, some Javascript and basic CSS.
What We Will Cover
- Overview - Tutorial overview
- Part 1 - How to detect IE/Firefox correctly
- Part 2 - What is the DOM and how to manipulate it using Javascript
- Part 3 - How to dynamically create widgets using the DOM (+ using CSS with Javascript)
- Part 4 - How to capture and react to mouse events
- Part 5 - How to drag widgets
- Part 6 - How to manipulate zIndex (the depth/order of widgets on the screen)
- Part 7 - Background about AJAX and JSON
- Part 8 - How to load RSS feeds into widgets
- Part 9 - How to create search widgets
- Part 10 - Resources and further reading