Anthology of Ideas

There have been no posts for a while now and none of the updates to AJAXed WordPress or my other plugins have been pushed out. There is a lot of stuff (of the good kind) that is going on in my life currently, so I’ve put everything else on the back burner.

Thank you for your understanding.

P.S. Don’t you hate posts like this? Me too!

I wanted to see how small you could make a fully functional AJAX script that worked cross-browser and degraded gracefully, so I went through an old custom AJAX script and made it as small as I possibly could. In the resulting AJAX scripts, the post version is 410 characters and the GET version is only 359 characters long. The scripts are fully functional and accept the following parameters: URL, DATA (in string form), and ELEMENT (to update).

The scripts could be a little smaller, but it would really kill readability.

“Get” AJAX Script

1. function a(l,d,u){
2. try{r = new XMLHttpRequest();}catch(e){try {r = new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP');}catch(e){r = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');}}
3. if(r){
4. r.onreadystatechange = function() {if (r.readyState == 4 && r.status == 200){document.getElementById(u).innerHTML = r.responseText;}}
5. r.open('GET', l+'?'+d, true);r.send(d);
6. }
7. }

“Post” AJAX Script

1. function b(l,d,u){
2. try{r = new XMLHttpRequest();} catch(e){try {r = new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP');} catch(e){r = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');}}
3. if(r){
4. r.onreadystatechange = function() {if (r.readyState == 4 && r.status == 200){document.getElementById(u).innerHTML=r.responseText;}}
5. r.open('POST', l, true);r.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');r.send(d);
6. }
7. }

Combined AJAX Script

This combined script also accepts a fourth parameter ‘p’ that should evaluate true if the data is to be sent by post.

1. function a(l,d,u,p){
2. try{r = new XMLHttpRequest();}catch(e){try {r = new ActiveXObject('Msxml2.XMLHTTP');}catch(e){r = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');}}
3. if(r){
4. r.onreadystatechange = function() {if (r.readyState == 4 && r.status == 200){document.getElementById(u).innerHTML = r.responseText;}}
5. if(p){r.open('POST', l, true);r.setRequestHeader('Content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');}else{r.open('GET', l+'?'+d, true);}
6. }
7. }

Demo: (Sorry but you will have to go to the full page so the JavaScript is loaded.)

The best thing to come out of YouTube since the Kiwi: the Gummy bear song.

Oder, ich bin ein gummi Bär; ich bin ein gummi Bär.

All right, all right. Back to your regularly scheduled broadcasting.

I’m running around stark naked in all my white glory. Why am I doing this? Other than the social aspect of being like everyone else, it is a great opportunity for the less-than-knowledgeable people to know what I look like underneath my superficial exterior. As you can see, I’m beautiful even without my clothes.

I’m glad my webmaster, Aaron, has taken care of my and built me into the most beautifulest website I can be. It doesn’t take a lot of CSS and styling to make me look good because I’m beautiful to the bone. YAY ME!!

~ post by Anthology of Ideas not Aaron (please don’t tell Aaron.)

P.S. The first person in this post is not the writer, but the website itself. So no, I’m not sitting here on the computer naked.¹

P.P.S. It is CSS naked day.

I am so totally stealing this video from Talk Like a Physicist, but it is worth it and I promise I won’t do it again. I really don’t have anything intelligent to add except: COOL!