Yes, yes I like the way Douglas Crockford talks about AJAX and JavaScript. Especially his last talk about AJAX Performance. I think that it is essential for every web developer to see/read this presentation.

Well as long term Ext JS fan and user I of course faced with consuming external data resources like for example Google Data API or Google AJAX Search API. The last one mentioned has some really great output and layout capabilities, but I did not want them. I really need only some kind of JSON or XML interface. Google has one – ScriptTag. So after reading this post about creating custom Ext.data.JsonReader and Ext.data.ScriptTagProxy.

/** Ext Proxy for Google Ajax Search **/
Ext.namespace('GoogleAjaxSearch');
 
GoogleAjaxSearch.Proxy = Ext.extend(Ext.data.ScriptTagProxy, {
   url: 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web',
   apiKey: null,
   cx: null,
   callbackParam: 'callback',
 
   constructor: function(config) {
      GoogleAjaxSearch.Proxy.superclass.constructor.call(this, config);
      this.on('beforeload', this.onBeforeLoad, this);
   },
 
   onBeforeLoad: function(o, params) {
      Ext.apply(params, {
         v: 	'1.0',
         rsz: 	'large',
         cx: 	this.cx,
         key: 	this.apiKey,
      }
      );
 
      return true;
   }
});
 
 <a href="http://www.wiso.cz/2008/10/30/custom-ext-js-jsonreader-for-google-ajax-search-api/#more-443" class="more-link"><img src="http://www.wiso.cz/wp-content/themes/wiso/images/more.gif" border="0" style="border:0" alt=" Read More " /></a>

Well Ext Javascript library is great. No doubt about it. And because I am still using PHP for some of my projects, I wanted some abstraction over Ext for PHP. There was no such project for PHP at that time. So I decided to start-up with some small prototype (yes I am XP fan ). All worked quite well, and code base started to expand. But one day I realized that I am doing noting than rewriting Ext to PHP… That strange feeling did not came away and I decided to do something with it. Back to the trees…. So after some time spent by thinking about design and generally whole purpose and motivation to writing PHP helper for Ext library… And my conclusion was that I will write some helper framework for handling communication (JSON and XML) and to help generally with all but Javascript itself. Ext syntax is simple and nicely designed so why not use Ext syntax itself… So that was how ExtPHPUI was born…

With ExtPHPUI I am focusing on following features:

• simplicity
• security
• performance
• flexibility

These more server oriented features are not in the scope of Ext JS, so I decided to provide helpers to simplify Ext JS sever side development…

If anyone is interested in PHP development with Ext JS library or even ExtPHPUI and want to share some knowledge and experiences feel free to contact me. I will write some more information about this project later.

After some quite long time I did a small visual update to my site. I replaced original AJAX based fulltext search with new version based on great Ext Javascript library example. I am currently working on new application based on Zend Framework and that great UI library. I hope I will find enough time to drop a post about it.

As always I am happy to that this great JavaScript library has moved forward. I was playing with alpha and beta versions and there is a lot to play with! If you are not familiar with Ext library I can only recommend it to you.

New aplha release of great Ext Javascript Library is ready for download. If you do not know about this great JavaScript library, you can take a look here. I am playing with this library from it’s first public versions and I can definitely recommend it.

It includes AJAX extension itself including AJAX Control Toolkit and source code release. I have to say that I took a break for a couple of weeks in ASP.NET AJAX area, but now I am working on my personal project – AJAX enabled e-shop for photos and pictures. I think it will be a good test for this final release . I am really excited to see what I can do with it .

From the article:

Firebug, an extension I wrote for the Firefox, makes web development much easier. Combined with your favorite text editor, Firebug is a great IDE for JavaScript/AJAX technologies. Read full article here.

Joe Stagner anounced a new AJAX Security Webcasts series starting next thursday. Through the fact that it is primarly targeted to ASP.NET world, I think it can be usefull for any AJAX developer. Here are the links to register for all five in the series.

• Live From Redmond: AJAX Security Basics- The Building Blocks to Protecting Your Applications Built with ASP.NET AJAX
• Live From Redmond: How Hackers Reverse Engineer and Exploit an ASP.NET AJAX Application
• Live From Redmond: The Brave New World of AJAX Hacking (and prevention using ASP.NET)
• Live From Redmond: The Next Generation of AJAX Attacks – A New Generation of Attack Theories
• Live From Redmond: Best Practices: A Look at Developer ASP.NET AJAX Security Mistakes

AJAX is pretty cool stuff. But at Black Hat USA 2006 in Las Vegas and other events, the downside of AJAX is getting its due. ''We are seeing bad design choices,'' says SPI research engineer Billy Hoffman.Full article is available at SearchSecurity.com.