Joomla! Discussion Forums

I would say developers like Phil Taylor ARE needed for the continued growth of Joomla. What is the point of making J! 1.5 easier for 3PD's if they are pushed away? One example is Elpie. Another is Phil just now.

The J! 1.5 framework is great. It really does make extending it easier and more flexible. It's great. But for continued growth, J! needs great 3PD addons. I know I can purchase Phil's components for commercial sites, because he stands behind his work and his work is stable.

Why does it feel so hostile around here? (And I believe J and especially J 1.5 is great). (Tho the blog didnt seem offensive to me either)

Chuck

We are not trying to push away any of the third party developers. I personaly think the extension and developer site are the best examples of our commitment to the third party developers both opensource and commercial.

Phil asked me to review his proposed solution and that is exatly what we did. We also used the oppurtunity to paint the bigger picture and explain about AJAX in Joomla! 1.5. The post was intended to be informative in nature, it was never intended to be a personal attack in any way.

The community asks that we communicate about what we are doing and why. We are trying to do so in a non-biased way. Basing myself on the reactions of this post, I think I can say that goal was met here.

Jinx,

Thanks for the reply. I do applaud you and the other devs commitment to opensource, joomla, and excellency. 1.5 is looking very great. So thanks for the update. And thanks for thehard work and commitment.

Chuck

my only question is
will it be possible to use more than one mambot or module that uses xajax library in the 1.5x core

http://www.xajax-joomla.com/ is a nice help but there is still no fix for having multiple xajax calls on the same page.

most of the ajax using 3dp scripts made for joomla are based on xajax.

thanks.

If you think that then you have missed the whole point of the mambot!! 

I already have a Joomla 1.5 Plugin for xAJAX that several developers have committed to - it allows multiple components, modules, plugins and external code all to run xAJAX in Joomla 1.5 with out conflicts.

The plugin only serves to route the incoming xAJAX calls to the right component - it is then up to developers to handle the incoming data (Secure it, test it, use it etc...)

The xAJAX Plugin for Joomla 1.5 is not yet publically available - but those developers using it are loving it!

As long as NO xAJAX calls are made anywhere in Joomla Core (Apart from the files in installer which are deleted after install) then any developer can use the xAJAX Plugin for Joomla 1.5 that we will be releasing shortly at http://www.xajax-joomla.com.

This is great! Thanks for the update, and all the hard work. It's much appreciated Phil.



I hope this won't raise any conflicts between xAJAX and any 'official' Joomla 'core' Ajax solution in the future?

will this be a commercial solution? and when can we expect this?

No it will be a free plugin ! Always free! See the existing site at http://www.xajax-joomla.com

The Joomla 1.5 specific version of the plugin is being finalised next week and will be released at the same time as the joomla 1.5 beta on the 12th October.

http://www.xajax-joomla.com - i seen this, however it has a limitation against mambots and modules in joomla 1.0.x
can't wait for 1.5 to come

if you say it does what it does then community is in debt to you since most of the 3dp ajax extensions available for joomla today are written in xajax and there has been no solution to use more than 1 xajax module on a page.

I hope this bot can be fixed so it doesn't include the js files when not needed..

The Joomla 1.5 version of the plugin has full support for Components, modules and plugins to interact with it :-) It even works on the frontend and the administrator area :-)



I know why you are saying this :-)

Plugins/mambots can be fired from anywhere, so at the moment the Joomla 1.0 version of this mambot has to load just in case - it was put together very quickly (the mambot) and therefore a few things like this were missed.

The Joomla 1.5 version however will not load any xAJAX if no xAJAX handler methods have been loaded - it will also allow component developers to themselves decide and specify if they want their xAJAX calls to be registered (Actually this is possible in the current version - but I dont think it has been well used this way).

As this forum is for Joomla and not the discussion of xAJAX plugin specifically I invite you to continue the discussion in the dedicated forum...

http://forum.phil-taylor.com/http://php ... .php?f=3.0

Phil, what flavour of AJAX does your solution provide ? AJAX itself or HIJAX ?

I ask this from an accessibility point of view in terms of strategic direction and scope for the J! project in general (haven't checked the current build of J 1.5 for AJAX accessibility requirements yet)

maybe its JAJAX. hmmm  pronounced YA YA X
new library just for joomla.

joo.fx
joomla on rails

absalom... I was thinking about this the last few nights. With the capability to use helpers in 1.5, helpers (PHP wrappers for AJAX libraries) can be written to support any AJAX library, allowing developers to pick and choose what they prefer to use. This might be a good solution until things settle down a bit.

Well, considering what Phil said about xajax being utilised as part of the install procedure for 1.5, there are more pressing concerns as to the credibility of the overall design - which is why I asked Phil about the flavour that xajax delivers.

User lockout in preference for eye candy isn't a good solution.

Abs,

The xajax solution used during the install is used only during the install. It is only in the install folder and must be deleted to use J!. So the xajax that comes with joomla will not interfere in anyway with anything.

Chuck

Except the fact the installation sequence and the way AJAX is implemented throughout it renders the whole process inaccessible. There are other rather irritating things I've found that probably do need to be addressed as well. So there is significant interference if you are using any form of screenreader in this respect - meaning user lockout.

I've finishing up wriiting an accessibility audit of the installation procedure and should be posting it live sometime today (as the Beta is a much more 'stable' base on which to base this sort of thing in comparison to my usual nightly or weekly SVN)

ok 1.5 is here.
please deliver the xajax plugin phil.

i really cant wait for it. other than my interest in 1.5 is errr.

Thanx

Is there any chance the 1.0 version gets fixed?
I just checked: if published, I get an accessibility score on silktide of 8.4
I unpublish the bot, no other change: I get 10 out of 10!

At the end of the day, any ajax on the front page is going to have an effect on accessibility of the page.

I do not know why just publishing the bot makes the score go down, I do not know exactly what factors it uses to create its score.  Maybe it sees javascript and gives you a penalty for that.

I dont think there is any thing to fix nessesaryly.

Depends on the Javascript manipulation.

And then again, Sitescore can be gamed, so don't trust it absolutely.

I'll post screenshots of results with the bot published vs unpublished..

The accessibility suite has a persistent bias against javaScript. I believe this dates from times past when it was so sloppily used on hobbyist sites and invasively used on others. There is still a lot of malformed code out there.

The W3C is very conservative. The test/evaluation suites simply do not keep up with current developments. Some of the W3C members feel that they shouldn't bet on specific technologies and always account for the relative capabilities of webmasters.

As to the first point, I can imagine an "Ajax" that doesn't use JavaScript, but a successor script that accomplishes the same thing. It would be less invasive and pose with fewer dangers to the users. For the latter point, I do not like being held back by the lowest common denominator. But, that is just me.

There's still a lot of malformed code, even in the AJAX libraries at times.



There is also investigation by those within the web standards industry as to how Javascript is negotiated by current day screenreaders. So it goes both ways with this.

Hi

i have just installed the xajax plugin on 1.5 and if i publish it - it breaks the site -
anyone come across this ?

Tnx
Sean

The release version of the plugin is NOT for Joomla 1.5

There is a version in SVN for Joomla 1.5 but has not been tested for a while - please search http://blog.phil-taylor.com/ for details