MasterWish – Practicing What I Preach

masterwish MasterWish, my labor of love (created with my friends Zach Tirrell and Jon Emmons) is my playground for Ajax and Web 2.0 experiments.

If you haven’t been acquainted with the site, its a wishlist site with a schlew of features. The high point is the ability to secure down lists and grant access to specific buddy groups. I’m pleased to say that we have gained a decent member base in the past 8 months and I am also happy to say that things are going to change around shortly!

MasterWish was built using SAJAX as the tool of choice for Ajax communication but as I’ve mentioned in the past, I am a Prototype convert. My knowledge of Ajax, JSON, and general application structure has been morphing so much in recent weeks that I have held off in completely revamping the wish list site.

Things are changing. I have begun the work to implement the following:

  • Creation of more “hackable” Web Service APIs using SOAP and REST
  • Representation of data using both XML and JSON
  • Ajax powered by Prototype
  • Sweet DOM manipulation powered by Script.aculo.us
  • Separation of Layout and Logic with event:Selectors
  • and of course, we’re already doing: Server-Side Templating for greater separation of Layout and Logic.

Sign up. Stay tuned. Get gifts.


Comments

7 responses to “MasterWish – Practicing What I Preach”

  1. I`m not sure my comment is appropriate here, but still.
    I say: huge included libraries are bad, at least when your connection is slow or your internet cost depends on traffic. (If you have unlimited broadband connection, you shouldn`t read the following grumbling).

    One of ajax`s key features is the ability to create load-on-demand applications, where you do not need to get the data if you don`t actually interested in it. But more often I see another situation: before loading a page with 20 kilobytes of text, I have to load 300KB of javascript. (see http://developer.mozilla.org for instance. But you`ll need a slow connection or a traffic meter if you want to see the effect ;)).

    You have to get me right. I do like javascript, ajax and all that web 2.0 stuff. But, hey, this isn`t local programming where you can simply include stdlib.h and turn your ‘hello world’ program into a two megabyte monster after compilation.

    So, I say: take the functions that you really need, use standart ways of class creation, try to minimize your code, while all those little children in Afr… in Russia have slow modems and evil greedy providers.

    Of course, maybe this is just a question of time, and in a couple (couple?) of years that won`t be a problem for almost anyone in the Internet to download 5-6 megabytes of prototype library each time they want to check the Firefox downloads number, but…

  2. @sp

    Thanks for your comment and your points are valid ones. I will take this into extreme consideration while re-working MasterWish. Perhaps I’ll look to Moo.fx as a way to exclude the javascript that isn’t needed. Because, lets face it…there are a lot of functionality in Prototype that is sexy but not entirely needed. Lightweight is key, as you have pointed out and speed is still an important aspect of the web. I guess you have just directed me to my next research topic! Thanks :)

  3. […] Prototype, as I’ve stated in the past, is our Javascript library of choice for Ajax at Plymouth State University and in the current re-writing of MasterWish. As of version 1.5 of Prototype there has been a sweet Selector function $$ which is best used when manipulating more than one dom element of the same type…i.e. updating all buddies in a buddy list at MasterWish with some property. […]

  4. Another really nice, great and original comment.

  5. ini web kyk kontol , gw cari map moomoo 1.5 di klik linkny malah bounce back ke halaman awal. apa seh mksdnya bikin web ini…. kontol lah

  6. i want to download moo moo defense v1.6.Plz tell me how to download thank very much