Limi’s Concept Zone

Ever find that you are searching through various programming language’s API sites, and wished that there was an easier way of doing it all? Well I found this site the other day called GotAPI, and on their site it allows you to specify which API’s you are interested in, and from there you get a very clean interface in which to search through them with.

So instead of having to have 5-10 bookmarks for all the different languages I now only need the one. It’s very fast searching and uses the standard web 2.0 style of ajax. But it’s done in a way which is very useful rather than showing off the fact its ajax and it being intrusive and annoying.

You can have as many languages as the site supports open as they all load up in tabs at the top, so you can search between them by just clicking the correct language. It also includes API’s for various databases and major sites such as Flickr as well, so it’s not just useful for programming.

The bottom line, there’s no adverts, it’s fast, free, and all in one place. GotAPI

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Ext JS is a JavaScript library, but unlike many others, it has some very interesting features, with even more coming in the 2.0 release. They released a preview on their blog today showing off some of the new kit that will be available in the next release.

“A common theme for the Ext framework is building rich web applications that can barely be distinguished from true desktop applications. Everything from the look and feel of a control to smooth transitions in DnD are considered when building out the controls. The Web desktop is a culmination of this effort and demonstrates how the use of standards based technologies such as JavaScript, CSS & DOM can be leveraged to build a desktop like experience within the context of a browser.”

This could probably be considered the holy grail of the internet developer at the moment. Creating a web-site that not only looks, but more importantly acts like a client side application. You can see a little demo of the “Web Desktop” as they call it at the following link, along with other demo’s as well.

Ext JS 2.0 Preview

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We have all seen the majority of different ways of displaying feedback to users via Ajax calls, however one I hadn’t seen before caught my eye today. Instead of hijacking the entire screen, or creating new sections or areas on the screen and causing movement, this does a modal dialog type effect… just without the dialog part.

You can see some examples here and here. This is certainly a nicer and softer way of displaying progress as no extra space is used up with the effect. Better still, this has a Ruby on Rails helper already made!

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