4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION (Web design portfolio) TO AJAX The
4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO AJAX The page changes, and in the map portal a red circle appears along with some smaller colored-in circles and some satellite images of houses. The red circle highlights the house I lived in, and the other smaller circles represent landmarks. The picture generated by Map.search.ch is an aerial view overlaid with a semitransparent street map. The combination is a map that makes it possible to explain where something is in relation to something else. For example, in Figure 1-2 you can see that the house I lived in has a red roof, and to the left seems to be some type of grey complex. The grey complex is a specialty meat company. The multilayer map is not Ajax specific because traditional web applications could have done the same thing. What is Ajax specific is the map s capability to dynamically reconstruct itself as you drag the mouse over a part of the map. As you click and hold the mouse button and drag across the map, Ajax retrieves map pieces from the server. In a traditional web application, you would have clicked buttons to the left, right, top, and bottom of the map to change your view of it. The advantage of the multilayer approach is the user s ability to easily explain directions. Usually we say, Turn left, and on the right is a gas station. It is easy to understand that there is a gas station on the right, but how far down the street? Is it on the corner? Is it one or two houses down the street? However, with Map.search.ch I can say, Turn right, and see on the map the meat company? Well, there is a parking lot, too, right on the map. The person who is receiving the explanation can mentally coordinate their driving to what they expect to see. Using this approach, when they see a gas station on the right, they will know precisely where on the right. The problem of explaining directions is that one person knows the area, and the other does E B V N not. The person who knows the area will highlight things that he remembers and considers important or worse, will explain according to things as he thinks they are. The person who does not know the area will focus on irrelevant things when driving through and hope to find the landmarks explained. With the overlaid map illustrating the color of houses, orientation of fields, and so on, each person has a common base to explain and understand the directions. Let s focus on some other aspects of Map.search.ch. Notice the little blue circle to the northeast of my old house. That little circle represents a bus stop. If you hover your mouse over the circle, a dialog box appears, telling you the bus stop details and starting and ending points of the route, as illustrated in Figure 1-3.
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