I was just messing around (Made a Chat)

[RyanSmith345]

Always good to see people making use of that tutorial. I wrote that way back in November 2005, and have been meaning to upgrade / expand it all of 2006.

It looks like a lot of people have already gone much further with it than I was planning.

[Dentafrice1]

Make a 2nd (If thats you) With the admin panel

www.habboremix.net has the best that ive seen so far.

If only it didn't use XML

[RyanSmith345]

I actually have a new one written that uses JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) instead of XML.

JSON AJAX Chat Tutorial

It was one of those things where I kept seeing JSON around and I had to figure out what the hell everyone was talking about.

It actually makes it extremely easy to parse the response - as you can tell from the tutorial because you can use the standard dot notation to access the different parts.

The only reason that I haven't gone completely that ways is because I'm worried about possible JavaScript vurnuabilites with the eval() function. I think as long as you make sure to cleanse the user data you will be alright, but I haven't figured out all the possible angles yet. At least not with enough confindence to recommend it to other people.

[RyanSmith345]

By the way, www.habboremix.net doesn't support Firefox so I can't give it any weight. I hate websites that don't at least make an effort to support multiple browsers.

As long as you code in a standards compliant way using the XHTML Transitional DTD then you can make your sites behave and look pretty much the same in all the different browsers.

Xuzuno (Forum Moderator) - Please don't double post before the editing time limit is up.

[Dentafrice1]

Never messed with JSON before.. might try it. Ive never worked with JS before but I hear its complicated

[RyanSmith345]

JavaScript really isn't all that complicated and it's actually pretty powerful. The problem with JavaScript is there are a lot of little nuances that if your not aware of them, it's a real pain to troubleshoot. Especially when dealing with cross browser compatiability issues.

[Kymux]

Nice work mate.

[Dentafrice1]

Im going to try to learn it.. Is it harder then PHP?

[RyanSmith345]

It's not that it's harder or easier than PHP, it's just different.

To be a good web developer you really need to know JavaScript. The thing you need to watch out for are little gotcha's like capitalization errors and the like.

Luckly we have moved past the days of the generation 4 browsers so you can pretty much write JavaScript once that will run in most browsers.

One recommendation that I'll give you, always use getElementById() to access your document objects. It seems to work great in all the browsers.

Also, download the Firebug (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/) extension for Firefox. It will make your web developing live so much easier I can't even begin to describe it. It will tell you when JS errors occur, what the error was, and even pinpoint the exact location in the script where the error occured. I have no idea how I ever developed for the web without it.

[Dentafrice1]

I don't use firefox.. well not much.. IE7