Unlike my previous site, I want this new theme to work dynamically, with only relevant information changing, rather than having to refresh the entire site on each click. I want this for a number of reasons, least of all to make a smoother interface for a simple site, but also so that the entire site can become aware of changes in realtime. The large empty space above the navigation bar is for a large scaling flash applet that I am currently coding, and this will communicate with the javascript code in the html to act reactively to each page selection.

In this way, the entire site remains pretty similar, with only a few changes that happen on link clicking. To accomplish this, I am using the incredible jQuery Javascript library to make asynchronous calls to load pages into sections, and also to display and control the flash applet with a series of animation and data commands.

The most challenging aspects of designing for such sites lie in how using Javascript removes a lot of the controls that we take for granted – a good example here would be that using Javascript to load in a new page breaks the BACK button in your browser. Which, for most users, is completely unacceptable. Other problems such as incorrect permalinks for bookmarking and placing history items in your list are difficult to remedy, although with cunning use of hidden forms and some Javascript parsing functions for extrapolating Urls and creating permalinks, it is possible.

The site now handles itself cross-browser and deals with all of these issues, as well as scrolling to anchored links and handling bookmarks.

If you find that this site is causing you problems, or that it is not working as I described, please leave a comment along with your machine details and browser specifications. Thanks!

Tested on : Firefox 2+ / IE 6+ / Safari 2+ / Opera 7+ / Konqueror 2+ / Chrome
Machines : Windows XP / Windows 2000 / Windows Vista / Mac OSX Leopard / Linux Kubuntu / Linux Fedora

Know Issues : Konqueror disables the flash applets ability to comminicate with Javascript (See error message in flash) – this is completely outside of my control and seems to depend on how your system is configured. This won’t prevent you from enjoying the site, just won’t let you see alot of the animations!

More like this ajax|designerzen|javascript|Web.