Being at this party/meet-up made me understand for the first time ever the true meaning of “Never judge a book by its cover”

On the 25th of November, I received a call at 9:30 in the morning with Dan Popescu’s voice on the other end of the line telling me that I was invited by the Night Wolfe Romanian Chapter for their annual party held about 115 kilometers from Bucharest. The voice said, “We are coming to pick you up in 20 minutes.” It was 9:30 in the morning and the last thing I wanted to do was to get out of bed, but somehow I managed to be dressed and look presentable. Exactly 20 minutes later, I was stuffed into a van full of people wearing leather jackets with a lot of chains and badges all around. I took another look around and saw that I was in the midst of bearded long haired tough-looking men. I knew that I was in for an adventure…. realizing it will be a long one when someone mentioned we would be there for the night and wouldn’t be returning until late in the evening the next day. I was suddenly overwhelmed and apprehension took ahold of me.. I wondered what the hell did I get myself into and was about to stay back.

As we are leaving Buchrest, someone in the van spots a Harley Davidson store, and suddenly there was so much excitement in the crowd. I actually cannot describe it in words. I was confused, “its just a harley store” why is everyone so happy. Well, i still dont know..

So… We got to the hotel and everyone started preparing the meeting room. Snacks were followed by more snacks. A few people tried striking conversations with me, but not many people spoke English. After the party, I was invited for a drive up in the mountains with a few fun Bulgarians and Dan Popescu.. It was -3 degrees, but when you’re having fun.. you forget to cold. The party went on all night…lasting till 6 the following morning, but i left early around mid-night. I had the best night’s sleep in a very very cold room.. haha. The following morning, I was told that we were going to visit an orphanage. I was so surprised to be told that these mean looking bikers were making time to visit these kids. I asked…why are you guys going to an orphanage?! someone replied, telling me that the purpose for this get together was to have everyone who was invited bring a few gifts for little children, and then the following morning hand them out at orphanages. My jaw dropped.. I was confused…. WHAT?!?!? This gang NIGHT WOLVES actually helps people??

Well, to my pleasant surprise, none.. not a single guy there at the party rode a Harley Davidson or any kind of cruiser ‘gangsta’ motorcycle. They all had either Honda Hornets or some Enduro/dual sportlike bikes.. and got together a few times a year to help out people around them…

Isnt that amazing? Something so small can be so meaningful. Im so glad they invited me and that i made an effort to actually go..

NightWolves is actually a Russian motorcycle gang. Supposedly, they are 100 times more powerful than Hell’s Angels. However NW are not involved in any kind of illegal business, their only agenda is to help people around the world.

Download Plugin

How does it work?

The plugin takes a list of items, calculates a number of child elements of a certain object, divides it by step parameter (which can be easily adjusted) and generates “control buttons”. Controls are inserted immediately after the selected object in a form of ordered list.

For target object I recommend using unordered list, although plugin will work with any other type of element that contains any type of child elements. If you want to have it set up that way, child elements can be of a different type!

To apply this plugin you will of course need to link to jQuery library and the plugin js file:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/easypaginate.js"></script>

You will need to initiate the plugin:

<script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(function($){ $('ul#items').easyPaginate(); }); </script>

This is the source code for the target object I am using in my example:

<ul id="items"> <li>Page 1</li> <li>Page 2</li> <li>Page 3</li> <li>Page 4</li> <li>Page 5</li> <li>Page 6</li> <li>Page 7</li> <li>Page 8</li> <li>Page 9</li> <li>Page 10</li> <li>Page 11</li> <li>Page 12</li> <li>Page 13</li> <li>Page 14</li> </ul>

This is the generated source code for control buttons (inserted immediately after the target element):

<ol id="pagination"> <li class="prev">Previous</li> <li class="current" data-index="1">1</li> <li data-index="2">2</li> <li data-index="3">3</li> <li data-index="4">4</li> <li class="next">Next</li> </ol>

Options

There are several options you can modify. First and most important is the step parameter. Step parameter defines how many child items will be visible at a time. It is also used in calculating of number of pages. By default this parameter is set to 4. To use your own step value, change the step parameter:

jQuery(function($){ $('ul#items').easyPaginate({ step:3 }); }); 

Here’s the full list of available options:

step

Default value: 4

Defines a number of items visible on each “page”.

delay

Default value: 100

Items on each “page” fade in one by one. This parameter controls the pause between each item’s appearance so we can create “wave” effect. It is defined in milliseconds.

numeric

Default value: true

Boolean. If set to true then the numeric pagination buttons will show.

nextprev

Default value: true

Boolean. If set to true then the next and previous pagination buttons will show.

auto

Default value: false

Boolean. If set to true then the plugin will automatically rotate the “pages”

pause

Default value: 4000

If set to auto pagination, this parameter controls the length of the pause in milliseconds between each “page turn”.

clickstop

Default value: true

If set to auto pagination, this parameter controls whether the pages will continue to automatically rotate. If you want to continue the rotation set this parameter to false.

controls

Default value: ’pagination’

As mentioned, the plugin generates an ordered list for the purpose of navigating through “pages”. This parameter defines the list’s ID.

current

Default value: ’current’

This parameter defines a class name of a current “page” in the numeric navigation. It is used for styling purposes.

If you want to create multiple paginations on the same page, have in mind that this plugin uses IDs to target control buttons so you need to define control id parameter for each pagination.

Enjoy!

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there’s plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.

1. Early life and childhood

Jobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.

Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.

Reed College

2. College dropout

The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated from college, in fact, he didn’t even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple’s headquarters — Jobs enrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private school’s steep tuition placed on his parents.

In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: “It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”

Breakout for the Atari

3. Fibbed to his Apple co-founder about a job at Atari

Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile tech, and software, but he also helped create one of the best known video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped by Atari to work on the Pong-like game Breakout.

He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game’s final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple’s other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the prototype’s design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus — but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to Wozniak’s own autobiography.

4. The wife he leaves behind

Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her future husband.

For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actually skipped a meeting to take Laurene on their first date: “I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, ‘If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?’ I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we’ve been together ever since.”

In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.

5. His sister is a famous author

Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.

After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: “We’re family. She’s one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.” Anywhere But Here is dedicated to “my brother Steve.”

6. Celebrity romances

In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed

Joan Baez

reveals that Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close “briefly,” though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan was the Apple icon’s favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actress Diane Keaton briefly.

7. His first daughter

When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter’s education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.

8. Alternative lifestyle

In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug’s therapeutic use.

In a book interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the “think different” approach that still puts Apple’s designs a head above the competition.

Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.

Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn’t consume most animal products, and didn’t eat meat other than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancer through alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his first surgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.

9. His fortune

As the CEO of the world’s most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn’t unheard of in the corporate world  — Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually — Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple’s lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: “I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.”

In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares were valued at $377.64 — a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows no signs of slowing down.

He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. The largest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. If Jobs hadn’t sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (before returning to the company in 1996), he would be the world’s fifth richest individual.

While there’s no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from his marriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.

He was one of the key person bringing the true innovation to the world. He showed us how making the difference can change the world; He changed the way we interact with gadgets and computers. And when he left, he left behind a great deal of legacy of things he created and accomplished. He just changed the world.

Today, with this post, we’d like to pay our tribute to the Steve Jobs, the hero who rocked the technology industry, the Galileo of modern era, if you may. Let us look into the rocky life of this legendary visionary, and learn something from his never-regret life.

1955: The Adopted Son Of Paul Jobs

A child was born, and the world didn’t know that this child will change the world. Steve Jobs’ biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put him up for adoption.

Steve Job’s biological father – Abdulfattah John Jandali – a Syrian-bored VP of a casino in Reno, Nevada. (Image source: iPhone5news)

His biological mother later found out that the adopting mother had never graduated from college and that the father was even not graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when his parents promised that he would someday go to college.

1972: College Drop-Out

The young Jobs graduated from his high school, and joined the course at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. During the time, Jobs had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, and he was spending all of the money his parents had saved their entire life, so he decided to drop the course after only 1 semester, mainly because he cannot afford the course.

Photo of Steve Jobs (middle), 14 years old. (Image source: Edibleapple)

The financial difficulties didn’t stop the young man’s passion, he rolled auditing classes at Reed, collecting and returning Coke bottles just to get himself some food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.

Jobs’ senior high portrait. (Image source: Edibleapple)

1972: Jobs’ First Job

Jobs’ first job was with Hewlett-Packard, as a summer employee. He then later took a job as a technician at Atari, which was a famous video game manufacturer. He was given a job to create circuit board for the game, “Breakout”, and he collaborated with Steve Wozniak (later the co-founder of Apple Inc), they both made $750 selling the chip back to Atari.

Jobs and Wozniak. (Image source: Wired)

1974: Jobs Became A Buddhist

Jobs was sparked with the interest of philosophy during his days at Reed College. At the same year he took on his first job at Atari, he travelled to Neem Karoli Baba, India with Dan Kottke.

They went in search of spiritual enlightenment, he came back a Buddhist, with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.

1976: Apple Computer Was Born

Many believed Jobs was inspired by Atari’s founder Nolan Bushnell, and it got him started Apple Computer. In 1976, at the age of 21 years old, Steve Job founded Apple with his summer job co-worker at HP Steve Wozniak, making them the first and second Apple employees.

The company was later funded by an angel investor Armas Clifford Markkula, who brought in USD $250,000.

1983: “Sugar Water Can’t Change The World”

An uprising year of Apple. The company hired Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO, then in 1983, Jobs lured John Sculley (vice president and president) away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple’s CEO, with a very famous question:

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

During his days, he help increased Apple’s sales from $800 million to $8 billion. In 1987, Sculley was Silicon Valley’s highest paid executive, withdrawing USD $2.2 million annually.

1984: Jobs Introduced Macintosh

The legend of Jobs’ innovation has just started. Jobs introduced the Macintosh to the world, and it became the first commercially successful small computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). The Mac’s development was later taken over by Jobs.

The company went well, but the disaster was quietly planted within the hearts of the founders.

1985: Jobs Fired From Apple

A turning year of Apple and Steve Jobs. Following the internal power struggle and announcement of significant layoffs due to the pessimistic sales, Sculley took off Jobs as from being the head of the Macintosh division, and later Jobs was fired by his own founded company, Apple.

Nevertheless he described the firing is the best thing happened to his life, noting that “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

1985: Jobs Founded NeXT

The innovation journey of Jobs is not gonna end here. He founded another computer company, NeXT Computer which produced highly advanced computer, but was ignored by market with the primary reason, “cost-prohibitive”. Like any other Apple product, Jobs ran the NeXT with the obsession for aesthetic perfection, but only 50,000 units of the machines was sold.

Due to the production constraint, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.

1986: Jobs Founded Pixar

Jobs purchased the The Graphics Group for the price of $10 million, which is widely known as Pixar today. The company was initially producing the high-end graphic hardware, but as the business didn’t go well, the company then contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films, and the Toy Story made it a notable success.

Pixar was later purchased and taken over by Disney in early 2006. Jobs serves as director of Disney, the largest single stockholder with 7% of the company’s stock.

1996: Jobs Re-Joined Apple

Apple, being experienced a series of business and innovation failure, bought the NeXT to bring back the Jobs to the company. Jobs was then named as the interim chief executive. After the return of the Jobs, he terminated a number of projects which he thought was useless to the company’s business.

It’s quite interesting to note that Apple’s employee was having fear to encounter the Jobs while riding the elevator that time, fearing that they might be the next batch to be fired.

2004 (Mid): Jobs Diagnosed With Pancreas Cancer

They said every genius does not have longer life, and it appears to be true. Jobs was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas, which doctor advised him to get his affairs in order, and told him he should expect to live no longer than 3-6 months. For him, it means to say goodbye.

Jobs announced to his employees about his diagnosis. However, he also stated that it is rare, far less aggressive type tumor. He resisted the conventional medical intervention (chemotherapy/radiation therapy) and embraces the diet method to cure the disease. It was a successful tactic, the tumor was reported to be “apparently removed”.

2004 (End): Jobs’ First Medical Leave

After the surgery, Jobs, announced in his e-mail to Apple employees that he will take the entire August off to take care of his health, and expects to recover from the pancreatic cancer. He planned to return to work in September. Tim Cook (current Apple CEO), head of word-wide sales and operation at that time took over Apple for the first time.

2005: Jobs Delivered Speech At Stanford

Steve Jobs delivered his commencement speech to the Stanford’s graduate. The speech was split into 3 main topics, with the first part focused on his earlier life, second part on his leaving from Apple and founding of NeXT, and the currently infamous third part – the death.

The speech ended with the advice from Jobs – “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

2007: Jobs Introduced IPhone

6 months after telling the George Bodenheimer of ESPN that the company’s new phone sucks, Jobs unveiled the plan of entering the mobile market with his new and revolutionary iDevice, named iPhone, which later not only dominates the U.S. market, changing the way people using the mobile phone, but also forcing mobile giants like Nokia to innovate at its best.

2009: Underwent Liver Transplant

On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had “learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought” and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously acted as CEO in Jobs’ 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple, with Jobs still involved with “major strategic decisions.”

In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. Jobs’ prognosis was “excellent”. He had a liver of a young man, around 20 years old.

2010: Jobs Introduced IPad

Following the tremendous success of iPhone, Jobs took on the next risky step to introduce his another, and probably his last revolutionary product to the world – iPad. Once again Steve Jobs shocked the world by the device which can’t even be categorized into either computer or smartphone category, but its surprising success has once again proved the visionary power of the Jobs.

Despite the world’s hesitation on tablet computing, Steve Jobs went with what he believed. In 2010, Apple launched their first iPad.

2011 (June): Jobs’ Last Keynote

This was probably the last presentation of Steve Jobs. He announced iOS 5, the latest generation of Apple’s mobile operating system. He delegated most of the speeches to different Apple’s key employees, which pretty much hinted about his falling health.

2011 (August): Tim Cook, Jobs’ Successor

The cells are falling, the body is getting weak. Knowing that he could no longer serves as the CEO of the Apple, Steve Jobs announced his resignation, following the quote, “I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO”. He named Tim Cook as his successor, and thanked the Apple’s employees for working with him these years.

5th October 2011: The World Goes Job-Less

We know the time has come, but we didn’t expect it to come so soon, so suddenly. Today, Apple, by placing the portrait of Steve Jobs on its website, announced that Steve Jobs, the former CEO of the company, has passed away. This marks the end of a legendary visionary’s journey. His family, in a statement, said Jobs “died peacefully today surrounded by his family.”

We have yet to receive official word on this, but All Things Digital is reporting today that Apple’s next big media event will be held on October 4th, where freshly minted CEO Tim Cook is expected to unveil the iPhone 5. Sources close to the situation say Cook will be the main presenter at the event, with execs Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall and Eddy Cue playing supporting roles. This would mark the first time that Cook has actually led an Apple event, adding an extra wrinkle of significance to an already highly anticipated occasion. The site’s sources went on to say that the next-gen iPhone will be available for purchase “within a few weeks” of the announcement, though All Things Digital acknowledges that the exact date of its unveiling is still subject to change. As always, we’ll be sure to keep you posted as soon as we hear more.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPad.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://ipad.yourdomain.com [R=301]

This will redirect iPad users to a URL you specify.

There’s several other error documents that you might wish to customise.
400 – Bad request
401 – Authorization Required
403 – Forbidden directory
404 – Page not found
500 – Internal Server Error
For each one you want to use, simply add a line to your .htaccess file and create the corresponding page.

ErrorDocument 400 /errors/badrequest.html
ErrorDocument 401 /errors/authreqd.html
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/forbid.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/notfound.html
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/serverr.html

Trying it out

Now you need to see if it works. Type the URL of your website in your browser and add a random file name at the end. Something like “http://www.yoursite.com/dgsgdgsdgdsgg.htm”.
If everything has worked properly, you should now be seeing your custom error message. If not, then it’s possible your web host doesn’t allow you to have your own .htaccess files. You may want to contact them and ask.
If it worked then you can now make a proper 404 page. You can have your own images, text, in fact anything else you can have in a normal web page. The best 404 pages have the site logo and a few simple lines explaining what’s happened. If you have a site search, you could put that on it too in order to help visitors find what they’re looking for.

AuthType Basic AuthName "This Area is Password Protected" AuthUserFile /full/path/to/.htpasswd Require valid-user

Ideally, the .htpasswd file will be not in a public facing directory. Put this in there:

username:$apr1$Las8y/..$HhJxAOjuYr0q3DpZSmPbw/

That is just a sample, you can create the code for your unique username and password here.

Note that all subdirectories of this directory will also be password protected by this same system.

As the web evolves, new technologies are emerging and uniting in remarkable ways. The combination of Ajax and jQuery, in particular, is one of the most powerful unions to date.

The purpose of this article is to give a brief and generalized overview of both Ajax and jQuery, and also discuss how jQuery has made Ajax development easier than ever before.

What is Ajax?

Since its conception in 2005[1], Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has changed the web as we know it today. It’s helped websites evolve into Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) by allowing web pages to make direct requests to web servers without reloading the page. This capability is vital in replicating the rich user experiences achieved in client applications.

Ajax in Practice

Let’s say that you have a login form for your web application. To ensure that the provided login name and password entered by the user is a match without using Ajax, your web application would have to load a whole new web page that shows an account screen if the login was successful, or show an error screen if the login failed. This is the old way of handling logins.

A more savvy approach to this problem would be to check if the login and password is correct using Ajax.

Here’s how Ajax would work in this instance: Once the user has typed in a login name and password and submitted the login web form, you could have a JavaScript function that invokes an Ajax call that sends two parameters — the login name and password.

The web server (usually through a server-side script/language such as PHP) takes the two parameters and then queries your user database to see if there is a match.

If there is a match found in your database, then the web server can return a success flag. Otherwise, the web server could return an error message.

Next, you would then have a JavaScript function that accepts the Ajax response. If the response is successful, it could use window.location to send the user to their account screen.

If the response contains an error message, the application can display the error on the screen without ever reloading the page.

The main thing to take away from this is that you don’t have to reload an entire page just to handle username/password verification, making your web application more responsive and, if the page is heavy, saving you some significant bandwidth.

What is jQuery?

Released in January of 2006[2], jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side script of HTML.

Used by close to a million websites[3], jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in use to date.

jQuery makes it easy to handle DOM objects, events, effects and Ajax, automatically takes care of JavaScript leaks, and has countless third-party plugins.

The Problem with Ajax

Despite its revolutionary impact on the web, Ajax can be difficult to use even for veteran developers.

People will usually create their own custom functions to handle Ajax calls so that the functionality can be reused across a web application. This can become very tedious when a web application makes use of different types of Ajax calls — such as the ability to handle both synchronous and asynchronous calls — or the ability to handle different response formats such as string messages, HTML, CSV, XML, JSON, etc.

As a professional web developer, I’ve personally spent countless hours building custom methods to handle Ajax calls.

Traditional Ajax calls usually take on the following form:

function httpRequest(id)
{
	if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
	{ // code for IE7+, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari
		http=new XMLHttpRequest();
	}
	else
	{ // code for IE6, IE5
		http=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
	}
	http.onreadystatechange=function()
	{
		if (http.readyState==4 && http.status==200)
		{
			response = http.responseText;        // do something with response
		}
	}
	dest=”servlet.php?id=” + id;
	http.open("GET”, dest);
	http.send();
}

If your web application only uses one Ajax call, it’s not that big of a deal to implement. The problem occurs, however, when your web application leverages lots of Ajax calls and you try to break the code apart to make it reusable.

The idea of Ajax is to send a request to some web server, wait for a response, and update your HTML page. It would be convenient to create a custom function likehttpRequest() that takes two parameters — a request URL and a response function — that could be reused throughout your system.

Once you start setting this up, however, you’ll immediately see that the simple task of making an Ajax call suddenly becomes a nightmare when you try to construct response function evaluations using eval() and figuring out how to make your new function handle synchronous calls, asynchronous calls, and different response formats.

At the end of the day, the simple idea of creating a custom httpRequest() function quickly turns into a big project.

The other advantage of jQuery is that it has additional Ajax functions and methods that you can use, which can further reduce development and debugging time.

Hello Ajax. Meet jQuery.

Among other advantages, one of my favorite features of jQuery is its ability to leverage Ajax with very little effort. To make an Ajax call, you can do something like this:

$.Ajax
({
	type: "POST",
	url: "some.php",
	data: "name=John&location=Boston",
	success: function(msg)
	{
		alert( "Data Saved: " + msg );
	}
});

If you’ve developed Ajax applications before without jQuery, you’ll immediately see the value here. jQuery has put all of the properties of Ajax into one simple API. You can control everything including the url, cache, success function, data type, and even synchronization, all from one neat declaration. It’s nothing short of beautiful.

Get Started with Ajax + jQuery

If you’re not using a JavaScript Web Development framework like jQuery or MooTools yet, and you’re planning on creating responsive web applications, you should leverage these awesome libraries.

For jQuery, the following list highlights some tutorials you can check out.

• AJAX Contact Form without page reload
• Easy Ajax with jQuery
• How to Load In and Animate Content with jQuery