YAF4AJN  -  Introduction

Yet Another Frontendcontroller For Ajax-Json-Networks

YAF4AJN is an Ajax library which allows the web developer to create frontends for Rich Internet Applications without writing javascript code - neither in pages, nor in included javascript-files: The backend application deliveres values which are encoded into json variables. For using these values the frontend developer now only has to name the presenting html tags of his page like the variable names. The rest does YAF4AJN itself... automatically.

YAF4AJN is 'Yet Another Frontendcontroller for Ajax-JSON-Networks'. The name is spoken like the german phrase ja fein ([ja: fain] ~ ok, that's fine). YAF4AJN is a sort of "javascript library" suporting the quick and easy development of Ajax based rich internet applications without writing (complex) javascript code. [ Yes, the developer need not writing javascript code, but he can. And even than his code can be really simplier than without YAF4AJN. ]

As Ajax library YAF4AJN allows a nearly complete separation of content and computation: Instead using the serverside computing of pages or html-snippets on the base of templates and dynamic values (like JSP or PHP), YAF4JN pages are created as static html content. These pages are directly delivered to the client browser: the webserver doesn't change them. Instead of this the browser itself requests the "missed" dynamic values. An applicationserver computes these values asynchronously and deliveres them as pure values to the browser, not as "html-snippets" or anything else. And finally the browser itself inserts the received values into the DOM tree.

Developer and Designer can take two advantages of "Yaf4ajning" a page:

  1. The user experiences a nice behavior: he can directly use the page (scrolling, filling formulars, click menu entries) while values still are subsequently embedded and presented when they are known / computed. Hence No longer any blocking, keep it flexible and directly usable.
  2. And the developer must only do two things for Yaf4ajning his pages:
    • He has to embed the yaf4ajn javascript files into his pages
    • He has to tag the missed values
    And the yaf4ajn library does all the other things. Hence: No longer developing complex javascript code, keep it small and simple.