New AJAX updating Room files available at the Barn

I have put the files for the new room up at the Barn.
You can get the zip file here:
http://www.encore-consortium.org/Barn/files/objects/EnCore/rooms_with_ajax.zip
The zip has two files one, ahah2.js, is the javascript that handles the AJAX communications.  This file should be put in a directory called edit_area in the root of your encore directory.  The other file is an @dump of a room with the  auto updating capabilities for the objects list.
This room has a property called js_base_url which is used if you cannot store the ahah2.js file in the encore directory. As long as the directory you have access to is on the same server as the moo it will work.
It is currently set to my directory at Literary Worlds so make sure you change it to your directory or set it to 0.
Let me know if you have questions or problems and also how it works for you if you try it out.
If you just want to see this room in action you can check out the test room at Literary Worlds by logging in as a guest at: http://brn227.brown.wmich.edu:7000/
Once logged in @go to #5446
There is a box there you can pick up and drop to see the update in action.
Enjoy
Ciao
KJ

New Experiment: Room contents display enCore V4

Continuing along on my experimentation with the user interface in enCore v4, it occurred to me that one of the issues I've had is how the room display is static, relative to the text side.  Where this can be an issue is with a busy class all logged in at once.  The text side is flying with all the comings, goings and chatting amonst the class members, while at the same time the room display, with the list of contents and exits, is frozen. Only a look command or click on the look icon will refresh it.

Several times I have entered a room with people chatting and they did not notice me entering because the text message scrolled past, lost in the chatter, and at the same time the list of the rooms contents didn't change either. They were quite surprised when I started talking!

How to get around that?

Here is my latest experiment... AJAX, Asynchronous Javascript and XML. This is the underpinnings of the infamous WEB 2.0 jazz we've been hearing about for years now.  I found a small javascript file called AHAH, Asynchronous HTML and HTTP, which is a simple implementation of AJAX that only deals with html rather than XML.  You can read about it here: http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/ahah

What this javascript file does is allow us to update PARTS of a webpage on demand or automatically without reloading the whole page. For my experiment I had it update the contents display of the room every second.  The javascript calls a verb on the room that sends back the current list of objects in the room.  The code then checks to see if the contents have changed since the last time and if so it updates the list in the display.

Very cool.

I had to change the SPANs with classes to DIVs with ids, which needed a bit of CSS gigerypokery to line up, but that was it.

The javascript file is very small so does not add any delay to the page when first loaded.

A pleasant surprise was the way the code was able to access the verb on the room, it did not need any path info at all, it knew the host it was being called from and simply returned the verb output without complaint. (Not sure why that works frankly)

This tool should have great use for interactive objects, since pieces of the display can change without having to refresh the whole lot.  Think of communication devices, games, viewports, graphics displays etc. According to the notes with the javascript there can be multiple instances of the updaters on the same page.

I will try to put the code into a package for the Barn in a bit.