AJAXify Your Wordpress Blog wuth AJAXWp

JavaScriptSearch
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; 04:44 AM

Technologist and entrepreneur Gianni Milanesi has created a lightweight JavaScript enhancement that adds AJAX functionality to WordPress blogs. It speeds up load times, increases the responsiveness of the user interface and gives the blog an overall cooler look.  The script can be downloaded at giannim.com/blog/index.php?page_id=13/.

On the project's webpage you can easily switch between AJAX-enabled and vanilla Wordpress.

Basic installation of the script requires moving three files to the Wordpress installation directory and pasting several line of code into the header.php file of the current blog theme. AjaxWp degrades gracefully and leavse the blog functional even for users with JavaScript disabled.

Unlike many typical AJAX applications, AjaxWp also supports bookmarking and has built in browser history management, so users can navigate through the blog using the browser back and forward buttons.

The script operates transparently by parsing the (X)HTML of the blog, and adding onclick event handlers to all links that point to internal blog pages. When a user clicks on a link AjaxWp traps the event and, instead of letting the browser navigate to the target page, requests the target page with AJAX. The requested page is then parsed by the AjaxWp engine, filtering out redundant markup (like the header and footer), and inserted in the designated area of the blog.

AjaxWp can work in two modes: Quick, minimal configuration and faster deployment; and Optimized, greater performance and optimization.  Specifics on installing either option are available at the project's website.