Published on 2007-03-12 13:01:10
Your site may contain a wealth of technical terms. The user while viewing it may have to wonder about their meaning. What can be done to provide site visitors with instant answers to the questions they have? Previously technical terms were represented as links so that users could click them and get a definition window. This approach, however, is rather clumsy and time-consuming: one has to click the link, wait for the definition window to load and then close it. Now with AJAX we can move closer to users' expectations. We can make the message window appear instantly once the mouse is over the term and disappear when the mouse moves farther. This service will not affect the size of your web-pages. When the contextual help is required Java Script will get definition from an external dictionary and display it.
The method for getting information through an implicit request can be applied not only for technical dictionary. Have you ever wondered about the double underlined links in such projects as hotscripts.com and devarticles.com? This is context-dependent advertising based on IntelliTXT engine from Vibrant Media. When the mouse cursor points to such a link an advertisement window appears. This technology is referred to as in-text advertising.
Member of the PHP Magazine Network, Copyright (C) 2005-2008 phpmagazine.net All Rights Reserved