samisdat at cssNeustart

samisdat is the larges and long term web thing i ever did so far.
I started this AJAX stuff last summer and in the beginning i noticed, that i have to change my design and coding process.

I started previous versions of this site and other projects always by thinking about it’s structure: What should be placed at the left, what on right hand and what should be on top.
Using AJAX there is another dimension: I had to think about what happens before, while and after. Beginning this relaunch this was more complicate then i thought it will be.

But after more then 8 month this is the first beta version of samisdat 2.0.

I hope that you like it and that it will work for you. But i know that it will not work in every browser. (Here are some more informations about supported browsers.)

XHTML

samisdat is made of valid und semantic XHTML or how it is now pronounced: POSH.
That a website consists of XHTML is not worth to mention, but i want to write about POSH, too.

Besides the semantics i tried to bring the page elements into a logical sequence: Source code starts with the navigation, then the main content and last but not least the sidebar.

A little bit of divitis: was not to be avoided, because of the AJAX FX. But all pages should be accessibly without Javascript.
I tried to realize both: Nice Javascript FXs but keeping the whole page accessible without them.

JavaScript

In the core the Javascript things here are complete unnecessarily and senseless:
I used over 2000 lines of Javascript to make some browsers do what the are are able to do without Javascript:
Transferring data. Instead of HTTP i used AJAX.

So there is no deeper sense within samisdat besides that i had a lot of fun and i learned tons.

Without using prototype and script.aculo.us i wouldn’t finished yet.

AJAX

If you want to be correct, i’m not using AJAX here. It is more like AJAJ.
I noticed, that its quite easy to generate XML though PHP, but JSON is much easier to process.

Textpattern

basis, foundation and base OF samisdat is Textpattern.

With something around 3000 lines i extendet Textpattern:

• To Delivering JSON
• To patter Bilangalt texts
• To spupport tags
• To paginate articles
• To generate table of content for large articles

This should be all for a shot overview. To be continued…