What is meant by Dynamism in Web Applications

Gerb68

Hi
Could anybody could tell me what "dynamism in web applications" means to them? I'm trying to develop a web application for my 4th year thesis that will incorporate dynamism and interactivity. I was hoping to develop something using HTML5 and CSS3 with HTML5 APIs showcasing interactivity.
When I think of dynamism I think of techniques such as AJAX & JSON and their implementation within a 3 tier client/server architecture but I'm not sure whether or not I'm missing something.

Any help with this would be greatly received

Thanx
Ger

onemorechance

Facebook might be the best example of a dynamic website; it's generated dynamically for each user, e.g. when you log-in it will generate the latest posts from your friends, and changes dynamically as you view it, e.g. an alert tells you as soon as a friend has messaged you.

Boards.ie is a dynamic website, your username appears on the top right when you are logged in. If you choose to follow threads, your username will be updated to display a red number alongside to indicate a new post has been made in a followed thread.

Websites like Yahoo let you decide what news items to give preference to when you go ot the site, e.g. you may prefer to see the sports news rather than current affairs each time you visit the home page.

These kind of features require a user account (database backend / 3rd tier), or at the very least cookies, to store the users preferences and details. A website may ask you a language preference or your location when you visit it for the first time, then store a cookie so that it will remember your choice for future visits and generate a web page based on your cookie.

Another way is to detect certain info, such as ip (not always a reliable indicator of location) and use this to show local information such as the local weather.

AJAX is used to send and receive data between the web browser and the server. The data received from the server can then be used to update the webpage dynamically, such as on facebook when a friend adds a new post and you see it appear on the top part of the page, or on boards.ie when the red number appears next to your name.

JSON is an efficient data structure to use for sending data over networks; it's more efficient than sending xml over a network.

Talisman

Dynamism in Web Applications is essentially Web 2.0

In the first generation of web applications/sites the content was static, the web experience has evolved and now the content is dynamic and the second generation is more akin to traditional desktop applications.

AJAX, search, tagging, personalisation, social networks and web services would all be examples of dynamism in web applications.

bpmurray

What they said but also "responsive" - try using Bootstrap.

Fussgangerzone

Broadly, I take it to mean a site that adapts to different situations well and gives the appropriate user experience.

User account driven experiences have been given and is a good example.

Responsive design is, in my opinion, a must-have for a modern website. The only time I don't put it into a site is when clients aren't willing to pay for it.
You get most of the way towards a responsive site by using media queries in your css.

Gerb68 wrote: »

[...]
I'm trying to develop a web application for my 4th year thesis that will incorporate dynamism and interactivity.
[...]

If you don't mind me asking, are you incorporating these features for their own sake, or to meet specific business requirements of the project?
Or is your project about seeing how far you can take the technology?

Feathers

Literally, not static — which could go anything from sometimesredsometimesblue.com, right up to 3D visualisations of the stockmarket in real-time