MX AJAX Toolbox for Dreamweaver

Ever since AJAX burst in the web design world, developers have been scrambling to determine the best framework to use when developing their sites. I won’t be the only one to say that there are a huge number of frameworks available. Being a web designer using Dreamweaver, a lot has been cut down on development time and not having such a technology at hand was a bit disappointing.

Dreamweaver is without doubt one of the best web authoring tools available in the market for the Windows & MAC platform (been using it since version 1.0). Not only does it allow you to build websites in quick and intuitive way but it can be extended with 3^rd party extensions to make the task of developing websites a lot easier. But as any web authoring guru will say, you are only as good as the tool you use. In other words, you need to know the basics of web design and dynamic application development. If you know these, then Dreamweaver will be a pleasure to work with. If you are a seasoned developer or someone who is just starting out with Dreamweaver, and you want extensions to quickly build your websites, then I suggest you take a good look at the extensions from InterAKT.

InterAKT have been building extensions for Dreamweaver for the past few years but I have been using their extensions extensively for the past year and believe me when I say that your will save hours on development time. Some of their extensions range from the superb MX Kollection to MX Kommerce .

An upcoming extension from InterAKT is the MX AJAX Toolbox. If you are a fan of Dreamweaver and are looking into adding AJAX features onto your site, then this is one product you need to get.

" MX AJAX Toolbox is the InterAKT product that allows you to build AJAX-based websites in just a few steps. It's a well-known fact that a web application that employs AJAX is much more difficult to build than a classic one (that does not use AJAX). This is where MX AJAX Toolbox comes to ease your work, and it simplifies it tremendously. " - Extract taken from the InterAKT help file.

MX AJAX Toolbox offers the following features:

• AJAX Tabset Wizard
• AJAX Accordion Wizard
• AJAX Collapsible Region Wizard
• AJAX Dialog Box Wizard
• AJAX Dynamic Table Wizard
• AJAX Photo Gallery
• AJAX Rating
• AJAX Suggest Text Field Wizard
• AJAX Drag and Drop Wizard
• AJAX Drag and Drop Ordering
• AJAX Web Service Wizard
• Edit Panel States
• Add Panel
• Add State
• AJAX Link
• Go to Master Page
• Manage Layout Changes
• Preview in browser

These can be accessed from the MX AJAX toolbar (show below) from the Dreamweaver interface or from the Server Behaviors menu.

One of the features that I particularly like about this extension is the ability to create a new AJAX site from scratch. No more need to decide the framework you wish to use, no more need to manually have to add the JavaScript files that are needed. All this is done for you at the click of the mouse button. In 2 simple steps, you can have an AJAX site template ready to be customized to your needs. Now that is what I call quick.

What happens if your JavaScript is turned off? Well nothing to worry here, any applications you build with MX AJAX will have graceful degradation implemented. This means that the AJAX applications will still work even if the JavaScript has been turned off.

There is a superb demo of what MX AJAX Toolbox can do. You can find it here .

MX AJAX Toolbox is scheduled for release sometime next week, so check back here for updates.

Read the MX AJAX Sneak Preview Article here

Seeing as this has been my first beta testing experience, I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed. I may not been able to participate as much as I wanted to in ironing out the bugs, but testing the MX AJAX Toolbox has been a great experience and I am definitely looking forward to more of them.