The Frost Ajax library is a tool for Ajax development on constrained browsers, such as micro browsers on mobile phones or gaming consoles.
It is intended to abstract the use of either the XMLHttpRequest object (XHR) or an equivalent ActiveX control and therefore make Ajax development on mobile phones or other constrained devices easier.
The goal with Frost is to provide the community with a library that can help to implement Mobile Ajax applications and Mobile Widgets.
Frost is free and licensed under the terms of the MIT license.
Approach
Frost follows a very, very minimalist approach. The library is aimed at the very lowest common denominator in constrained browsers, so you can use Ajax even on browsers that do support Ajax, even if the level of Ajax support in those browsers is very rudimentary (yes this means IE Mobile 2003).
Our goal is to limit not only functionality, but also the size of the downloadable file in order to adapt not only to browser-, but also to bandwidth constraints.
To reach this goal, Frost consists of 3 main components:
a test page to collect available support for Ajax and related technologies in constrained browsers
an adaptively outputted JavaScript file to be included in web applications
Here’s a video of the Frost demo page showing some of it’s functionality:
Browser Testing
There is a browser test page available here: http://pwmwa.com/frost/. You simply have to click one link. The page currently detects the following:
JavaScript (getElementById) support
XMLHttpRequest object or ActiveX support
innerHTML for DIV tags (this is not stored in stats yet)
The URL is short and can be typed easily with a phone. Use the page to test whether your phone/other device supports Ajax or not!
We’re currently working on testing for the following:
body onload event handler (in body tag and in script)
getElementByTagName availability
basic DOM operations
Here’s a video of how the basic version of the browser test pages look like, there will be changes to this soon though:
Browser Support Chart
The browser support chart is currently in the works, it will be made available once we tied it together with WURFL to filter out desktop browsers. We also want to contribute to the WURFL project and make our findings available to them.
Download Latest Version
As well as above parts, this one is in the works - until now only a pre-alpha version is available and intended to produce feedback on the initial approach!
The Download consists of the JavaScript library file, a PHP script to detect the browser and to filter the JavaScript library file according to the current browser support chart (this part doesn't work yet) which will also be included as an XML file.
Download the second pre-Alpha version of Frost here (changed: 12/11/2007) - Please refer to the included README files!
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The Frost Ajax library is a tool for Ajax development on constrained browsers, such as micro browsers on mobile phones or gaming consoles.
It is intended to abstract the use of either the XMLHttpRequest object (XHR) or an equivalent ActiveX control and therefore make Ajax development on mobile phones or other constrained devices easier.
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