Address Book DHTML GUI
My little address book GUI is a demo on the internet, so it doesn't update its database. It's also a prototype – don't look too closely at the code, yet. There are some fairly obvious bugs, too.
Those caveats aside, there are some interesting aspects to the application.
My favorite is that – with recent browsers – form fields don't have to look hideously ugly. You can also show or hide content dynamically, save state information in a cookie, and do worthwhile validation before submitting a form.
Because current Mozilla browsers still make ugly select lists, I made an imitation select list widget for the edit screen. While the fake widget works reasonably well, it isn't ready for prime time, either. There are accessibility issues, and some odd quirks due to strange browser behaviors with cached pages: if you use the back button to go back to the edit screen, some browsers will keep the actual value of the hacked widget, but mess up the visual highlighting – highlighting the originally selected field, not the one you changed.
As a prototype for an address book, some problems are apparent. You would actually use fieldnames to match the vcard standard, for starters. Even more important, a real address book needs to be able to synch, import, and export records.
The current back-end framework is only used for convenience. If I ever develop this interface further, it will be for a more sophisticated back-end that is currently in development.
In the meantime, this prototype/demo only needs to be pretty to look at.
Copyright © 1998-2011 J. R. Boynton