Using Ajax Shelf to Help Users Find Pages on Suncoast Site

by Tom Johnson on Jan 29, 2007
categories: technical-writing • wordpress

I've been experimenting with an "Ajax shelf" to help users find pages better on the Suncoast chapter site. The Ajax shelf is like a web component that slides up and down when you click a button. I think it's pretty cool. Here's an example:

Shelf is hidden:

When the user clicks the View Pages link, the shelf expands:

When the shelf expands, it has the effect of sliding down. When you click the View Pages link again, the shelf slides back up.

I've decided to store all my pages on the Ajax shelf. Because I'm using the Suncoast chapter site as a little CMS, I'm hoping that this way of organizing the pages will make it easier for users to find information.

I'm still tweaking the Suncoast site, but what do you think of the Ajax shelf part?

The theme I am using has the Ajax shelf functionality, but you can apparently add a shelf to your blog manually by following this tutorial. (I haven't tried the tutorial.)

Ajax, by the way, is just javascript, and stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Keith Hoffman wrote more about Ajax in his Intercom article on Web 2.0. Hoffman mostly talks about the collaboration functionality that AJAX provides with online word processing programs. He says Ajax allows multiple authors to simultaneously work on a document and have each person's changes saved instantaneously. So Ajax has many different applications — the shelf is just one.