Introduction to Spry

Spry is an Ajax framework library developed by Adobe. It provides easy-to-use simple Ajax functionality without sacrificing too much power for the simplicity or ease of use. You don't need to be a Javascript programmer or gruru to use Spry in fact you don't need to know a lot of Javascript at all to start using Spry.

The whole concept behind spry is to allow you to easily encorporate HTML, XML or JSON data into your pages without a lot of Javascript programming!

Spry manages to pull of some really powerful features with minimal Javascript code, and minimal Javascript knowledge. You will see by the many examples that I provide that setting up Ajax functionality using spry is simple and fast.

Installing Spry

The first thing you need to do is download the Spry library from the Adobe Labs website. Once you have done that you then extract the contents of the zip file into a directory of your choice. The zip file contains all of the library files in two flavors, one set of files is compressed to save space (meaning all the uncessary white-space has been removed), and the other has all of the white-space available so it is easier to read.

Once extracted you are done, you can start using the library in your web-pages or follow along with some of the tutorials I provide. You will quickly see how easy it is to use.

Spry Basics

Spry consists of three main parts, Data, Widgets and Effects. Spry data deals with retreiving data and then using it on the page. Widgets are pre-packaged advanced functionality, the markup for a widget is usually on the page in HTML and then the widget contructor converts the html into a functioning widget. Lastly are the Spry Effects. Effects are a combination of CSS and Javascript that cause things on the page to change color, shape or size; move from one place on a page to another or simply disappear.

Notice

All the tutorials I have written use the default css styles and files that come packaged with the Spry download.