Ajax basics help

[herghost]

Hi all,

 

I want to display some blocks of text (testimonials) on my website, however I want them to auto fade in/out every 3 seconds or so without refreshing the page, is this possible with ajax? Where would I start?

 

I know I could do it in PHP by assigning each testominial to an array, then using the rand() function to display one, however the user would have to refresh the page everytime to view a new one

[trq]

Ajax is used to make http request back to a server via Javascript. You may or may not need to use it to retrieve your testimonials.

 

What I would do would be to have php load all your testimonials into a Javascript array when the page is created and then simply use Javascript to display these one after the other as you describe.

 

How many testimonials do you expect to display?

[herghost]

Hi Thorpe,

 

Thanks for your reply, only 3 or 4 at the moment, but possibly upto 20.

 

Thanks

[trq]

Yeah, I would still think it best not to bother with any Ajax and just load them into a Javascript array and go from there. Do you know any Javascript at all?

[herghost]

Hi Thorpe,

 

Thanks, yes, well enough to give this ago, and I will never learn properly unless I try!

 

 

Cheers

[gamblor01]

herghost,

 

I'm not sure if this is precisely what you are looking for, but I saw a web page for a local restaurant that uses CSS to scroll pictures and text.  It doesn't fade in and out, but scrolls off the screen to display the next picture/text comment.  You might be interested -- if you view the page source you'll see the style sheets and looking at those will show you how to scroll:

 

http://www.yanagitx.com/

 

thorpe's idea sounds like a good one to.  So maybe if you can load them all into an array, you can use CSS to scroll through them.  If you have a tutorial on how to fade text in and out I would be interested to see that too!