Visit The Site: www.potawatomilanguage.org/dictionary
Access to the Dictionary
As of December 1st 2009 I had put the dictionary under login-only access. If anyone would like temporary access to the dictionary to check it out I will be able to grant a temporary pass. I appologize for the inconvenience.
Description
Created 2009. I designed and developed this PHP driven dictionary to display over 7000 Potawatomi words and phrases. The site is driven by Object Oriented PHP and features a hand coded AJAX search suggest feature.
Once the initial page is loaded, clicking menu items and using the search suggest reloads content into the page with AJAX. This page is still SEO friendly though. If Javascript was turned off (simulating how Search Engines would crawl the site) the links would still work, but without the ajax feature.
Since there are over 7000 menu items, I built in the search suggest feature in order to make finding words easier. Every time a word is added, updated or deleted, an XML file is updated from the database and the AJAX is told to reset the cache for the search suggest. The search suggest then iterates through the XML list and finds words that match what the user is typing into the search suggest field.
This system allows multiple users to update the database via an inline form. These users can add words to the database from the site, or choose a word and then edit or delete it. This feature is powered by AJAX as well to ensure a smooth user experience.
Site Features
- Object Oriented PHP Backend
- AJAX Search Suggest
- MySQL database that contains the words, user info and cache settings
- Pictures and audio that are easy to add to dictionary elements
Skills Employed
- Custom XHTML, and CSS
- Standards Compliant, Cross Browser Compatible Code
- PHP Development
- MySQL Database Design
- Dynamic XML Development
- Javascript Development