You see them popping everywhere on your favorite websites. These cool effects that seemed to be possible only in flash websites. Javascript and ajax effects are getting more and more popular, and this popularity is built around two names : script.aculo.us and moo.fx.

Those two are javascript effects librairies allowing you to insert pretty cool visual effects in your website. Script.aculo.us is probably the most used actually. We tried it a month ago when we updated the homes listings. Using it, we were able to display the google maps and big pictures without reloading the page, and without having to download them before the user clicks. Only problem was that the librairy’s weight (50Ko) caused our pages to load much slower.

That’s when Moo.fx comes in handy. This librairy contains all the effects that we need and weights only 3Ko. No wonder their quote is “Moo.fx - size does matter”. How do they describe it?

“moo.fx is a superlightweight, ultratiny, megasmall javascript effects library”. Wow!

Why are we using it so much on the new homepage?

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Damn, I just received an email from the Google team telling me that there is a problem with my xml file. Seems like the Bulk Upload program doesn’t accept the canadian currency for our houses prices. Also, we are forced to display a USD price onto our own pages.

I think that I’ll display the USD price with the CAD, but only when a visitor is coming from Google Base. This should be easy to detect using the $_SERVER[”HTTP_REFERER”] variable.

I began this week to test the Google Base beta projet API and bulk upload program.
Google Base is an online database provided by Google into which any user can add almost any type of content. A major component of Google Base is acting like a classified ads service. Some US real estate brokers are already listing their properties in this database and they seem pretty satisfied with the results and visits they get. We figured out that posting the homes for sale from ByTheOwner to Google Base could be a great idea to get additionnal visibility on our clients’ listings.

There a 3 ways to list a home for sale on Google Base.

1. Fill a online form describing the home for sale : Works great, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be the one filling all the forms for the properties on ByTheOwner, eheh
2. Work with the Google Base API, wich is quite simple if you get started with the demo.
3. Bulk upload. You first create a spreadsheet or xml file containing a list of items you want to send to google. Then you upload the file in your Base account and google processes the items in the file.

At first, I started with the API cause I wanted to send the ads to google instantly when the homes were created on ByTheOwner. But the need to get authentified with google everytime made my program very unpleasant to use. I figured out that the best option for me was the bulk upload. So I’m working on a script that will create a xml file containing all the active listings on ByTheOwner every morning. I’ll just have to upload the file to Google Base and Ta-Da!

I sent a first 20 homes batch on friday for testing purpose and it seems to work pretty well. Only problem I see is that the description is incomplete in the search results. I’ll start uploading all of our clients ads as soon as I’ll get this fixed.

ByTheOwner.com brings together a targeted group of people who are currently completing an important event in their lives: buying and selling their home. This is a time when they will need several different products and services.

Many business owners were contacting us every week to advertise their services on our website. The new Real Estate Ressources section of the website now allows them to buy visibility for their company directly online according to their needs and budget.

You would like more infos on the service?