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Building Richly Interactive Web Apps with Ajax

Posted by timothy on from the you-were-there dept.

FalsePositives writes "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications (from Adaptive Path and via Jeffery Veen) introduces their experiences with what they are calling 'Ajax' as in 'Asynchronous JavaScript + XML' aka the XmlHttpRequest Object. It is used by Google (Google Maps, Google Suggest, Gmail), in Amazon's A9, and a few others (like the map of Switzerland spotted by Simon Willison). ... Is this 'The rise of the Weblication'?"

6 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. new acronym by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative


    old technology, noob developers

    remote scripting has been around since 1998 with Dan Steinmans DynAPI, then Brent Ashley published his remote scripting and a plethora of remote scripting projects popped up on sourceforge

    the only thing new here are the developers/kids calling it Ajax when its nothing new or original at all, not to mention MS has had remote data binding on elemnts since IE4 !

    sheesh

  2. Re:Weblication? by stupidfoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I thought JSON was the new hotness?

  3. Sounds a lot like JPSpan by misleb · · Score: 5, Informative
    Does anyone know how Ajax compares with JPSpan? I've been using JPSpan in a Firefox plugin that I am working on and it is really nice. Basically it takes a PHP class and presents it to your JavaScript as a JavaScript object (after you create an isntance of it). As far as your web application is concerned, the object exists in the local context, but actually, the code is running on a remote server. JPSpan takes care of the XmlRequest stuff for you.

    -matthew

    --
    "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
  4. Re:Java app by Hamfist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Our company is arriving a bit late to the 'intranet' party, and I'm developing our Intranet in this style. Where you really notice the difference is:

    1. Speed - It f'ing fast
    2. Startup time - Instant
    3. Footprint - small
    4. Browser support - surprisingly consistent. Event models need some work, including Firefox.

    Did I mention that it's fast? Check out google suggest, realize that there's a round trip to the server going on in the background, and you'll get the picture.

    It also maintains suprisingly light code. You just register an event handler of some DOM element, and let the teensy bits of javascript pull up some fresh XHTML. This technique fits very well with simple event driven programming.

    Another nice thing is that you can use most whatever as a callback. I'm using good old PHP, as PHP snippets are fast and lightweight.

    I suspect we will be seeing alot much more of this.

  5. Re:AJAX? by Adhemar · · Score: 5, Informative
    Isn't that a cleaning powder?
    Yes, it is
    • a cleaning powder
    It is also
    • an ancient Greek king in Homer's Iliad. Well actually two:
      • Ajax the lesser of Locrian Ajax, son of Oileus, king of Locris
      • Ajax the Great or Telamonian Ajax, son of Telamon, king of Salamis
    • a Dutch football (in the soccer sense) team of Amsterdam, already mentioned
    • several ships of the Royal Navy
    • as already mentioned, a place in Ontario, Canada, named after one ot these ships
    • a character on the animated televion series Duckman
    • a car (actually several models)
    • several companies: a Californian boiler company, a Dutch fire security company.
    • a buzzword for a combination of technologies, see this Slashdot story.
  6. XmlHttpRequest The Easy Way by coldcanofbeer · · Score: 4, Informative
    For an easy to understand tutorial of XmlHttpRequest, check out http://www.webpasties.com/xmlHttpRequest/

    There you will be guided with baby steps on how to implement a city, state lookup based on zip.