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Building Richly Interactive Web Apps with Ajax
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'?"
First of all, almost any PC will have a semi-recent IE installed (or Firefox for the more enlightened), and that is already enough to run Google's stuff.
Compare that to the Java plugin requirement, which, sad to say, is pretty far behind in availability on most PCs.
Also, Javascript-based stuff is easier to program, trust me on this. Layout of elements is much easier - and it can be done in any decent HTML editor. Finally, there's no thread-related insanity that AWT/Swing bring to the table.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
I bet someone else will post the exact same thing, but instead they will replace Java with Flash...
I think the point is that you don't need to insert an object or rely on a 3rd party enviroment. You can do it in Javascript.
Also, the reason this is so very cool is that it doesn't tie your applicaiton into a backend of any kind, you can scale your backend as long as it spits out XML. I think this is the reason so many of the big companies are going to it. They require a bit more flexibility on that end.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Adaptive Path Services: "We evaluate your site and offer detailed recommendations."
wait wait, this is rich, let me get this straight: a web design company wrote a article saying what you're using now is the "old" sucky way and their new stuff is the way to go??
hold on! this is revolutionary! ;)
Not that AJAX isn't great, i'm sure it is, but this is like reading a article on how great a new car is that was written by the manufacture. Perhaps a more unbiased article needs to be submitted before I believe it.
oh and mod me +5 flamebait cuz i have so much karma i'm sniffing clouds.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
function getDataDOM(url){
data = (!window.XMLHttpRequest)? (new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")):(new XMLHttpRequest());
data.onreadystatechange = readyStateChangeFunction;
data.open("GET",url,true);
data.send(null);
return data;
};
You were saying?
Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit.
Can I say it again?
Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit.
I write these kinds of apps. I have been doing so for years now. I haven't written a browser-fork in code in AGES. I don't even use the hacks in CSS for chrissakes. They aren't needed.
Remind me never to hire you mmm kay?
No Comment.
Am I missing something, or is this company coming in late to the party and trying to coin the term "Ajax" as if they started the party themselves? Sounds like marketing BS to me. Just take a look at some of their wording. It's as if Google used Adaptive Path to create their client-rich interfaces:
Google is making a huge investment in developing the Ajax approach. All of the major products Google has introduced over the last year -- Orkut, Gmail, the latest beta version of Google Groups, Google Suggest, and Google Maps -- are Ajax applications. (For more on the technical nuts and bolts of these Ajax implementations, check out these excellent analyses of Gmail, Google Suggest, and Google Maps.) Others are following suit: many of the features that people love in Flickr depend on Ajax, and Amazon's A9.com search engine applies similar techniques.
eTrade SUCKS
If one wants to look up addresses every single day, and requires advanced features of some form to do so, I'm sure your solution would be a "better" one. But since I just need to find directions now and again, Google Maps is the perfect solution - minimal, yet extremely user friendly and intuitive.
As for "custom protocol" and "dedicated network client"... Why? We have technologies like XML so that we don't need to write a new format or parser for every task we have. Who knows, though, if you're quick developing such a system the hardware developments in the meantime might not make your efficiency gains negligable. But I doubt it.
There are things that custom client/server models are good for. This is unlikely to be one of them for its user-base. And the people who need a faster network map system probably already have one.
Which existing technologies? Google's use of remote scripting (that's the name it's had for years, I don't see the need to change it) uses HTML, CSS, Javascript and XMLHttpRequest.
Given that XMLHttpRequest has been used in relation to these technologies for just under six years, and that before that, invisible inline frames were used to do similar things, I fail to see how this is a novel combination of technologies. In fact it's hard to conceive of a use of XMLHttpRequest that didn't use these technologies.
GMail is the most complex example of it I have seen. GMail is the most popular example of it I have seen. But "complex and popular" does not mean "innovative" unless you are looking in a Microsoft dictionary.
Please go back and read what I wrote. I know this is impossible in those browsers. That's the whole basis for graceful degradation.
It is certainly possible to build a webmail application that works in Lynx and Netscape 4. It won't be very fancy, but it will work.
You can make it much more user-friendly for more advanced browsers in one of two ways.
Do it the Google way, and construct a Javascript behemoth that fails to function at all in browsers that don't support every feature Google wants.
Do it so that it degrades gracefully, so if a browser doesn't happen to have all the features you use, it falls back to less onerous requirements.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised that Google don't understand this better. If pages didn't degrade gracefully, the Google search engine itself would not be possible.
I should also note that we don't have to go back to browsers like Netscape 4 and Lynx when talking about this stuff - the latest releases of Konqueror, Opera and Safari have all had problems dealing with the GMail code.