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'?"

Comments

Weblication?

[Neil Blender]

No more cutesy terms, please.

Re:Weblication?

[PopeAlien]

.. aw c'mon. you're just jealenvious that you didnt inventrify such a fabutabulous e-term.

right?

think of the infotainment value!

Compatibility?

[nizo]

Is Ajax compatible with the Odysseus web security tool or will it just cause Ajax to die a horrible death?

new acronym

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Java app

[dfj225]

Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere, but if you really want something on the web to feel like an app, why not make it a Java app that runs in the browser? With all the different browsers and how they each handle Javascript differently, I much rather write something in Java and know it will almost always work on different platforms. Anytime I have to do something in Javascript, it almost always feels like a hack. I can't imagine writing something like the stuff Google does in Javascript. Is there really an advantage to doing stuff this way over the Java way?

Re:Java app

[MyIS]

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.

Re:Java app

[Hamfist]

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.

Re:Also Check out Bits of News

[pe1rxq]

Ajax isn't a technology... its a cute name for a bunch of existing technologies.

Basicly they found that you could make webpages update themself without completly reloading if you trow a lot of buzzwords at it.

You could do this a long time ago without xml....
I did it a while ago for a database app.. The page contained a piece of javascript that was started when a input field changed. This triggered the loading of a external .js file that just happened to be a cgi script. This cgi script would do some database queries and generated some javascript code that would update all the other fields on the client.

Jeroen

Sounds a lot like JPSpan

[misleb]

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

Re:JavaScript ? I'm out.

[cabra771]

Dude. Seriously. It's 2005. Time to put down the Netscape 4.7 and walk away.

Re:AJAX?

[Adhemar]

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.