AJAX Buzzword Reinvigorates Javascript

samuel4242 writes "Javascript may have been with us since the beginning of the browser, but it's going through a renaissance as companies like Google create Javascript-enabled tools like Google Maps . There's even a nice, newly coined acronym , AJAX for "Asynchronous Javascript and XML". A nice survey article from Infoworld interviews Javascript creator, Brendan Eich, who says that this is what he and Marc Andreessen planned from the beginning. Perhaps AJAX will finally deliver what Java promised. Perhaps it will really provide a solid way to distribute software seamlessly."

Comments

Correct me if i'm wrong but...

[0kComputer]

Isn't part of this due to Microsoft's non-complient browser API?

Go ahead and mod me as flamebait.

AJAX Won't Deliver...

[NardofDoom]

... until every browser does things the same. A lot of the current applications for Google Maps (like this one) don't work in Safari.

Unless standards are complied with fully there can never be "one programming language" for web scripting. Anyone who's had to debug Javascript in IE that works in Firefox knows this.

Re:Slower than Java

[natrius]

Having to go back to the server again and again and again to get tiny amounts of data doesn't sound too nice to me.

That's what you do each time you click on a link to go to a different web page within a site. With AJAX, you only get the data you need. It's not slow. Have you used Google Maps? GMail? That's what's going on behind the scenes, and it makes the experience far better.

Java

[HRbnjR]

People keep talking like Java has failed and is now dead and gone.

I have been programming primarily in Java since 97, and if you ask me, it's just *starting* to pick up steam.

The language itself is just becoming mature - with big strides (generics, etc) in Java 1.5. And only now are we seeing alternate implementations to Suns, with GNU Classpath approaching a million lines of code, and GCJ compiled applications shipping in Fedora Core 4. Java applications such as Eclipse are also just starting to become popular, and Java API's for things like GNOME are just appearing on the horizon.

So quit calling Java dead :)

Open up AJAX

[iamthesamurai]

There is a need to standardize (as much as possible) the way that AJAX will work in the browser. There are a lot of code-writers and code-copy-n-pasters out there. When you visit one of these sites, you know because the browser may act funny due to poor programming/hacking of Javascript interacting with the server. AJAX is much bigger than just XML messaging, it's an opportunity to bring a more traditional application model to the browser via Event handling and dispatching. Notice that if you have an engine or framework that is well built, it's quite simple to add event handlers like key presses or mouse clicks or even drag-n-drop. If one was to script each element on a page, that gets heavy and can slow the browser. Which - btw, is why AJAX hadn't caught on until recently: computing resources were not sufficient in many cases.

That being said, everyone should look at http://www.sourcelabs.com/ajb/AJAX Mistakes. There's also a nice list being compiled at http://www.openajax.net/OpenAJAX .net. This combination of technologies has been around for a while, however, as people find them more useful and interesting, there is a need for good information and a solid foundation for folks to work off of.

Ajax and Java deliver the same promise

[davide marney]

Perhaps AJAX will finally deliver what Java promised. Perhaps it will really provide a solid way to distribute software seamlessly... (emphasis mine)

The "promise" of Java (write once, run anywhere) is exactly the same as Ajax. A big implmentation difference is in the runtime. Ajax's runtime is native to the browser; Java's runtime is not.

If what you need to do can be done with Ajax, then Ajax delivers on the promise, today. Java? Sure, it delivers big-time, if you can live with Web Start and deploying the runtime to every desktop.

Ajax should be welcomed by Java advocates everywhere. The marketplace are finally "getting it" regarding write once, run anywhere. The limitations of Ajax are substantial, so it won't be long before people need more muscle.

Re:Slower than Java

[ciroknight]

I'd rather go back to the server every time for a small, 2k object than go back to the server for 14k of HTML, and 160k of images/flash/multimedia/etc. For most application's, it's even a smaller object than that. Just look at Google Maps vs Mapquest. Every time you change zoom, Mapquest has to refresh the entire page, whereas G Maps, it's entirely seemless, and doesn't even seem like it's going to the server at all.

It's got some other potential uses I've been investigating as well. Brings back the whole HTML-based video game idea, now that you don't have to refresh the entire page to change one variable to something useful...

Are we sure it's the buzzword?

[twifosp]

I find it hard to believe that the buzzword itself breathed life back into Javascript like the title implies.

I think maybe the slick apps like google maps is finally showing what good code CAN do, instead of the bloated bug ridden javascripting of yesterday.

Or maybe I'm just not transcending expectations by thinking outside of the box, and therefore my toolset isn't capable of brigding the information gap causing a chasm with my ability to think forwardly.

I'm struggling to identify which is worse: The day when we report that a buzzword has made progress, or the day a buzzword actually creates progress.

Yeah, But...

[Greyfox]

You're still programming in a brain damaged environment. The browser provides a tiny fraction of what the entire system is capable of and a tiny fraction of the refinement of the programming interfaces that have been around since the '70's. The only way that programmers will be able to cope with these shortcomings will be to increase the scope of the browser until it pretty much becomes the OS. At which point we will have gone full circle.

That being said, this does look like the least annoying of a lot of really annoying hacks to attempt to shoehorn stateful programming into an inherently stateless paradigm. Personally I think we should be rethinking the underlying infrastructure before we build too much on top of it.

Re:Yeah, But...

[drix]

You're missing the point: you don't need that complexity any more. Google Maps basically gives me the ability to use a $300 thin client to accomplish (some of the) tasks I do at work using a $5000 Xeon machine with $10000 worth of ESRI software to do at work. What's more, if Google comes up with some way to make Google Maps better, like, say, add satellite images, they implement that functionality overnight and have millions of users using it the next day. Compare with the release-patch-rerelease paradigm of old. I don't consider JavaScript and the browser and it to be a brain-damaged programming environment--you just have to remember that you are no longer expected to do any heavy lifting on the client side, and the majority of the GUI tasks are already handled for you by the browser itself. Most of the "refinment[s] in programming interfaces that have been around since the 70s" were to simplify those very chores. In that sense, the limited functionality provided by JS is really quite elegant.

Also, emulating stateful-ness over the web is being handled at a much lower level than the browser these days, and to good effect. See Tapestry.

Re:widget set

[mmkkbb]

Well, that answers the age-old question: what do end-users need 4 GHz processors for?