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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."
Set your content type to "text/javascript" and you can send data over the network and have it be perfectly legal and ready to use. NO XML PARSING!
JSON (JSON.org) just happens to be legal Python syntax... which makes me think...
hmmm.... Google has a huge server farm and is renowed for using Python... Google Maps talks client/server using Javascript, not xml... Python and Javascript shared JSON sytax for serializing objects... hmmm...
It is a very efficient combo: Python, Javascript, JSON, mod_python.
The thing that's different about an AJAX application is that the application has no file system hooks. About the only things it could read datawise are cookies, and if you're that afraid of webobjects, you've probably already got them disabled and you probably have a hard time with even the simplest websites (read: slashdot).
Note, this doesn't stop the annoyance factor. Those stupid flash ads will eventually become those stupid AJAX ads, as SVG matures into something usable, and people code more SVG-AJAX apps. But we've still got some time.
Besides, AJAX could do some good. I could think of it as possible to build a quick and dirty AJAX application to check if the packages on a system are out of date (yes, re-inventing the wheel is bad, but if you're changing the whole framework, sometimes you have to). Or any of the other millions of applications Dashboard widgets are already doing today.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Here's a demo in a proper web page:
http://www.blakespot.com/xml.html
Good stuff.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
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The XML part of XmlHttpRequest is a bit misleading - you don't have to use XML and parse it in the client. If you use a server process that generates an HTML fragment, you can replace the innerHTML of a target id easily.
I made a JAH example to show how easy this is.
JAH stands for Just Async HTML
The idea behind Ajax *does* revolutionize the web paradigm.
Don't be silly. It's a nice optimisation. It's very useful, and I use it a lot, but it's not revolutionary.
For example, rather than load a form, and all the form formatting to make the text fields line up correctly, and all the validation code to validate that form, you load a series of XML tags that contain only the basic information needed to tell the client how to lay out the form.
Huh? An external stylesheet and generic script loaded from cache means the only thing you need in your HTML are the form controls and a couple of regexps to drive the script. You want to replace that with dynamically loading XML? That's over-engineering that reduces quality.
The client takes care of generating the HTML for the form
Sounds like you've just made your application dependent upon Javascript. That's not good practice, and law requires an accessible alternative in many places, so you either don't do this, or have to code the functionality twice, once with Javascript, once without.
Those who have used good Ajax sites (google maps, gmail) should understand the power behind it, and these sites only break the tip of the ice berg.
Have you actually looked at the gmail code? It's hideously bad.