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Microsoft to Release AJAX Framework
An anonymous reader writes "News.com is announcing that Microsoft has announced plans to release a JavaScript client framework library for use with ASP.NET 2.0 that makes AJAX style browser clients easier to code. Developers who attend Microsoft's PDC conference in September have been promised an early release of the code."
It only really works well with IE...
Is Atlas any different from Client-side CallBacks which is a long known feature of asp.net 2.0? I suspect it is not different. If not, it's interesting how Microsoft's marketing department got several news outlets (eWeek, InformationWeek) to report a long known feature as news.
Now maybe I'm just entirely on crack here, but didn't Google recently announce or imply that they're going to be releasing their own internal AJAX framework?
Developers who attend Microsoft's PDC conference in September have been promised an early release of the code.
This is Microsoft pre-beta software were talking about, right?
Probably delivered in on 5.25" floppies, in a grease stained paper bag with the word "BILL RULZ$" written with crayon on the side.
Sign me up!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
does it have scrubbing bubbles?
I'll just hold my breath until they ship.
You call that a troll? I have a whole beltway full of trolls better than that!
They've had the ability to "innovate" and make their browser into a "rich client" for years. Now that folks like google and amazon have figured how to make DHTML work, Microsoft is playing catch up. Let's hope if it does become a de facto standard that Mozilla can reverse engineer it.
With AJAX you have to do a check on how to instantiate an XMLHTTPRequest object. MS implements it via ActiveX (read: really stupid).
... and doesn't even bother checking of window.XMLHttpRequest is a valid object (i.e. the correct way of doing things).
I've got money that says their "framework" starts like this:
var req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
Of course there's any number MS only javascript methods that'll probably litter this "framework" as well.
Another wedding of Microsoft and new technology. (Something old, something new^H^H^HMicrosoft, something borrowed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft, something blue.)
Hmmmm,
Serially, AJAX maturing, in my opinion is a good thing. But standard caveats and disclaimers apply. If Microsoft is implementing this in their development suite and you are on a team destined (fiat or otherwise) to use AJAX in this context, make sure you investigate thoroughly all settings, flags, and usage and ramifications in the user world. Historically, if you use Microsoft's flavor of anything, it won't be comaptible with much. (Ironically, this new development actually sits on top of something Microsoft originated, though did little with thereafter.)
MS is really lagging on AJAX and you can trust MS do to it non DOM compatible way and IE only ;-)
.net platform. Is it me or has .net hype already vanished as well as webservice-em-all FUD from MS ?
:
They are trying to bring more buzz into their
For any AJAX adicts down there my favorite blog is
http://www.ajaxian.com/
If we were using RiA solution instead of HTML page for applications, AJAX would not be required to implement an acceptable application ergonomy.
It's nice that large companies are starting to jump on the AJAX wagon. Now it's more important that we have a good OSS solution--especially before MS hogs all the good patents.
HIJAX...
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal...
This is a transparent attempt on Microsoft's part to avoid being crushed by the rising juggernaut of web app development that is Ruby On Rails. If RoR has an AJAX framework, then ASP.NET has no choice but to follow in its footsteps in hopes of eking out some meager semblance of survival on David Hansson's waste products.
Bow, Microsoft, bow before your Ruby masters!
---------
get your war on
This is the company who needs to change their motto to: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
that this has the same name as Duckman's idiot son or merely foreshadowing?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Has anyone actually tried parsing XML using javascript??
.NET boys are being forced to use XML for everything (internal and external), it will make their sites very slow, keeping on the upgrade gravy-train.
Slow doesnt even begin to describe it... I found that using either plain ol' CSV or even actual JS (which gets evaluated client side), are far far quicker.
Still, I am glad that all the
Namely, the Blue Crystals of Death.
Why can't it just support ^W like UNIX terminals do
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Pfft. AJAX is easy. It's cross-platform AJAX that's brutally hard. You expect us to trust Microsoft to create a framework that will allow perfect portability between Opera, Safari, Mozilla and MSIE? Uh huh.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
The nice thing about AJAX is that it works in all modern browsers. (And it makes for dynamic pages too.) So a framework that requires .NET is a step backwards.
Read up his blog post:
http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000471.html
So the RoR creator boasts that microsoft is late to adopting AJAX. Didn't Microsoft invent XMLHttpRequest?
IMHO, this is going to make serializing data in ASP.NET into javascript easier ... that's all. Just because they say it is AJAX doesn't automatically mean it is simple or anything.
Truthfully, if macromedia would loosen their purse strings from Flash a bit more - we'd see more stuff like OpenLazlo come up.
Btw, I plan to work on a wsdl2javascript wrapper over XmlHttpRequest. I think we should be able to make SOAP calls from javascript directly - that would solve all these stupid XSD schemas and SDKs for each and every REST webservice they use with AJAX.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
There are already several javascript libraries that make ajax development easier such as Sarissa. Sarissa makes it possible to use XMLhttpRequest in IE and makes avialable certain IE only parsing functions in other browsers.
I've tried working with some others with varried success.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Comet!
Somehow, I dont think this will be good for browsers outside of IE. It seems when microsoft comes out with something, it becomes the defacto because of their user base, even if its not good.
One of the more interesting features of ASP.NET is that different browsers requesting the same document will actually receive different documents, as ASP.NET renders them for a specific browser. Of course, this is completely wrong way to do things and destroys the idea of web standards conformity, but if MSFT pulled it off, it could mean the end of cross platform AJAX issues.
Of course, I would bet against that actually happening.
Perhaps Slashcode could be enhanced to provide the functionality. That would make this kind of story much easier to put up.
Hint: the input just needs to be standards-compliant tool. The program should already know which Microsoft product handles the cool-sounding things and be able to choose the upcoming event for the given market segment. The time period should be long enough to allow the code to actually be written, or long enough for the announcement to be forgotten.
sigs, as if you care.
If you ever saw the book called "A first look at ASP.NET 2.0", it had some demos of the new technologies that would be in ASP.NET 2.0. Once of them was an AJAX style client-side callback.
People act like AJAX is some magical new technology, when in reality, it's been used for years. Microsoft is just one of the companies who offered a "framework" to make it easier to develop. If they end up integrating it into their controls, it will be huge.
And for reference, I believe their demo worked in Firefox as well.
If anything, the AJAX popularity will just give them a little kick in the ass to move more quickly.
They can't see them.
Fucking classic.
I don't think that word means what you think it does.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is great for AJAX. Microsoft's imprimatur will make AJAX easier to everyone to sell to business people, even when no Microsoft technology is involved in the implementation.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
With AJAX you have to do a check on how to instantiate an XMLHTTPRequest object. MS implements it via ActiveX (read: really stupid).
/rhetorical
ActiveX by itself is bad. ActiveX with Ajax would be worse because it would enable spyware writers become more agile.
Why is Microsoft helping spyware writers? Surely they would have known this could be a bad combo... right??
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It won't be "good" til about version 6.0.1300.2410 after everyone who uses IE has been infected with the hundreds of trojans that exploited it. Of course by then "fat pages" won't be cool anymore.
Lets remember that Microsoft created the XMLHTTP objects that AJAX is built on.
Ok, resume bashing.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
"People who do (AJAX development) are rocket scientists," Fitzgerald said. "In some ways, this papers over the mess that is JavaScript development. It's easy-to-build 'spaghetti' code."
Well, while JavaScript surely needs some further development, it's actually not that hard. That what made my JavaScripts usually hard to maintain and in the end a pretty ugly piece of code is working around deficiencies of the IE...
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
...was buzzwordarific.
And, by the way, we need to change the coversheet on the TPS report you just described.
Nope, it only works with water.
Your head a splode
They should call it HIJAX...
Since it's AJAX the code should be pretty clean.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I just cannot help noticing that the name of Microsoft's software "Atlas" appears in the text only three times, while the detergent name is in almost every paragraph, a whopping eight times. Is Microsoft pushing someone else's "technology" in their press releases, or is someone else spinning their release in their favor ?
And Microsoft also plans to make sure that ASP.NET 2.0 works well with Safari, Opera and Firefox. The last thing they want is for their web apps to generate HTML that breaks 10-15% of the market out there because that's enough now for developers to look to JSP and JavaServer Faces.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
"In some ways, this papers over the mess that is JavaScript development. It's easy-to-build 'spaghetti' code."
Only at Microsoft would that statement be used to describe something good. Everywhere else, spaghetti code is a reason to yell at someone.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Sarissa is a cross-platform XML and XSLT library (more like a wrapper actually) for Mozilla and IE.
I'm sure AJAX development can be simplified with sarissa. It won't work with other browsers, of course since not all of them support XSLT.
This is amazingly timely because 10 minutes ago I finished writing an article for our internal newsletter (a "feel good" thing for our developers) about how to use Ajax.
I wrote a quick demo page with less than a screenfull of javascript and that included browser detection, a reusable main function and it's callback, plus a function specific to my example.
Ok mod me down because I didn't read the article (yet) but why is a "framework" necessary.
Wonder how similar it will be to AJAX on Rails, one of the best AJAX abstractions I've seen to date, using the excellent Ruby on Rails object persistence and MVC framework
but.... hahahahhahhahahahahahaha
Ohhh god... it hurts... soo bad...
hahahhahahahahaha...
Ruby on Rails has like what... 5 people using it? Okay lets be generous.. 100...
Juggernaut?? Please... the project will probably be abandoned in less than a year like all the other half-assed frameworks. (Though really, I'm sure that's what all the PHP haters said too.)
PHP and Java is who they're really fighting against. In the web dev. world PHP wins over ASP.NET in almost every situation. For all the other situations, Java and ASP.NET fight it out and it's usually a tossup on which gets chosen.
The real future of web. dev. though is this AJAX stuff. It allows the user experience to be exponentially better without forcing the developer to learn a new backend language. You can use PHP, Java, ASP.NET to talk to your database and do any heavy processing, and let AJAX display your data without screen refreshes and without a lot of traffic to your website.
there are a lot of them...
Sarissa - http://sarissa.sourceforge.net/doc/
Prototype - http://prototype.conio.net/
Dojo - http://dojotoolkit.org/
SAJAX - http://absinth.modernmethod.com/sajax/
DWR - http://www.getahead.ltd.uk/dwr/
JSON-RPC-Java - http://oss.metaparadigm.com/jsonrpc/
AJAX may be the acronym du jour, but these techniques have been around for YEARS, ever since IE5. AJAX is just a simplified way of doing it, just like every programmer in the world creates their own little libraries of routines for handling db connections and the like. AJAX doesn't do anything new, it just repackages it for those who never heard of it.
When I first learned about XmlHttpRequest in the IE5 days, I thought it was going to revolutionize the web. All the problems of session state maintenance would disappear and web pages would become little client-server apps. MS had this capability first with the ActiveX control. They could have hyped this capability and taken the lead with it back in 1999. ASP.Net would have been another great opportunity to showcase this feature and create standards. Instead the ASP.Net philosophy seemed to be to make as many trips to the server as possible. For a while MS virtually abandoned the idea of out-of-band requests. So now, years after introducing this feature, somebody at Microsoft finally realizes what they had going and decides to jump on the bandwagon. Good job guys, but a little late.
Mac phans like to pretend Mac is different that Microsoft.
I've been using the following; which seems to work pretty good:
j s
http://dkpinteractive.ath.cx/scripts/AJAXRequest.
Regards.
I find it rather abrasive to work with, yet it results in a much cleaner design in the end.
Thank you! I'll be here all week!
This is exaclty right. AJAX is built on XmlHttpRequest which is not a W3C standard. It was first implemented by Microsoft in IE 5, then by the Gecko crew in Mozilla 1.0. There is a W3C proposal that is similar, but it is basicaly ex post facto. Apple and Opera adopted XmlHttpRequest basically so their users could use GMail. There are differences in implementation on each of these browsers, so there is definitely no standard.
What's sort of interesting is that Microsoft first introduced this as one of those non-ECMA standards they were popping out left and right in the late 90's. Many people believe these were all designed to hurt Netscape. They didn't really do much with this gem once Netscape had bit the dust. Then Google comes along and resurrects it with GMail making them look like them look like these great innovators, especially compared to Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. Oh the irony.
"Microsoft has announced plans to release a javascript client framework library for use with ASP.NET 2.0 that makes AJAX style browser clients easier to code"?
Nine out of ten Script Kiddies agree Microsoft makes the tastiest software. It's now even harder on your wallet and still twice as vulnerable!
And it's the implementation in IE5. Why? Because the Microsoft Exchange team wrote the original implementation of XmlHttpRequest to support OWA in Exchange 2000.
So, in this case, the first implementation of the idea, used for the purpose that others have adopted later is Microsoft's. Usually, that's considered enough to claim priority in defining a standard. That other browsers aren't conformant to the standard is hardly Microsoft's fault.
msdn.microsoft.com/library tree uses AJAX a.k.a OutofBand calls to get the data.It is a simple HTC + CSS + XML.
While people are busy promoting ajax on rails and so on, there is already a great AJAX Library for .net called Ajax.net
http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/
Works like a charm
http://ajax.schwarz-interactive.de/csharpsample/ This thing works beautifully with the current version of asp.net.
hilarious stuff, man
I have something that could be used as an AJAX Framework. It's cross browser and easy to use in an obtuse and poorly documented sort of way. Also, a prototype AJAX for ASPX plugin.
After all, he was the guy who lost to Odysseus fighting over Achilles armor (you know, of the heel fame?). Later, he went mad and began slaughtering cows. He then killed himself.
Sadly, most people will think "what you cut dope with"...
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
What's so hard about AJAX? I did my first implementation last night and it wasn't any more difficult than anything else you might need to process with some javascript.
The HTML and JavaScript sepcifications upon which web browsers are built are good and all, but were they built with the idea of hosting an application versus a webpage? It seems to me that AJAX is sort of a hack to turn a web browser into an application container; why not build a new, open specification designed from the get-go to be an applications container and not merely an HTML display mechanism?
I'm a Rails novice. My abilities with Rails are only marginal compared to the gurus of the framework. And I am turning down consulting jobs. I work on Rails at work now, both professionally (see where I work in my description and be shocked) and in my current consulting job.
I have turned down two consulting offers because I simply don't have the time in the week to juggle more than 1 full time and 1 part time job. Both were for what I'd consider "enterprise" class applications.
Rails is huge, and its getting bigger. A cursory technorati and google search can show you that. If you can't see this, you're going to be left behind as a web developer.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
One of the great things about "AJAX" is that the "X" is optional. No reason to do XML at all unless that's what you want. So, if XML is overkill for your application, take a look at JSON, http://www.json.org/
I think it's better than CSV even. And it's got bindings to tons of languages, not just Javascript. So producing the server-side is also very easy.
DHTML doesn't mean anything by itself except for using client side script to change page layout. There used to be significant differences between how to do that in IE and Netscape - document.all versus document.layers, but that's irrelevant today. As long as you use the Document Object Model to do your DHTML you're standards-compliant and cross-browser compatible (with many minor bugs affecting one browser or another, but still pretty close).
And your knowledge is pretty far off-base.
Do you realize the XMLHttpRequest Object (the core javascript object in which AJAX would not exist without) is not a W3C standard? It was first implemented in IE5 as an ActiveX Object (new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")) and latered implemented by Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, etc.
Of course, you won't find anyone giving MS credit for innovation here, but you'll get modded 5 if you're the first to mentions "standards!"
From what I hear, they plan to combine AJAX with ActiveX to create a new technology, ActiveAjax. It is rummored this new fusion will revolutionize how we think of the web and web content.
if Microsoft hadn't invented Ajax.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
As as ASP.Net developer:
:)
I can tell you that while it WORKS, there is a LOT of Microsoft-specific crap that gets spit out into the web pages, especially with the designer.
You have to be very careful to clean that stuff out.
For example: Microsoft will let you happily think that you can just set the widths of tables and controls willy-nilly and it will all line up and look pretty.
Only in IE.
Other browsers tend to ignore control widths, because they can obscure text. For example, with drop-down lists, Mozilla makes the list long enough to hold the longest entry.
You can force them back to a specific width with CSS if you *really* want.
Headers in the Datagrid controls don't line up unless you do things like this. You end up having to change the controls to spit out spans (and turn off the BR tags) and make the HTML yourself it you want it clean and to pass W3C validation and look decent in other browsers.
This is a big defeat for Microsoft. Microsoft has always pushed the fat client, because that is where it makes most of its money, and it hates web protocols because it can't control them like it can the desktop.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, AJAX has really caught on, and so Microsoft has to support it or be left behind, even though doing so undermines its long-term strategy.
Monopolies rarely survive technological revolutions, and it looks like AJAX is going to do some real damage to the Windows monopoly.
As for the jokes to your comment, I have them covered allready.
This is not about any particular framework. It's about OSS server technology slowly creeping into everyday webapps and beyond. And Firefox/Mozilla Rich Clients in XUL lurking around the corner. Same goes for Flash stuff like Flex or Breeze. MS is fighting those too with new Products like "Office Live Meeting" and such. In MS much fear I sense about that.
Ajax on the other hand is a new buzzword for an ancient technology that usually is called "Doing neat client side stuff with Javascript". Some type A new economy wiseguy over at AdaptivePath brought it up and wrote an essay on rich clients with the assistance of the official web economy bullshit generator. And now - naturally - MS is picking it up. MS is king when it comes to buzzwords (and bullshit) and since they've got it all set up allready they now have a reason to sell more ASP.Crap servers for 10 Bazillon Dollars each.
That's all it is about.
BTW: If you want to check out a wepapp-juggernaught I'd suggest Zope, aka 'What RoR wants to be when it grows up'.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Maybe it's not that hard to be a "rocket expert" today, but 50 or so years back, when the phrase was coined...
MS long-term strategy involves having both client and web applications developed with XAML. Though they appear to deny the intention to replace HTML/Javascript, XAML is designed to be able to, and it just might because it will be far superior -- it will be a .NET language. (The open source community will help them port it to Linux, etc.)
XML UI Browser/Platform
Except that you can do pretty much all the AJAX stuff using a hidden frame instead of XmlHttpRequest.
HTML 4 Strict and XHTML Strict do not include frame or iframe elements, and an object element (the official replacement for iframe) may not act as the target for an a element or for a scripted load. If your client or your boss has specified that the project shall use a Strict DTD and shall work when XMLHttpRequest is not available, then you can't use AJAX.
Wasn't J++ superceded by Visual J#, which, as I understand it, compiles Java into MSIL code?
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
hey here's a hot piece of information:
AJAX is javascript/css. so says google. so says all professional web developers older than 17. It used to be called DHTML.
it's amazing how much milage one can get from a buzzword.
Why are people even discussing it? or referring to it as some hot new technology?
Hmm maybe I'll only hire interns who put something about "experience with AJAX development" on the old resume...
ajax chat
I created an AJAX chat after this first came out just to try my hand at it. The code is free and you can use this as sort of an example of how AJAX kicks some serious but. I was reading the comments and XMLHTTPRequest works with both Mozilla and IE (I coded with both browsers open, side-by-side). So check it out and put it on your site.
install instructions for ajax chat
I thought it was cool 'cause it saves the cost of a messaging server.
An interesting problem came up with overloading the xmlhttprequest object so you must be careful and code flags to be sure the object is not recieveing info.
And considering their framework will likely only work in IE in conjunction with IIS, what's the point?
They could also do everyone a favor by rewriting XMLHTTPRequest as something else than an activeX object.
P.S., AJAX is a really dumb acronym.
...this means MS will be fixing the gigantic memory leaks in the XmlHttp implementation in IE?
Right, just like ASP.NET renders some output differently with Firefox. Server-side script should output the same regardless of the browser. It's bad enough we have to come up with client-side hacks for different browsers.
If you open up your machine.config installed by ASP.NET, you will notice the following note:
If you click the link, you will get the message "This file is currently under development. Please check back shortly." Surprise, surprise. Yeah, it can be fixed with a bit of Google searching, but why is it broken in the first place? Oh yeah, it's Firefox, which Microsoft hates. Opera is configured correctly, but then again, Opera also isn't made by communists.
They would~
<overrated>Insert Sig Here</overrated>
Steve Ballmer let it be known that Microsoft would quickly and firmly embrace and extend itself into all AJAX standards: "Nobody beats our MEAT!" roared Ballmer, to the applause of the announcement crowd.
ActiveX is the equiv of an Applet, only it doesn't run in a clever sandbox, doesn't support intelligent (and workable, albeit tricky) signed classes.
Yes you can sign activeX controls, but you cannot have a fine grained security profile that gives different zones different privs.
Applets are still very cool, and if anything, I see them being used more and more for high media websites, even at the expense of flash, see lenova's (?) new site for their products.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
The AJAX framework is built on ASP.NET 2.0 callbacks which Microsoft went out of their way to make sure works on non-IE browsers. In fact, all ASP.NET 2.0 controls generate XHTML 1.0 strict compliant code and work on all browsers identically. Even the advanced heavy-javascript controls it ships with. On top of that, everything gracefully scales back on older browsers or when javascript is disabled.
XmlHttpRequest started with IE but Netscape came out with their own version which most non-IE browsers also use. It WAS later added to the standard.
http://whatwg.org/
Web Applications specification.
ASP.NET runs on the server, it doesn't matter what browser or os is on the client as long as it supports XML requests.
How is WHAT different from what Microsoft is proposing in Longhorn with Avalon and XAML -- aside from WHAT being Open and Avalon/XAML being MS?
Or is that the only functional difference?
Does anyone know of any good resources / tutorials for AJAX. Do O'Reilly have a book yet?
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp