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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?
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!
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.
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
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)
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.
What are you talking about it works well.
You don't write code to go over each character of the XML! Use the builtin stuff.
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
Funny.
About 5 years ago I was writing extremely rich web applications, using XMLHttpRequest to make client side side-band requests back to the web app, using XML data islands and client side XML document manipulations. Examples include a web timesheet, where the user could manipulate entries (adding new ones, changing them, and deleting them), upon which it would sideband the changes back via XMLHttpRequest, on success changing the client XML document by manipulating it via the DOM, retransforming it with the XML. I created power generation control systems that were entirely atomically updating values (no whole page refresh bullshit).
Of course all of this required Internet Explorer. None of the competitors had anything marginally similar.
AJAX, that extroardinarily lame acronym, isn't "new" kids, except that it only relatively recently became a feature that could be used more generally across many browsers. They finally caught up to Microsoft to some degree.
Oh, and before anyone accuses me of being a Microsoft astroturfer because they're delusional and like revising history, VS.NET 2005 will most likely turn into VS.NET 2006, given Microsoft's extraordinary, embarrassing inability to deliver in recent history.
Except that MS invented the XMLHttpRequest object which makes AJAX possible.
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.
Has anyone actually tried parsing XML using javascript??
Yes and no. I usually let the browser do the parsing in an IFrame, then I just walk the DOM. It's much easier than taking a string of XML and trying to break it down like a good parser should. It's far too tempting to cheat like hell and do stuff like recursively find the outer tags.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
servlets !~ ActiveX
applets ~ ActiveX
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.
Learn about ^W, "already"!
Has anyone actually tried parsing XML using javascript??
With msxml in IE it is remarkably quick (of course it is given that msxml is a binary component). Or are you talking about trying to build your own Javascript XML interpreter?
Comet!
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.
So maybe you should have said "MS invented the XMLHttpRequest object which makes AJAX somewhat more convenient."
Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.
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.
Either you didn't try hard enough, or you didn't know enough
> I usually let the browser do the parsing in an IFrame, then I just walk the DOM.It's quite a hack to have an IFrame for this and all that. XmlHttpRequest is cleaner because you can read headers , set headers and even check on status code on return.
> It's much easier than taking a string of XML and trying to break it down like a good parser should. It's far too tempting to cheat like hell and do stuff like recursively find the outer tags.Read through quirksmode importing xml tutorial . Also anyway, only XmlHttpRequest lets you POST xml content to the webservice at the other end - not stupid old www-encoded form posts.
I've been using XmlHttpRequest extensively recently - it's a surprise nobody noticed it until google brought out GMAIL. Now it's the latest Buzzword that you NEED on your resume to get a job as a web-dev (which I'm not).Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I also did something similar to what you mentioned around 5 years ago. I didn't use any XML, but I did most of it with Java Applets and sending data over HTTP to a servlet. It worked great. It also worked in every major browser at that time. As you mentioned there was no full page refresh stuff the client had to endure.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
First, Amazon has nothing to do with Ajax. Their sites don't even take good advantage of it (except in a limited way, in the 'search inside the book' feature). Google yes (Gmail/Google Suggest), Amazon, no.
/. crowd would rather tear their teeth out than say IE 'innovated' or Microsoft led the way in any way.
> Microsoft is playing catch up.
And given that Microsoft created a very rich version of Outlook Web Access as far back as 1998, it's quite revealing that no one 'figured' out how to make DHTML work on a web app used by lots of people until Gmail came out. Actually, the reason for this is of course that Netscape/Mozilla didn't support it until recently-- although I'm sure the
If it helps you get over it, Adam Bosworth, who was on the IE team then and one of the creators of IE4's comprehensive, script-accessible DOM (which made 'DHTML' possible) now works at Google.
And regarding this toolkit-- it's interesting to see so many people reflexively bash it when Ajax today is a _bad_ mishmash of XML, javascript and HTML. RoR helps but RoR has its own set of problems-- chiefly maturity and applicability to a wide variety of projects. Ballmer got a lot of stick for dancing around shouting 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' but trust me that's how Microsoft earns its living: easy-to-use platforms + easy-to-use development tools.
Go somewhere random
Yes. In fact, this Microsoft announcement sounds like a repackaging of their old technology. What a great day for there marketers!
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.
Err, the Mac is a different platform, so if it works on IE on both a Windows PC and a Mac, then it's cross platform. He didn't say cross-browser.
Or for something to be cross-platform, must it work on every platform? If that's the case then the word has no value as there's nothing that works on every platform.
You forgot some notable others:
.NET? no... mono
* Microsoft Office? no... OpenOffice.org
* Outlook? no... Thunderbird/Sunbird
* Windows? no... WINE
*
Anyhoo, I understand your point about compatibility but Microsoft's goal isn't to be compatible, rather to ensure their own profit.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Either you didn't try hard enough, or you didn't know enough
Geez. Who stuck a bee in your bonnet?
It's quite a hack to have an IFrame for this and all that. XmlHttpRequest is cleaner because you can read headers , set headers and even check on status code on return.
Do you have any idea what the subject is even about, or do you just like to rant? The parent poster was talking about parsing XML directly and how slow it was. (You can get an XML string via XMLHttpRequest, BTW.) I responded that I don't worry about the speed because I don't do it in JavaScript. I shunt the data to a hidden IFrame (which can still be done with XMLHttpRequest if you understand document.open(), which I'm guessing you don't from your senseless rant), let the browser parse it for me, then I walk the W3C compliant DOM tree. There's practically nothing faster or easier to do.
I've been using XmlHttpRequest extensively recently - it's a surprise nobody noticed it until google brought out GMAIL. Now it's the latest Buzzword that you NEED on your resume to get a job as a web-dev (which I'm not).
I was doing it before it was cool. What's your point? Just because you just found XMLHttpRequest and think it's God's gift to web developers, doesn't mean that it's the ONE TOOL for everything. Good Web apps are a lot more complex and difficult to get going. For example, have you ever shunted a JavaScript program into an existing program in a pluggable and user runnable fashion? I have. In fact, I wrapped the entire program in XML Meta-Data so that I could provide Icons, Associations, and Security Features before the program was ever loaded into memory. My program then sits as a text string in a psuedo-filesystem until it's actually ready to execute. Then I pull some wizardry to run the program without touching the HTML DOM. Would you like to hazard I guess as to how it's done, oh great and powerful jackass^W web wizard?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Now I know why they have been giving away IE for free! This a plan that's been in the works for a long time.
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.
Just imagine saying "yeah, my web app's cross-platform, it runs on Firefox on Windows and Linux".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
CORBA == ActiveX/COM
And they both suck
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
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.
Put simply, when you haven't got your terminal keyboard settings set up properly, whenever you press backspace a ^H will appear instead. Typing control-h (^H) on a properly set up terminal has the same effect as pressing backspace. Typing ^W has the effect of deleting the previous word.
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.
AJAX, that extroardinarily lame acronym, isn't "new" kids
Of course its's not new. Only this wierd new acronym is new, and most kids only know it by this name. All it really consists of (JS, XML, DOM, etc.) have been around for many years and used extensively. There just happen to be real coders out there who instead of giving freaky names to everything just use the available great technology to create great content. These days probably it's becoming more and more frequent that on job interviews one will be asked about knowing AJAX and if raising an eyebrow, they say goodbye, no matter (s)he is good with js/xml/dom/xhtml. These things just happen.
Many pro jobs could be easily got by two-legged dictionaries.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"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.
Why don't you use the .responseXML attribute, which gives you a DOM object, instead of "shunting" it into an IFRAME, thus losing all hope of having more than one request at a time? (Which, granted, shouldn't exactly be a routine occurance, but there are many things that can result in that, even if you're not planning on it.)
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.
First, Amazon has nothing to do with Ajax. Their sites don't even take good advantage of it
You fail it
The opposite of progress is congress
This is a good point, and it's a wonderful example of why dogmatic restricting yourself to standards is bad for the industry.
If Microsoft had not done this, and shown the utility of the technology, it is doubtful that Mozilla and others would have the technology now, reducing our choices as developers.
Don't forget:
:-(
XMLHTTP? no... AJAX
Lets not for get "AJAX" is quite old (at least around since 1998) and originally done by MS. The jack-asses at Adaptive Path were using it (XMLHTTP) and wanted some new sexy name to use as a marketing gimik for it and so "AJAX" was born
This is not new stuff! Its a bunch of old stuff used together. It used to be refered to as XMLHTTP programming, but now its "HOT" again 'cause its got a sexy new name. This marketing crap makes my head hurt!!!! Lets not forget the first "AJAX" product (at least that I can think of) was Outlook Web Access released around 1998 by MS! Lets also remember the thing that makes it possible is XMLHttpRequest which MS created (yes one of those non-standard things they create which everyone hates)!
Its cool stuff and that its being more widely adapted is good, but to pretend this is some awsome "new" technology or MS is just now getting on the bandwagon is just stupid. I guess you could argue MS is just now getting on the bandwagon of calling it AJAX, but who cares what you call it?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
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.
I thought that was Blue Crystals of Meth, no never mind, that would be the same thing.
Think global, act loco
Why don't you use the .responseXML attribute, which gives you a DOM object,
:-)
Primarily because of browser differences. The IFrame solution seems to be more portable than responseXML. The other half of it is that I'm still doing development and have temporarily eschewed XMLHttpRequest because I'm not running a server. (It's all internal to itself.) Using an IFrame allows me to perform architecture tests on new applications straight from the files on disk.
instead of "shunting" it into an IFRAME, thus losing all hope of having more than one request at a time?
That is one annoying point to the IFrame solution. However, Multithreading in a browser can be a difficult thing to deal with, so it's something I'm trying to avoid for now. Currently I use a linked list of items to load so that they all get loaded in sequence. It works quite well for the moment, and can easily be switched over to XMLHttpRequest when I'm ready.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
> Netscape has supported DHTML since Netscape 2.0.
over a very limited subset of the DOM. Result: DHTML apps for NS2..4 distinctly lagged IE4 and IE5.
> And GMail was far from the first popular web app
Saying K5's commenting system is popular is the same breath as Gmail is popular is a bit like saying 'my parrot can talk' and then 'my child can talk'. Sure they both do, but the difference is in degree. Similarly http://map.search.ch/ scooped Google Maps, but how much exposure did it get? Not maps.search.ch's fault, but the point is until Gmail and Google Maps there hasn't been a widely used site that _required_ you to have an Ajax-compliant browser to use it (Note Gmail's light-mode came much later).
Go somewhere random
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
You might like to actually get a sense of what Ajax is all about before failing others.
All I see on that page is Javascripted widgets and a big, oldfashioned 'See results' button that reloads the whole page to show the search results. This is Ajax. Not. (Clue: if Amazon had updated a div/frame with diamonds as the user slid the widgets around, then you'd have an easier time convincing me it was Ajax.)
And even if they did use Ajax in this (rather obscure) store section, it'd hardly make Amazon.com an Ajax app in the same breath as Gmail/Google Maps, where the entire interface is built around Ajax.
Go somewhere random
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.
More accurately, Firefox shipped with a non-ActiveX-based XMLHttpRequest object, which brought AJAX to the rest of the non-IE world.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
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!"
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.
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
Good answers. I'm glad I held the sarcasm :-)
:-)
.responseText for), and I don't always want Http. FTP might be nice, or file:, or other things as appropriate.
Using an IFrame allows me to perform architecture tests on new applications straight from the files on disk.
I think it is a major problem that there is that discontinuity between browser requests like that and XMLHttpRequest. XMLHttpRequest is great, but has two major misnomers in it: I don't always want XML (which they added/implemented
You can kind of tell it was an afterthought by a code monkey, and not implemented by an actual MS architect. (I know they have some good ones in there, and there is a definite difference between the things MS prioritizes enough for the architects to work on, and the things left to the monkeys...)
Multithreading in a browser can be a difficult thing to deal with, so it's something I'm trying to avoid for now.
Oi. I hope they address that in Ecmascript 2.0. Hmm... doesn't look good.... all I want is a freakin' semaphore, for Pete's sake....
Semi-bog-standard Firefox, with scripts enabled.
The thing is, I noticed the count but-- while dragging the slider the count always shows 'loading results...'. That's even when the slider isn't moving but the mousebutton is held down. The count updates only when the mouse button is released. I haven't looked at the source either but I imagine a onMouseUp handler updating the innerHtml of the div. IMHO this is DHTML not Ajax primarily because it isn't asynchronous (the A in Ajax).
Go somewhere random
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
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?
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.
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.
Does anyone know of any good resources / tutorials for AJAX. Do O'Reilly have a book yet?
Nick...
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Uh, you're not supposed to *parse* XML using JS, you're supposed to let the browser's XML parser do his job and THEN walk your DOM Tree using JS&JSDOM...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler