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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?
HIJAX...
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal...
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.
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.
here is what it looks like
Except that MS invented the XMLHttpRequest object which makes AJAX possible.
I'll take that bet. Scott Guthrie (project load on the Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft) has stated that Atlas client script will work on all modern browsers, and will not be restricted to any web server.
You can read more on his weblog.P
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.
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
Lets remember that Microsoft created the XMLHTTP objects that AJAX is built on.
Ok, resume bashing.
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
You've not used ASP.NET have you? All of the generated HTML and Javascript is guaranteed to work in all major modern browsers. True, some of the cooler DHTML stuff only works in IE, but other browsers get less cool but still functional equivalents.
Or, you know, you could just mindlessly bash MS, it's your choice.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
While I agree that Microsoft's way leaves much to be desired (primarily because AJAX on IE requires that you leave your browser open to ActiveX insercurities), I'm afraid there isn't really a "correct" way to do it. Your way (testing for the native XMLHttpRequest object, and then falling back to the ActiveX object if necessary) is certainly the best way, however.
IIRC, Mozilla's XMLHttpRequest object was created to mimic the functionality of Microsoft's ActiveX version, and then Safari and Opera (to a certain extent) followed suit. However, the XMLHttpRequest has never been part of ECMAScript (the standard that Javascript is based on) nor the W3C DOM. It has always been an "extension" that Microsoft has foisted upon the world, much like the <marquee> tags and layers we love to hate.
As such, it is inconsistently supported -- particularly in Opera and Safari 1.3/2.0. There are also minor differences (e.g. the number of arguments that the send method accepts) that arise due to the lack of a standard specification.
Fortunately, because of its immense utility in creating modern web-apps, it has become a de-facto standard and thus rather reliable. I would love to eventually see browsers support a standards-based version of AJAX (something like the W3C Level 3 DOM Load and Save specification), but until then, there is no truly "correct" way to do it.
Simple enough to bang in some workarounds with Greasemonkey I reckon?
function ActiveXObject(name) {
if (name == "Microsoft.XMLHTTP") {
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
return new window.XMLHttpRequest();
}
}
return undefined;
}
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.
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.