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AJAX, Echo, .NET - What Impact Have They Had?

Posted by Cliff on from the will-the-browser-ever-trump-the-desktop dept.

BjB asks: "We've talked about platform neutral frameworks for years, but with the recent story about AJAX threatening the desktop, it made me think about the hype around two frameworks that were supposed to bring applications to the browser: Microsoft .NET and the Java competitor Echo framework. Both technologies boast that you can write a desktop application that can also easily be exported as an identical web-based application. I know a lot of developers hailed the .NET framework as a major innovation and jumped on board. The Echo framework was the counter-attack that leveled the field. Now, over two years later, I don't think I've ever seen anything that leverages either one? Was this a short lived battle with nobody reaping the rewards, or has it actually made some in-roads?"

9 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. .Net by Fr05t · · Score: 3, Informative

    My old employer makes a software product which has 4 parts:

    Management Software running on Windows
    Web version of the management software
    End user/client software on Windows, and PDAs
    End user/client software in a web browser, and WAP

    They moved to .Net so the business logic code could be shared between all 4-5 of their applications. Before that any time there was a change in how the software worked it had to be changed across all products, which greatly increased the chances of adding bugs, took more time, etc.

    The .Net code meta tags, and application assembly also helped greatly in creating an easy to use AJAX framework.

  3. Re:in house by GeckoX · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ever been to dell.com?

    There are many others.

    Keep in mind a couple of things: .NET is a large platform. There are tonnes of ways to use it. You can build compiled binaries, rich ActiveX enhanced web applications for intranets, traditional websites, or AJAX enhanced web applications, to name a few.

    You wouldn't necessarily know you are visiting a .NET web application.

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    No Comment.
  4. Re:Because they're still platform dependant. by Rolan · · Score: 2, Informative

    .NET works fine without IE. .NET 2.0/VS.NET 2k5 is even producing 100% standards compliant HTML code for controls, etc.

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    - AMW
  5. Re:.net gripes by Rolan · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...but where's my perl, python and ruby dot net (and I don't mean editor support)?

    Right under your nose, if you bother to look:
    http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/NET Perl and (experimental)Python
    http://www.saltypickle.com/rubydotnet/Ruby/.NET compatability
    http://www.zope.org/Members/Brian/PythonNetPython
    http://www.ironpython.com/Python, again....

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    - AMW
  6. Fundamentally different by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Echo and .Net are From-based web apps. Every click / button push results in a form being submitted to the server, and the whole page being re-drawn. This is no different than any other form of web development done for the past 15 years, the only benefit is ease of development or deployment on the server side.

    AJAX (or whatever other name you want to give to this remoting method) is not like this. It uses the XMLHttpRequest object to submit and fetch data to/from the server without requiring a new page load, and manipulates the page using the DOM to render the results.

    This results in a much smoother experience for the end user, but it usually requires quite a large shift away from the old paradigm - for example, AJAX and Stuts do not mix well. So if you have a large web app already written in Struts, and want to AJAX-ify a few parts of it to give a better UI, it can be more trouble than it is worth (it requires totally re-thinking how you do input validation, for example).

    1. Re:Fundamentally different by TodLiebeck · · Score: 3, Informative

      Echo and .Net are From-based web apps. Every click / button push results in a form being submitted to the server, and the whole page being re-drawn. This is no different than any other form of web development done for the past 15 years, the only benefit is ease of development or deployment on the server side.

      You're correct with regard to the Echo 1.x platform (originally released in early 2002), but the upcoming 2.0 version of Echo, "Echo2", is built entirely around the technologies now being referred to as "Ajax". Every single update to the state of an Echo2 application is performed by partial updates to a DOM (there is no case in which an entire document is reloaded or swapped out). All client-server synchronization is performed over XMLHttpRequests, with the client sending an XML message describing a user's input and the server reciprocating with an XML message containing directives to update the state of the user interface.

      You can see all the XMLHttpRequest stuff in action by appending "?debug" to an application's URL, e.g., click the following link to run the interactive test app in debug mode:

      http://demo.nextapp.com/InteractiveTest/ia?debug

      You'll need to allow a pop-up through as the "Debug Pane" runs in a separate top-level browser window.

      Note that running in debug mode will reduce the speed of an application to a crawl, especially in Internet Explorer. Normal operation can be restored by simply closing the debug window.

      Currently Echo2 is on its second release candidate, with the final version being released imminently. More info on Echo2 can be found here:

      http://www.nextapp.com/products/echo2

      The Echo2 demo apps may be found here:

      http://www.nextapp.com/products/echo2/demo (Both of these can be operated in debug mode.)

      Best regards
      --Tod Liebeck
          NextApp, Inc.

  7. Re:Because they're still platform dependant. by GeckoX · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think I've been fairly clear that the big difference now isn't what is _possible_, it is what is now within the grasp of your average developer/given resources.

    I was writing AJAX functionality 6 years ago. A _lot_ of work, not reliable, NO tools available.

    In asp.net 1.x, the foundation was laid, but it was still too time consuming/difficult to roll rich web apps with it.

    With 2.0, it's in the box, available to point and click developers.

    AJAX has been a viable _set_of_technologies_ (it is not a tool) for a long time now. There are just now viable tools that can easily make use of AJAX.

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  8. Re:Because they're still platform dependant. by The+Cydonian · · Score: 2, Informative
    I'm not sure why you think .net apps require MSIE to function. Out here in my company, most of our deployments are in ASP.net, but we make sure all our UI is 100% W3C compliant.

    Don't about you folks out there, but our clients actually require us to be cross-platform-friendly.

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    More than mere navel gazing.