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Better Web Apps With Ajax
An anonymous reader wrote to mention an article on IBM's site detailing the fundamentals of Java-based Ajax. From the article: "This article gives you a good understanding of the fundamental principles of Ajax, and a nuts-and-bolts knowledge of the client and server side components that participate in an Ajax interaction. These are the building blocks of a Java-based Ajax Web application. In addition, you will be shown some of the high-level design issues that come with the Ajax approach."
Why? Less verbose (easier on bandwidth) and no parsing (ever tried parsing XML using XmlHttpRequest? It sucks). JSON is object syntax. It is a real, live object serialized to string.
It just so happens that JSON is also legal Python object notation.
Hmmm... GMail, Google Maps, Google Suggest... none of these use XML. Google is also renowned for using Python. JSON syntax is the same in client-side javascript and server-side python... hmmm... makes me think twice, anyway, instead of drinking the web services kool-aid Sun and Microsoft are serving.
There's a pretty good library I've used recently called DWR.
If you're looking for a Java library to do some of the heavy lifting, check it out.
I made a little window-manager-esque thing in Javascript/CSS/HTML a few weeks ago (Looks messed up in IE, works fine in Firefox)
http://dugnet.com/klown/ajwm/, all that's needed are some AJAX functions to swap out the contents of each window, instant freakish web-app thing..
Since everyone else is mentioning their favorite AJAX toolkit, I'll list one too:
x .html
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net/javadocs/inde
This is a component of the larger Java Web Parts project called AjaxTags. It's a taglib that allows you to easily add AJAX functionality to arbitrary page elements in a purely declarative manner, i.e., *NO* coding on your part (although there is more capability there if you need more). It really makes AJAX a breeze, and is pretty powerful at the same time. If you are a Java web developer, have a look, you may very much like what you see!
P.S., The parent projects' page is here:
http://javawebparts.sourceforge.net/
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
So we shouldn't separate presentation from code because it makes it less portable? Actually, it often makes it MORE portable. My mobile web application is a great example. I was able to reuse a huge amount of code and target a VERY different client thanks to the fact my presentation and my code were extremely well separated.
.NET developers as some kind of less educated developer. I'm not sure why. To some extent, I could see that with VB developers. They often started off with an MIS or IT background and had to use VB to solve simple problems. In fact, VB is great for that. VB evolved into a language that was great for a lot of things. But the stigma stuck around... with some justification. .NET developers live in a world that is far more advanced in nearly everyway than VB. We have all the great runtime features that the rest of the developer word has. I can write my .NET in C++, or one of several hundred other languages that can target the CLR. What, exactly, makes a .NET developer any less of a developer than somebody who chooses to toil away in PERL or Python or Java?
As far as portability in general... think about this. What would happen if you had to port one of your apps to Gameboy? What would YOU do!? What about my TI-86? Huh?
Since I'm a developer who knows what they're doing, I know my target platforms before I start the project. If there is a chance I might need to port this to another platform in the future, then I take that in to account before I start the project.
Crippling your application, or dramatically increasing development time, or being forced to choose a less than ideal development platform, because you want to make sure you can run it on another platform regardless of the business requirements right now is a bad idea.
Sorry, but that VAST MAJORITY of web application will be created for one platform and stay on that platform for the foreseeable future. Applications that do require portability typically start off with that requirement from the get go. This is especially true for server side applications. (Which makes it all the more ironic that Java is so popular on the server side.)
Nonetheless, there is Mono. They have made great progress. Is it perfect? Of course not. But neither is Java's portability.
Lastly, you seem to view