Ajax Is the Buzz of Silicon Valley

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Ajax, or 'Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,' is allowing webpages to update as quickly as desktop software, powering applications like Google Maps and attracting money from Silicon Valley investors, including for a collaboration-software company called Zimbra. The Wall Street Journal reports: 'Zimbra's chief executive, Satish Dhamaraj, says that when he started his company in December 2003, "I really thought that Ajax was just a bathroom cleaner." Now his San Mateo, Calif., business has amassed $16 million in funding from venture-capital firms including Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark Capital, the firm that famously funded eBay Inc. Peter Fenton, an Accel partner, says Ajax "has the chance to change the face of how we look at Web applications" and could boost technology spending by corporations, because Ajax is also being used to develop software for big companies, not just for consumers.'"

Comments

Gong!

[jeffvoigt]

Slashdot should know better than to post a pure fluff article. This is nothing more than an advertisement. If we're going to masquerade this as news content, as least include how much slashdot got as a kickback. ;)

Re:So what?

[__david__]

Hear hear! XML is a complete waste of time. I just don't understand why everyone and their brother is so gung-ho about XML. It's ugly to humans and ugly to computers (not completely trivial to parse). Before anyone implements something that uses XML they really need to take a look at YAML.

When dealing with XMLHTTPRequests, JSON is the only reasonable way to communicate with Javascript. I often just use plaintext, too, and parse with a quick regular expression. It much better than sifting through the XML tree with the clunky DOM interfaces.

I've used all 3 techniques (JSON, plaintext, XML) when building my gaming site and I can tell you that for returning messages to javascript from XMLHTTPRequests, JSON kicks XMLs butt any day of the week.

-David