Another Belated Microsoft Memo

fiannaFailMan writes "Bill Gates has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as AJAX (that MS 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the idea itself, but the fact that Microsoft is taking it seriously.' Zach Nelson of NetSuite decided against writing a memo. 'Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'"

Comments

Memo

[Donut2099]

Note to self: learn to write software

Re:Memo

[Tackhead]

> Note to self: learn to write software

Addendum: Make sure someone fucking buries the next NetSuite and fucking kills the next Zach Nelson before the lunch with Ballmer. Buy stronger chairs, too.

Re:Memo

[buck_wild]

Note to above poster: decaf is apparently bad for you, but a bit LESS caffeine may be a good thing. Have a good weekend. :)

Re:Memo

[buck_wild]

Someone is a bit touchy today. "retardo" made me think of 4th grade...and laugh.

Re:Memo

[tomhudson]

Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'"

It's not cheap - its easy. He's writing memos now because, like a LOT of people who used to code, he can't write software any more.

This has happened to a lot of former coders - they hit a certain age, and they just can't see themselves writing code any more. They don't want to learn yet another language or 5. This doesn't happen to everyone (hey, I just pulled a 9-5 ... that's 9 AM to 5AM, and I'll be hitting the half-centry mark next year), but it does seem that a lot of coders are gone well before they hit 40.

You could probably divide coders into 2 groups - those who code because they can, and those who code because they're curious. The ones who code because they can, eventually, they can't.

But curiosity never stops. When you've been coding for 16 hours, and you figure you're all done, but it would be neat to "write a quick little program to write a program" (because programs that write programs are the happiest programs in the world), and you go and do it because you WANT to and you're curious as to how well its going to work out and you know you won't be able to sleep until you "scratch that itch" . . . if you're still doing that a couple of decades later, you aren't the memo-writing type.

This phenomenum (people peaking in their 30s and then they drop out) isn't limited to just IT. Look at how many "management types" simply can no longer do the grunt work in their own problem domains. They've lost their edge. Sure, they make up for it with experience, in a lot of cases, but there's no replacement for a sharp edge AND experience.

Re:Memo

[gnuLNX]

I have to agree with you. For me the itch usually wakes me up around 3 a.m. Something I just have to finish or try. I have been writing code since I was around 12 on an old commodore 64. I am 32 now. I took a few CS classes in college but I am mostly self taught. So to those considering a career in this field here are some worthless tidbits from my observations.

If you find it laboring to read an algorithms book then you might want to find a different field.

On the same note. If you don't understand algorithms to the point of being able to modify them to fit different scenarios then go back and reread your algorithms book and then get some literature papers on new modern algorithms...good stuff.

If you only learned assembler because a teacher told you to then you might want to find another field. Sure you don't NEED it now...but damn it sure is cool to take advantage of the SSE registers with in-line assembler.

If you believe that only those who suffer through classes are the elite...again you might want to find another field. In this field my friends only those with a true interest will rise to the top. Sure it might be easier to learn when a teacher gives you the correct material, but what about the 16 year kid who learns an algorithm because it was the only way to solve the problem efficiently...who do you think understands it better??

If you learn a new scripting language only because you think it will help your carear as opposed to learning it because you are really curious about how it is different then you should probably find a new career because learning new languages is a pain if you don't really want to learn it. On that note go learn Ruby...what a cool cool language. As a scientific programmer I don't really get to use it much but it is a remarkable language.

Oh and on the topic of languages....go learn FORTRAN. If you don't know the fundamentals of FORTRAN then it is like being a rock musician without studying the blues. If nothing else you will understand why so many of us HATE that language. Plus you will gain a new found respect for the software written by the previous generation. That was some tough shit given the tools they used.

If you find that you only have a passing interest in math...you might consider a new career. Math and logic are the foundations of programming. Really good CS people are typically pretty good math people. Not saying you can't code without math ability, but you probably can't code as good as someone with math ability.

In essence if you aren't one of those people who loves to learn on his own. CS is gonna be a tough field for you. Most really good programmers have a mix of CS and hacker qualities. They use the good engineering practices from the CS side in combination with the need to scratch an itch from the hacker side.

Well those are my thoughts...back to itch scratching. been up since 3 am today. Needed a slashdot break.

Cheers.

Re:Memo

[JulesLt]

Could just be losing interest in where you work / the product you're working on. When you're young, you just go elsewhere that's interesting.

I mean, what do you do if you're Bill Gates and you're fed up with working at Microsoft?

Re:Memo

[tomhudson]

Yep, those old machines with almost no ram really were good at teaching us how to get the most "bang for the buck". And assembler is just sooo sweeeet once you get the hang of thinking in those terms.

Who owns it?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does Microsoft have a patent on AJAX? Can they leverage their parenting of the technology to stifle progress once again? Who owns AJAX?

Re:Who owns it?

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

When has Microsoft flexed their patent muscle to stifle progress? Could you post an example, or are you just anti-"micro$oft!!Lol"? You should note that their "anti-competitive practices" did not involve patents, and would be hailed in a truly free society.

Re:Who owns it?

[msbsod]

FAT

Re:Who owns it?

[Anonymous Coward]

FAT16 vs. camera builders.

Re:Who owns it?

[80 85 83 83 89 33]

another "stifling" factor: slow bandwith. unfortunately i only have friggin dial up, and anytime a website has done something that i could have run on my desktop, guess which is a lot slower by comparison. Even when there shouldn't be a lot of back and forth communication that doesn't require bandwith, it seems that it still takes a LOT longer to get results back than if i had done it local. don't know why....

Re:Who owns it?

[ejdmoo]

That article says that MS could flex their patent muscle.

It is NOT an example of a time that they have done so. All speculation.

Re:Who owns it?

[msbsod]

FAT licensing. If this hadn't been stopped on time, what do you think would have happen if someone refused to accept their "license" scheme?

If Microsoft decide to take over the AJAX market with a patent, they will find one.

Re:Who owns it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who owns AJAX?

Colgate-Palmolive Company, New York, NY 10022.

Re:Who owns it?

[blackmagic1982]

Dude, why are you reacting this intensely to this? Microsoft is a COMPANY. Their goal is make as much profit as possible by what ever legal means they can. Of COURSE they should used there patients to stiff such products! That is why patients exist. They need to protect there own property. Each and any every one of these innovate new website's should be sued to the hilt if by Microsoft if they can. What are you...some kind of SOCIALIST!?!?!

Re:Who owns it?

[quantaman]

Has MS sued anyone over Mono patents? No.

However look here and here.

You don't need to sue someone so stifle progress as evidenced by the fact their Mono patents are currently stifling progress by the risk of lawsuits where Microsoft could easily remove that threat.

Re:Who owns it?

[TheNetAvenger]

So does Microsoft have a patent on AJAX? Can they leverage their parenting of the technology to stifle progress once again? Who owns AJAX?

When has Microsoft EVER leveraged a patent to stifle progress? Hell even their FAT and other crap they made is widely used for free, and they have sought NOTHING from it.

Myths are like Rancors, hard to kill, even though they don't exist.

Re:Who owns it?

[Kihaji]

So exercising a patent on a 10 yr old filesystem that has been beaten on all fronts by multiple other filesystems, or as the linux people say when talking about ext2/3/jfs/reiserfs/xfs/... is now stifling innovation and progress?

Re:Who owns it?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the author of the "VirtualDub" video editor described it:

Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media Group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. I have asked for the specific patent numbers, since I find patenting a file format a bit strange. At his request, and much to my own sadness, I have removed support for ASF in VirtualDub 1.3d, since I cannot risk a legal confrontation.

Re:Who owns it?

[quanticle]

another "stifling" factor: slow bandwith. unfortunately i only have friggin dial up, and anytime a website has done something that i could have run on my desktop, guess which is a lot slower by comparison.

Ummm... That's the whole point of AJAX: to use JavaScript to allow the client to take care of the pretty visual effects while the server sends the data using XML. This way, not only can pages change dynamically without refreshing, but the bandwidth load is lessenend greatly, as you're just transmitting XML formatted plaintext, rather than graphics.

Re:Who owns it?

[cbreaker]

Just because they're a company doesn't mean they are required to be unethical shitheads that destroy entire industries because they have enough cash to do so.

And the way I figure it, Microsoft probably doesn't want to be convicted of monopoly practices again - becuase there IS a limit to how far companies are allowed to take capitalism.

Re:Who owns it?

[aCapitalist]

Fuck RedHat. We all know what their motivations are for spreading that FUD about Mono. They don't want it ever to become a part of Gnome because they fear losing control over Gnome. Stop being so weak-minded.

Re:Who owns it?

[Waffle Iron]

FAT is no longer used for serious hard drive storage, so it has nothing to do with ext3, etc. It is now a common interchange standard for peripheral devices like cameras and thumb drives. By attempting to institute a tax on a previously-considered-free standard at this late date, they are impeding progress in the peripheral hardware area.

BTW, the utility of this patent has to do with backwards compatibility with OSes that only understand the 8.3 file format, which nobody gives a shit about anymore. However, the particular way that long filenames are kludged into VFAT are now cast in concrete, and any implementation is stuck infringing the patent claims regardless of whether anybody will ever access the 8.3 filenames. In other words, the patent no longer has any valid technical use other than creating market barriers and collecting licensing revenue.

Re:Who owns it?

[Baricom]

The original Office XML format was never adopted by the FOSS community because it was patent-encumbered. Microsoft was just about ready to charge storage companies a royalty for formatting their drives with FAT.

Re:Who owns it?

[killjoe]

Microsoft tried to squeeze apple with their patents on the ipod interface. Yes after the ipod came out MS rushed out and got a patent on the interface and tried to squeeze apple for money. Apple told them go suck ass and they never pursued it.

Microsoft sued lindows for trademark infringement. They also sued a 16 year old boy who had the temerity to register a domain name with his name in it.

Microsoft has repeatedly said they intend to agressively defend their intellectual property.

What makes you think MS will never sue anybody for patent infringement after their top level executives have said they fully intend to?

Re:Who owns it?

[asapien]

Hey, that's the question nobody's asking about AJAX, is it patented by MS. Given that they developed the xml request object for the web version of outlook, they've certainly been doing "AJAX" before the term was coined, so its possible they have a patent, or would want to patent it. Ultimately AJAX is no good for a lot of things people use Windows for, like authoring 3D animation, editing video, or doing audio sequencing with protools. You still have to know plain old c++ and there's nothing to be gained from running those types of apps over a network. AJAX is what it is, its not a good solution for building most informational websites, its a tool for web applications. But there's still a whole class of uses for Windows that I don't see going anywhere, you need that "ol' c++ magic" to create really robust multimedia apps. True, you can watch video and listen to music over the web, but it would be a real pain to edit video or audio over the web. Though I'm building a program called phpsound to use AJAX to develop csound csd files, but there again you have to run csound on a local machine to render the audio.

Re:Who owns it?

[drsmithy]

Just because they're a company doesn't mean they are required to be unethical shitheads that destroy entire industries because they have enough cash to do so.

Yes, it does. That's pretty much what public companies do. Fuck everyone else to maximise their profit.

Re:Who owns it?

[idlake]

(Just in case you are serious...) Dude, you're confused about what a democracy and a free market is. Of course, Microsoft is going to try to get away with whatever sleazy and underhanded tactics they can, but in our society, it is the legitimate function of the people and government to oppose Microsoft in this every step that they can. That isn't socialism, it's democracy and a free market. What you are asking for is called totalitarianism, in which government and corporations gang up on the people.

Re:Who owns it?

[someonewhois]

Trademarks are different from patents. You have to persue trademarks in order to keep them valid (I'm not sure about patents, but I don't think it's the same). Apple is another MAJOR corporation that is a number 1 rival right now. Sure, it was uncalled for, but they have to do what they can. Going and suing individuals over it would be stupid.

Re:Who owns it?

[killjoe]

"Sure, it was uncalled for, but they have to do what they can"

Exactly. They have said they will sue, they have sued. What's even worse is that most times they simply threaten to sue. When it comes to individuals that's all it takes to stifle innovation. Somebody already pointed out one case I am sure there are many more. No open source developer can afford to be sued by MS so all they do is pick up the phone and threaten to sue and they get what they want.

I just don't get it. What makes you think that MS is so nice, moral or ethical that they would never sue anybody for patent infringement?

Re:Who owns it?

[kimvette]

In those cases you don't let camera, memory card, etc. manufacturers produce products for 10+ years using that technology THEN demand they cough up the dough. Any company that knowingly does that should lose all protection rights to any patents they hold because it's the civil equivalent of entrapment.

Re:Who owns it?

[kimvette]

It would be really scummy of them to do since they proposed c# to be an open standard from the beginning. I don't think Microsoft would even attempt to take action against Mono or any other C# implementation because of all of the negative PR it would generate not to mention the potential legal issues.

Re:Who owns it?

[TheNetAvenger]

original Office XML format

And yet it is in use on almost EVERY alternative Office Suite...

Explain your myth a bit more, please...

Re:Who owns it?

[TheNetAvenger]

Microsoft tried to squeeze apple with their patents on the ipod interface. Yes after the ipod came out MS rushed out and got a patent on the interface and tried to squeeze apple for money. Apple told them go suck ass and they never pursued it.


Trademarks are NOT patents, and even precious 'Linux' and 'Apple' and 'Berkley' have all had litigation to protect trademarks, go look it up.

As for the patent...
Creative actually holds the patent on this, so explain this Myth that you admit 'never' happened a bit more, please...

Re:Who owns it?

[TheNetAvenger]

As the author of the "VirtualDub" video editor described it:
Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media Group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. I have asked for the specific patent numbers, since I find patenting a file format a bit strange. At his request, and much to my own sadness, I have removed support for ASF in VirtualDub 1.3d, since I cannot risk a legal confrontation.


Ok, and the real news story on this from 2000 was... "He was stopped from using the ASF since he reverse-engineered the ASF file spec."

We were all there and remember this story, yet no one remember ths 'point' from it. Other companies have been producing .asf support in their product before and ever since then. Do a freaking search.

Additionally, the components of the .asf and basically all the Windows Media formats have been turned over to a standards body that Microsoft doesn't even have control over anymore, go look up VSC.

If Microsoft wanted to cause harm, the would have 'sued' him, or EVERY company out there that used the .asf format. THEY DIDN'T - EVER, just like I said...

Additionally, this is his story, no Microsoft confirmtion, ever, it could be a great hoax for him not wanting to keep .asf support for political reasons, who knows what you could make up from something that has no evidence but what a 'guy said'...

Re:Who owns it?

[Baricom]

I stand corrected.

Re:Who owns it?

[kelnos]

Of COURSE they should used there patients to stiff such products! That is why patients exist.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Who owns it?

[TheNetAvenger]

If there were really no risk that Microsoft would ever sue him, then he wouldn't have had to stop making it. If you're so sure about this, why don't you go dig up the old VirtualDub code and start distributing it again?

Tons of sites, and companies still DO distribute the origianl VirtualDub program with ASF support. Next time do a quick search instead of assuming and posting what you don't know.

Re:Who owns it?

[LionMage]

When has Microsoft EVER leveraged a patent to stifle progress?

Actually, according to this site, they've done it at least once, and they've engaged in some other tactics to discourage competition using patents as bludgeons or bargaining chips.

Here's a direct quote from the site I linked above:

In 2003/04 Microsoft published patent license terms for CIFS which disallow the use ore [sic] reimplementation of this communication architecture by GNU software. In late 2002, Microsoft began dissuade corproporate customers from introducing GNU/Linux by pointing out that if they use free software nobody would protect them from being sued for patent infringement.

The implication is that SAMBA is on legally dubious footing. This also explains why current SAMBA development is at a glacial pace -- its developers need to reverse engineer a good chunk of Microsoft's networking code. That would be needed anyway, since Microsoft's own implementation is idiosyncratic and does not exactly conform to their own published specification.

Calling something a myth doesn't make it so.

AJAX and Comet

[bigman2003]

Personally, the whole AJAX thing is cool, and at the same time scary.

I'm a web developer, and right now I am really getting into the stride of making very good apps, very quickly.

With AJAX, the expectations will rise considerably. The development effort will go way up...all to do the same things we are doing now.

I know that this sounds stupid to a lot of you...but think about games. Better graphics increase development time and effort, but don't necessarily make a better game.

Soon, EVERY web app will need to be an AJAX app...even if it doesn't need to be.

The age of simple software is once again coming to a close.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[gbrandt]

Surprisingly the bar is raising up to a point where web developers may have to think like software developers.

Thats the scary part...

Gregor

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Now.Imperfect]

I encounter the same problem. There is so much out there that it can be frustrating for a web developer.

Personally I felt that age of simple web pages slipped away when javascript started becoming popular.

Now to be a web developer its gotten to the point that its difficult to know fewer than 3-4 languages. And its nearly on par with desktop development; but soon will be the day when desktop and internet will be seamless.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[imidan]

I've been having discussions about that in my job recently. With AJAX as the new web development buzzword, people are coming to me and asking if we can put AJAX into every project. A lot of the web-based applications that I work on would not benefit from asynchronous communication--they really work best using the traditional synchronous request/response model.

But I've implemented a few shiny upgrades to older web apps that we run, and people love 'em, and want AJAX in everything. There are a few applications that we maintain that make significant use of JavaScript, and people want to 'upgrade' the JS to AJAX. I've explained over and over again that AJAX is just a particular thing that you can do with JS, it's not something that you replace JS with.

AJAX is a really cool development method, but it's like any other tool--there are certain situations where it helps, and others where you just don't need it.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[varmittang]

Yeah, I remember back when I/people use to say that people where not programmers just because they made websites. That really has changed since perl, php, and now ajax are became popular ways of doing websites. You really do need a little bit of a programmers background to get something done on the web now.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[lasindi]

Soon, EVERY web app will need to be an AJAX app...even if it doesn't need to be.

I'm afraid you may well be right. Most users never touch command-line programs today, even though the command-line is, for many tasks, easier and faster than the GUI equivalent (not to mention the fact that programming for the command line is far simpler). So, yeah I hope it doesn't happen, but it wouldn't be the first time ...

Re:AJAX and Comet

[stagl]

sounds a lot like flash to me.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Brandybuck]

Soon, EVERY web app will need to be an AJAX app...even if it doesn't need to be.

As a user who has had to endure every application being a web application, even if it never needed to be, you're not going to get my sympathy. You're part of the group that created this problem.

I've got no problem with distributed applications, but the idea that everything should be HTML/CSS/Javascript sitting in front of a database is just wrong.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[krunk4ever]

This reminds me of my friend and what he did recently. He was contracted to make a website that would display a menu depending on the day of the week. The user gets to input the date he plans to order on and the drop down box will expose what he can order on that day. However, instead of just doing a simple javascript check to see what day it was and updating the drop list, he implemented it with AJAX that would send the date back to the server and the server will send the list of of items available on that day. If the menu changes often and doesn't follow a particular schema, this would've been a good way to do it. However, given the menu is based on the day of the week only, that's just at most 7 menus to store, and each menu being 20 items or less doesn't require that much overhead compared to the rest of the page itself.

But I guess when the thing is "in", everyone wants a part of it.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[AutopsyReport]

Until AJAX can be implemented with a tried-and-true method with absolutely no breakage in the traditional flow of movement between pages (being able to recycle data and regular page transitions using Back and Forward), there is no possible way that AJAX will become another requirement of web applications. As it stands, its a very popular trend, but it really isn't holding much weight despite what the average web developer may think.

With AJAX, the expectations will rise considerably.

I think I'd call that requirement's creep on the client's part. There is no expectation to use AJAX, because as most developers realize, it's not reliable. And anything employed on that Web that is unreliable tends to buckle pretty fast.

The development effort will go way up...all to do the same things we are doing now.

And you earn more for adding a 'nifty' feature, so if someone wants some AJAX integration, where lies the problem?

Re:AJAX and Comet

[delphi125]

>The age of simple software is once again coming to a close.

What makes you think that AJAX won't be made simple?

For example, how hard is it going to be to detect and download new posts in forums (such as /.) dynamically, if you have a thread open in a tab? Not much harder than automating hitting refresh, with some XML and XSLT.

And it won't be needed for everything, by any means. Just a certain class of web apps which need to be able to run on multiple browsers (and also on dial-up/cell phones).

Re:AJAX and Comet

[T-Ranger]

True, but when the US Congress gets around to changing the number of days in a week to reduce the dependence on forign oil, you friend will only have to upgrade the server, not a bazillion web browsers out there.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[LDoggg_]

sounds a lot like flash to me.

And unfortunately, I'm starting to see sites use it in the same bad ways.
Anyone that decides ajax, java, or flash is a replacement for website navigation is an idiot.

These technologies have plenty of uses to enhance web applications, but as soon as they render my browsers controls unusable, something is wrong.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[LDoggg_]

Would be interesting to see slashdot with a new ajax-based comment view.
Right now they have flat, nested, no comments, and threaded.

Take something like threaded, then instead of refreshing the whole page when you drill down, just the pull down the comments for that thread.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Bogtha]

Kuro5hin have two dynamic comment modes available. They were written years ago before the AJAX hype, and use inline frames, if I remember correctly.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like saying Amish home builders are going to have to start thinking like architects.

They can try, but they aren't erecting any sky-scrapers just by thinking differently.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[jd142]

I guess it depends on how often the 20 items or so change. I just completed my first ajax app today and it's got a similar type of very simple interface and I thought the ajax method worked better and faster than the post/reload page method or create multiple javascript array variables. My app let's secretaries select a faculty member from a drop down list and then the courses taught by the faculty appear so the secretary can select the course.

Yes, it' simple (but I wanted something simple to get the hang of it) and at 50 faculty teaching an average of 3 courses, it wouldn't have been a huge chore to build the arrays from a one time database query. But this way I learned a new tool for the toolbox and I'll have some base code I can steal when I want to do something more complicated..

For my next trick I'd like to do something cool with seating charts and interactive photos that users can drag around the screen, all web based.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[gregbains]

Having started making websites around 6 years ago when I was 11, it seems everytime I learn something new another thing becomes popular.
Learn HTML and you need Javascript, learn Javascript you now need PHP, learn PHP and someone wants ASP, learn ASP and along comes AJAX, and flash is in there somewhere too. Then you have CSS layouts becoming (rightly so) popular
This is not a bash at new technology (or old technology becoming popular), but a bash at people seeing something and not realising it is there for a purpose, not for everything.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The greasemonkey script is supposed to do this for slashdot. Haven't upgraded it yet myself.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[DavidTC]

People who use AJAX to impliment any sort of navigation are fools. I've heard of people using it like frames, where there's a menu and the main content changes. These people should be shot...they exchanged the slight inconvience of a page refresh for broken navigation include non-bookmarkablity, needless reliance on javascript, and extra server and client load. (Running javascript on the client and non-caching on the server.)

There are exactly three ways AJAX should be used:

Changes that do not matter, like lists populating with shipping costs when you type in your address. No one needs or wants to 'go back' there...they just type another address. Or like dragging the boxes around on Google's personal homepage thingy, that is obviously undoable just by dragging the stuff back. Include 'saving halfway-done forms' and 'verifying forms server-side before a submit' in this.

Or they should be database frontends, which, like it or not, a large percentage of web pages are. You already can't 'go back' in those, and at least AJAX will return some logical result instead of either returing an out-of-date page or a message about 'resubmitting form data' that no user understands. (I'm in the middle of considering converting a rather simple one of these using xajax.)

Or, last but not least, 'live updates' to web pages. Like new forum messages showing up every ten seconds or so, or webmail. In which case the page must give exactly the same 'new' page if someone were to just hit refresh. This is essentually the same thing as a Javascript refresh in the header, and a lot less annoying.

Any other ideas anyone has for AJAX are probably bad ones. Forms updating automatically, database applications where browser navigation already doesn't work right, and live updates to the newest version of a webpage, that's about it.

Although now that I've said that, I know I've missed at least one useful concept.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Tatarize]

Yeah, honestly it is rather annoying to have to learn so many languages. I wrote an AJAX Chat program the other day, I needed HTML, javascript, PHP, mySQL and really should toss in some CSS. It took half the day to get it working in a very basic sense. I honestly didn't think about it once as a web development problem.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[bfandreas]

Well, AJAX breaks the forward/back browsing capability, which is not altogether good. My worst fear is that AJAX will be used for building what basically is a fat client within a browser. Come on, there are better ways to implement that. Without the compability hassle. AJAX is nice, when you want to go hybrid. Classic web application and "smart" forms. But if your stuff isn't usable without activating JavaScript, ActiveX or XMLHttpRequest then you are violating one of the best practices we've struggled so hard to establish. I'm sorry, if you rely heavily on that then your design is seriously broken. AJAX, SOA and whatever are only buzzwords. Specification proxies. Far from the be-all, end-all. Watch the fad. Watch it fade.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[The Cydonian]

In my previous company, we had an SOP for clients who demand AJAX. We show them our prototype-isque web-app with AJAX and tell them, look while we can do this, we will nevertheless need another extra X man-days to incorporate it into your deliverable, are you sure you want to pay $Y more for snazzier textboxes?

In our experience, exactly one of the five clients how initially demanded AJAX in a two month period actually required us to do it.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Skreems]

speaking as someone who has done (and enjoyed) both game development in c++/python and web work with php and javascript, let me be the first to say:

fuck you, buddy :-)


Really, it's not about making some gigantic labyrinthine application... it's about accomplishing the end goal for the user as quickly, efficiently, and correctly as possible. The web happens to provide some tools that enable massive return on very little code, but that doesn't mean that ALL those who work with it are unable to program larger systems, given a reason to do so.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[krunk4ever]

if you've played with javascript, it's as simple as onchange="javascript:function()" where function() modifies the list. no post/reload needed.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[krunk4ever]

um... informative?

1st of all, if the calendar system did change, the same change you do to the server can be easily done to the html file.

2nd, there are gazillions of situations one can make up so that it'd be better to have one than the either, but I'll give you the simplest scenario why it's better to do simple things w/o AJAX. Often times a webserver can be up while the database may have crashed or too many users have connected to it. Why update at semi-real-time when you can update at real-time? Why risk the chance of your database failing and not updating the entries at all, when you can have them all done on the client side.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Hosiah]

Now to be a web developer its gotten to the point that its difficult to know fewer than 3-4 languages.

Now that goes right to the heart of why I hate web development. Each of the languages of web design are poky little scriptlets, weak beyond belief, so that to actually *do* something, you need three or four just to get you through it. It's really saying something when you needed four languages to design the page that your web browser displays, but you only needed one to write the web browser itself.

The web needs to be torn down and rewritten from scratch. Start with ONE language that does EVERYTHING, all with the SAME SYNTAX ON EVERY LINE. Not doing this part with a C-style curly brace here, and that part with an HTML-style angle-bracket there, and using twenty different commands in ten different dialects to do the same thing. Web source is starting to look like Perl on acid.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[ultranova]

The web needs to be torn down and rewritten from scratch. Start with ONE language that does EVERYTHING, all with the SAME SYNTAX ON EVERY LINE.

This is already happening. Look at how many web sites are just one big Flash application. Home pages for games seem to be particularly vulnerable to this disease. I say disease because unlike HTML, Flash was meant to control exactly what things look like. Consequently, I have to live with whatever idiotic "artistic" UI choices the Flash authors made, instead of being able to either turn off the style sheet or apply my own, increase font size, or whatever.

Not doing this part with a C-style curly brace here, and that part with an HTML-style angle-bracket there, and using twenty different commands in ten different dialects to do the same thing. Web source is starting to look like Perl on acid.

Did it ever occur to you that the parts look different because they do different things ? HTML describes what should be displayed, CSS describes how it should be described, and Javascript describes what annoying popups and visual effects should be opened when you open the page, while ActiveX handles malware propagation.

Do you really think that having one mega-language that did all of this would be any clearer ? I, for one, like being able to tell these apart, even when someone insists on embedding them all into a single file.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Hosiah]

Look at how many web sites are just one big Flash application.

No, I wasn't talking about Flash at all. Flash is never the answer, no matter what the question is.

Did it ever occur to you that the parts look different because they do different things ?

See, I come to it from a programming background. In C, you would declare char *variable="my string"; , and that's the "what". Then you'd use ncurses for example: mvprintw(screen,10,12,variable); , and that's the "how". Annoying popups and visual effects can be done in their own library extensions to the language, which STILL have the same logic of syntax throughout, as with the SDL library for C. There is NO inherent reason why doing different functions requires a tag to be in nested angle brackets in one place and in lists seperated by colons and semicolons in another. And ActiveX can be dragged to the garbage can!

I, for one, like being able to tell these apart, even when someone insists on embedding them all into a single file.

Hey, thanks for your 2 cents, anyway! You mean in HTML, you can't tell the <b> from the <ul> just because they both use abreviations nested in angle brackets?

Re:AJAX and Comet

[DrSkwid]

You didn't NEED those, you CHOSE those

You could have used Javascript in the client AND the server if you decided to.

But anyway, boo hoo, so what ?

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Tatarize]

No I needed those. This guy had a gun to my head and demanded I use PHP on the server side to interact with the mySQL.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Taladar]

If you like unified Syntax you should have a look at Lisp. You can't reduce the number of syntax rules much further than that (maybe Forth but that is a lot more low-level).

Re:AJAX and Comet

[DavidTC]

The problem isn't really outdated pages. The problem that every edit results in a new page.

Let's say I'm at point X. And I want to check the list of data at Y. So I click on Y.

Sure enough, entry 4 is incorrect. So I click on that, get a new page we will call Y4 for editing entry 4, edit it, submit, and end up back at Y.

And now I can't get 'back' to X, because that edit was a POST.

And even if it was a POST redirect to a GET, I first pass through the incorrect old Y. And the subpage to I used to edit Y4.

Solution? Rewrite Y as AJAX, so you can update in place. When you add something, you don't go anywhere...the Javascript goes and calls server-side functions to edit the DB, and then updates the page.

And it's faster because you don't have to give them subpage page Yn where they can just edit whatever Yn they clicked on, but neither do you need to put every single piece of data in a form. They can click on the the right entry on page Y and 'pull it down' to edit boxes below, or magically convert it to edit boxes in place.

AJAX lets you present a screen to the user, and edit changes within it. They can, at any time, go forward and backwards to other pages, and edit changes there, and the other pages are always current, exactly like users expect.

To put it simply: The ability to go backwards and forward within the editting process is a misfeature. No one, programmers or users, wants users to be able to back up to an edit screen from 20 minutes ago. (For example, if they changed the primary key value on that edit screen, none of those changes will take.)

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Svlad_Cjelli1972]

As a general rule, I try to stay away from employers that use firearms as motivational tools. Just some food for thought.

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Hosiah]

have a look at Lisp

Been there, done that. Of course, which of the zillion dialects? Hmph, anyway, when Firefox can interpret and render a page in Lisp, I'll switch. I'd be tickled pink: Lisp is that kind of groovy fun! (Chorus from the flame-pit: "Parenthesis! Parenthesis! Oooooh, the parenthesis!) *Ahem* Really, almost any single language will make do. I'm just talking about not needing five of them to make one simple web page...

Y'know, ELisp can do buffers and highlighting and such, and XEmacs can do graphics in versions 21+, if my facts are straight. It almost *could* work! But Python has much of what's attractive to the job, and (booooy, are we *ever* speculating here!) might be more adaptable to the web task.

See, I can tell just by looking at the capabilities of each web development language - it's not that they designed deliberately limited, but that each language brought the web up to match the technology at the time - while failing to anticipate any further development. Thus, they scale up poorly. Now project ten years into the future, as each year we bolt another clunky little special-purpose language onto the web, each one good at three more tasks and lousy at everything else! Had we to do it all over again, we'd make a web design language that's turing-complete and NOT FLASH, and there's your content, styling, interaction, and animation right there! Unfortunately, there's your damned viruses, too!

Re:AJAX and Comet

[oldCoder]

Javascript on the server? I actually thought that went out with Netscape. What servers support javascript well?

Re:AJAX and Comet

[DrSkwid]

IIS

Re:AJAX and Comet

[Skreems]

Bullshit. By your logic, if a top-level programmer does some web work, he suddenly loses his ability to program. No, learning HTML will not teach you programming, but learning HTML doesn't PREVENT you from learning programming.

Probably a prelude to changing the way it works

[Mostly a lurker]

Mr Gates is probably laying the framework for changes in the AJAX support in IE aimed at breaking competitors products.

Re:Probably a prelude to changing the way it works

[Bogtha]

Mr Gates is probably laying the framework for changes in the AJAX support in IE aimed at breaking competitors products.

It's true that in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7, the method by which you instantiate the XMLHttpRequest object will change. But you have it completely backwards - they are changing it to be a native object, to be compatible with all the other browsers that implement it, instead of its original ActiveX implementation found in Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.0.

Web 2.0?

[Stevyn]

That has to be the worst idea to come out of a marketing drone since synergistic paradigm. At least Microsoft is actually working on new stuff lately. Google and Firefox have urged them to restart their old habits of copying that we haven't seen since the mid nineties.

Re:Web 2.0?

[sedyn]

New stuff? Amen to that...

I for one welcome our new light-blue site of doom overlords.

In other news...

[sabre307]

Later this year Microsoft is planning to release a hard drive based MP3 player.

These guys are so far behind the times it's not even funny. The next thing you know they'll be talking about how we really need something to search the web with, or an online way to look up an address. Hey, here's an idea, we'll make a website that contains information about stuff and make it editable by everyone.. We can call it a Wiki!

Re:In other news...

[kers]

Uhm. No. There is already busses on Hawaii called that.

Other than that: it was a cool idea, but it would never work in reality.

Re:In other news...

[B3ryllium]

Maybe they'd call it a "Miki" and get sued by Disney, and both companies will drive each other into bankruptcy?

We can only hope.

Re:In other news...

[Keeper]

Later this year Microsoft is planning to release a hard drive based MP3 player.

They already have. It also plays video. And it was released over a year ago.

Re:In other news...

[kelv]

What was meant as an ironic comment unfortunately turns out to be true. In SharePoint v3 (due out in 2006) they are adding support for Wikis and Blogs.

Once again another case of back to the future. Unfortunately I'm sure they will be like all the other SharePoint features - worst of breed in everything that they do. (If you don't believe me just go and have a look at the 'discussion boards' features of SharePoint)

Just imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how powerful and profitable Microsoft would be if they weren't always five years late to the party.

Re:Just imagine...

[kfg]

The race doesn't end at the starting line. It ends at the finishing line.

KFG

Re:Just imagine...

[ergo98]

Just imagine how powerful and profitable Microsoft would be if they weren't always five years late to the party.

Just imagine how...status quo or diminished...Microsoft would be if they weren't intentionally five years late to the party. Seriously.

5 or 6 years ago Microsoft was hugely pushing a lot of very advanced web technologies, including remote scripting, behaviours, client-side XML data islands and heavily programmatically controllable transformations, and even the much-maligned ActiveX. These enabled some remarkable web applications (ActiveX, for instance, allowed you to have auto-updating rich client on the desktop, but retaining all of the advantages of the document model of HTML).

It really was a fantastic platform that they created, and they were light years ahead of everyone else. Of course it was entirely tied to Microsoft's platform and browser, which was why you didn't see it much on public websites, but for internal teams that were up on their chops (most aren't, unfortunately), there were some amazing solutions created.

However Microsoft has a so-called-problem that shops like Salesforce don't - they are pulling in billions upon billions a year from their, err, "legacy" products, and often they're their own biggest competitor. The last thing they want to do is pull the carpet out from under their cash cows and enter into a new competition as a new entrant of sorts, eliminating a huge source of income, and a competitive advantage. It's for this reason that the IE team was disbanded years ago, after they shot far ahead of everyone else.

The revisionist history where people imagine that Microsoft is behind because they're just not as advanced as their competitors really is laughable. Microsoft was a mile ahead and then decided they really wanted to run the 20K instead of the 100m.

Re:Just imagine...

[Bogtha]

The revisionist history where people imagine that Microsoft is behind because they're just not as advanced as their competitors really is laughable.

Er, "behind" and "less advanced" are synonymous.

Microsoft was a mile ahead and then decided they really wanted to run the 20K instead of the 100m.

If anything that's backwards. Microsoft sprinted to get halfway decent Javascript and XML support, and then decided they'd won the race and stopped dead. There hasn't been an Internet Explorer rendering engine update for over four years now.

Meanwhile, Gecko/Presto/KHTML have made steady progress and had the majority of the capabilities of what will be in Internet Explorer 7 years ago. Microsoft have acted like the hare racing against the tortoise - arrogant enough not to take the competition seriously, and have been overtaken while they weren't looking.

Re:Just imagine...

[ergo98]

Er, "behind" and "less advanced" are synonymous.

No they aren't. Using your own analogy, that's like saying the tortoise can run faster because in a given race he's in the lead - he might be ahead in that race (technology is a race with no winning line), but in no way is he a faster runner.

and had the majority of the capabilities of what will be in Internet Explorer 7 years ago

I think you missed my point.

Re:Just imagine...

[foobsr]

The race doesn't end at the starting line. It ends at the finishing line.

Logic? I thought the finishing line implies that you are out of business,

CC.

Re:Just imagine...

[NineNine]

5 Years late? What, is AJAX everywhere already? Microsoft is smart because they don't necessarily jump on every stupid bleeding edge technology. In case you don't have a memory, there have been hundreds of Net based technologies that have come and gone... Remember VRML? How about XUL? Write-once-run-everywhere Java? "Push" technologies? The only lemmings who jump on every new buzzword the instant it comes out are Slashdotters, and those fucking leeches that keep coming up with unprofitable web companies yet keep getting millions of dollars to buy fucking Herman Miller chairs where they can sit on their fat asses and come up with new ways to use the buzzwords. A smart businessperson will not be an early adopter. A smart businessperson let's the early adopters blow all of their energy and capital to see if a new technology is going to work, THEN come in and develop it.

If history has shown anything, it's that Bill Gates is one of the best businesspeople in the world right now, and has a better grasp of technology trends than people like you and other armchair CEO's could ever hope to have. Now sit down, shut up, and pay attention to people who know better than you. Maybe you'll learn something.

Re:Just imagine...

[DavidTC]

MS isn't intentionally late to the party, either.

MS throws their own parties. They are amazing parties. They have amazing buffets, they have live music, they spend a lot of money on large dance halls. Their parties are the coolest parties you could ever imagine.

Their parties rock.

At some point, other people will throw parties. Often way after MS had their party. They're liable to be held in empty warehouses. There is no food. There rarely is booze. These parties aren't as cool as MS's, with the singular exception of some recent ones by Google.

But usually these parties suck.

Why does no one ever come to MS's party?

Because MS cards people to make sure they are exactly 21 years old, wearing a striped (diagonally, not those weird hippy vertical ones) tie, and paying a six thousand dollar entrance fee.

The other parties, however, are free. And recently a group of people called OSS has taken to magically pulling food and booze out of thin air and bringing it, for free, to everyone else's party. (And often, to MS's party.)

If the other parties do rock, and the law of averages would indicate that some most, MS wanders in when they're about halfway done, carrying food and booze, sometimes charging for it, although not if the OSS people have already shown up.

Re:Just imagine...

[fbg111]

Of course it was entirely tied to Microsoft's platform and browser, which was why you didn't see it much on public websites,

Actually I think it was b/c of the much-maligned ActiveX security vulnerabilities. There are plenty of ActiveX-less websites that are coded solely for IE anyway, so lack of platform-independence is not really the issue.

Re:Just imagine...

[kfg]

Perhaps, if you aren't the winner.

KFG

Re:Just imagine...

[ergo98]

Actually I think it was b/c of the much-maligned ActiveX security vulnerabilities. There are plenty of ActiveX-less websites that are coded solely for IE anyway, so lack of platform-independence is not really the issue.

I had no intention of focusing on ActiveX, but rather was talking about the gamut of technologies that Microsoft had introduced. Microsoft had the first real DHTML capable browser, their object model was worlds ahead of everyone else, they had far better XML/XSLT support, supported XML data islands, and so on and so on.

Late to the race doesn't make Microsoft a loser.

[no_pets]

This isn't the first time Microsoft has been late to the race. They are the masters of catch up and making the most of what someone else pioneered.

Slashdotters are quick to laugh at Micro$oft, but Microsoft is the one laughing all the way to the bank.

I thank M$

[bogaboga]

> [...]This time it's web-based software using technology such as AJAX (that MS 'invented but failed to exploit')

There you have it Slashdotters. Here, Microsoft has some innovation to show. Sincerely, I have been slashdotting for a long time and can say I have seen very little if anything about M$ being recognized for its innovation.

This I believe, is one of them. Thank you M$.

Re:I thank M$

[Bogtha]

I wouldn't really call it innovation. People were doing the same sort of thing beforehand with inline frame hacks. XMLHttpRequest is nicer, sure, but it's a refinement of existing practice rather than something brand-new.

About the only thing I can think of that comes close to being innovative from Microsoft regarding browsers was their "channel" support in Internet Explorer 4, which was subsequently discontinued when the "push" fad ran out of steam. Of course, it was highly derivative of other non-browser efforts, but as far as I'm aware, Microsoft were the first to put it into a browser.

Re:I thank M$

[DavidTC]

Yes, that actually was an innovation...except that it required all sort of proprietary stuff.

As the major advantage of 'AJAX' is that doesn't need that stuff, I guess you could say they invented AJAX...except for the actually useful part of it working cross-platform and transparently. Because of this rather obvious limitation, it failed to actually be used anywhere except intranets.

Part of this wasn't MS's fault, as it was pre-standard DOM, IIRC.

Any idiot can create interesting web technology that operates within a single browser. The power of AJAX is that libraries let it transparently Just Work, to steal an MS slogan.

And once Javascript got standardized enough that you could replace parts of the webpage live, on any browser (Giving us dHTML), the 'And we can edit the page with data from the server' is not an incredibly large conceptual leap. All major browsers, at that point, had some sort of XML parsing support inside their Javascript, so the obvious idea that you give out the same XML to any client, and rely on their Javascript to parse it, was also rather obvious.

In sort, I don't think AJAX really was any sort of innovation. It's just cross-platform DHTML with an XML data channel. Pretending MS invented it five years ago is ignoring the 'cross-platform dHTML' part.

unseen memo by Bill Gates

[digitaldc]

Memo to self-

Stop writing memos.

Re:Open Love Letter To Bill Gates..

[boarder8925]

Dear Anonymous Coward,

Let me just say that—

Sorry, Billy got a BSOD. He'll send his message momentarily.

And by momentarily, I mean in no less time than 72 hours.

;)

Failed to exploit? Nah.

[abscondment]

Oh, they managed to exploit it, albeit indirectly.

Re:Another dupe

[tehwebguy]

yes, amazing. zonk dissapears for a while, comes back, posts 2 dupes in a day.

Memos as Press Release

[MagikSlinger]

I agree with PBS's Robert X Cringely: the leak's just a distraction. It's only there to make Wall St. think Microsoft is still relevant and on the edge of the wave.

Re:Memos as Press Release

[outsider007]

It's only there to make Wall St. think Microsoft is still relevant and on the edge of the wave.

Please, with the 360 launch, this isn't even a blip on anybody's radar.

Conflict

[kosmosik]

But with this web-based/AJAX thingies it is a bit a conflict of interest for Microsoft. MS desperately tries to jump onto the services band-wagon. But the truth is that their main revenue comes from shrink-wrapped software (like Windows or Office). They *try* to laverage that to other areas but they fail miserably.

Take MS vs. Google. Now Google still IMHO does everything before MS, and then MS goes "me too" and issues something similar but yet worse than Google offering. In normal situation - meaning MS has no money to pump from OS/software revenue into new markets they would not get a chance against Google - they will simply bankrupt. Right now they pump the money but I doubt they get any revenue (even to go on zero line) from their web services.

Now as far as I understand they wan't to couple web-based software (more like service) with shrink-wrappedsoftware like Windows and Office. I base that on various interviews with MS execs about MS product line I've read. But this is like flawed idea from the begining. The most valuable part (IMHO) about web software is that it only needs a browser and server infrastructure on the other end. So in fact you do not need to pay any special attention to the client side (as you would have to with shrink-wrapped software). So for e.g. you could have a big extranet with 5000 clients across the world, using one sophisticated application by web and only thing you need is decent server architecture and on client side - commodity: standard browser running on any OS, maybe a printer or smth. to get the job done.

This is completely the opposite of having fat clients loaded with bloated OS and software suites - the MS way.

So I see a conflict here.

Re:Conflict

[rampant mac]

"But with this web-based/AJAX thingies it is a bit a conflict of interest for Microsoft. MS desperately tries to jump onto the services band-wagon. But the truth is that their main revenue comes from shrink-wrapped software (like Windows or Office). They *try* to laverage that to other areas but they fail miserably."

I had to respond because you bring up a really good point here. I don't have the original author's name, but someone on /. posted about software services a few years ago, comparing Apple to Microsoft:

"Some columnist recently pointed out that Apple achieved in one stroke everything MS is trying to achieve with .NET, by announcing iCal and iSync last week at MacWorld. These two programs allow users of Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) to connect their PDAs, cell phones and desktop PIMs to a single database and publish them on the Internet, connect with the calendars of others, and resolve conflicts between the two.

In other words, while Microsoft spent two years talking about Web services and technologies, Apple quietly went about actually building them into a program its users will want to use. Microsoft has been announcing and releasing software for other people to build these Web applications, but Apple decided to lead by example instead.

No doubt the next release of Windows will include similar features, and of course they'll be more widely used than Apple's. But just think what might be happening right now if Microsoft had spent as much time creating Web applications for Windows XP as they did promoting them.

If a person could synchronize their PocketPC to their MSN account and Outlook at the same time, then reconcile with all their coworkers' calendars and documents, without having to do anything more than press a button, Microsoft wouldn't need subscriptions to sell the next version of Office or Windows. Instead they settled for getting halfway there so that they could sell more copies of Exchange Server and keep PocketPCs as expensive as humanly possible."

Look at how Microsoft is trying to compete with Google. Google search = Simple for the novice user, but jam-packed with options for power users who need more refinement. Microsoft has made a good attempt at implementing Google's simple search layout, but it's still not there. Take the damn drop-down menu:

Google: Search for 'Killian's' -> Get web results. Click the Images link -> Get images of 'Killian's' Beer
MSN: Search for 'Killian's' -> Get web results. Select drop down menu -> Images. Re-click Search -> Get images of 'Killian's' -> Note that every image is everything but the beer.

I think Microsoft has a long way to go.

AJAX good for large services , not small

[Coopjust]

AJAX is a good idea for larger services, like Gmail, that many people use and it is completely seamless. However, AJAX is much harder to code, and it's not necessary for a smaller company, which doesn't need the marginal gains vs. the coding. Still, for a large company like Google, it takes less time to load (which makes Gmail seem better) and also saves bandwidth.

Re:AJAX good for large services , not small

[RingDev]

I disagree. It is a tool. It works best when used correctly. I have a small app that constantly checks for database updates and refreshes a frame when there is an update. Tiny app, but AJAX could make it significantly better with only a tiny bit of code and an AJAX plug in. The larger and more complexe the service, the more fore-thought and design that is needed. But the tool is just as effective, in small or large projects.

-Rick

Re:AJAX good for large services , not small

[brunes69]

AJAX is a joke to code if you have any idea what you are doing.

1. Use an existing RPC library, like JSON-RPC for java, to translate your objects and methods. Don't re-invent the wheel.

2. Use an existing AJAX library to wrap the XMLHttpRequest object, like Sarissa.

3. Sprinkle wherever it fits.

It is quie simple actually. I was able to AJAX-ify a few pages of an exisiting app in under a day, giving them quite a more responsive feel.

Re:AJAX good for large services , not small

[MicahStevens]

Agreed, I don't spend any additional time coding AJAX type things, it's just a different technique to deal with the data. I've never thought it was more time consuming or more difficult.

Re:AJAX good for large services , not small

[DavidTC]

Many people aren't quite up on the 'AJAX plug in' stuff yet. If you think AJAX is too complicated, go look at 'xajax', which is PHP. It writes all the Javascript for you.

You literally write 6 lines of PHP, put a div with an id attribute in a page, put a single 'onclick=' on a button, and that button will go back to the server, execute whatever PHP you want, including a PHP function to replace the inside of that div, and transparently update the page. It really is that simple.

And that's just the first library I looked at. For all I know, that's overly-complicated. But in about one minute, I was able to write an example web page that, whenever I clicked a button, it ran some php code to get the server time, and add a line to the page with it.

Without, and this is really the most important part, me ever seeing a line of Javascript except a single function call in the onclick= handler. Which is good, because I hate trying to write cross-platform Javascript.

You can put the PHP in the page, or have an external handler. (When this AJAX catches on, we're going to have to set up seperate virtual servers so it doesn't screw up the logs.;) )

And if you love Javascript, you can do it in the other direction...you can call javascript from the PHP. Technically, you could even bounce back and forth forever, although that is obviously extremely stupid.

Re:AJAX good for large services , not small

[dzfoo]

You forgot the marshmellows:

4. Top with marshmellows.

How are you ever going to make it work without the marshmellows?

        -dZ.

Another memo found

[msbsod]

"Bill, is this your memo: 'how to run a government 101 at 11:00' ?"
"No, it's George's. I took the advanced class last year."

Never stay up past 11:35am

[DigitalHammer]

Did anyone else first read the title as "Another Baleeted Microsoft Memo"? :/

Re:Never stay up past 11:35am

[WilliamSChips]

No, if it was a baleeted memo, it would be "Dear Bill Gates, How do you type with boxing gloves on?"

Re:Never stay up past 11:35am

[TubeSteak]

/me pretends to be Ballmer & throws a chair at DigitalHammer
No. Nobody read it as "Baleeted"
That's not even a word

Can't you people just leave me alone?

Re:Never stay up past 11:35am

[SpooForBrains]

If only ...

"'Everything is fine, nothing is ruined' ... well, that's always nice to hea- WAIT A MINUTE ... flagrant error?! Where did all my emails go?"

Another memo

[psykocrime]

Zonk has sent out another memo heralding the latest big development in the industry, as he sees it. This time it's web-based software using technology such as DUPES (that Slashdot 'invented but failed to exploit'). The Economist says 'As in previous cases, what is new is not the story itself, but the fact that Slashdotters are taking it seriously.' Commander Taco of Slashdot decided against writing a memo. 'Posting dupes is easy,' he says, whereas 'professional quality editing is a whole lot harder.'"

Re:Late to the race doesn't make Microsoft a loser

[0kComputer]

Kinda like the old saying "the second mouse gets the cheese."

Hmmm...

[TubeSteak]

Lemme fix that link for you
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx

I'd say they've managed to exploit it fairly directly.

lmao @ Mark Benioff

[fbg111]

From TFA: This prompted yet another memo from Marc Benioff, the marketing-savvy boss of Salesforce.com, a leading proponent of the software as a service model. If Microsoft were serious about Web 2.0 and Microsoft Live, he suggested helpfully in an internal memo sent to the press, it should rename its traditional software Microsoft Dead. Web 2.0, he said, was not about old companies constrained by their legacy products but new firms such as, naturally, Salesforce.com, Writely, Numsum, Zimbra and Goffice.

memo?

[bufalo_1973]

memo (in Spanish)? as in the first meaning? :P

Re:Late to the race doesn't make Microsoft a loser

[B3ryllium]

"Isn't the first time"? This isn't the TENTH time! I've lost count, ran out of fingers.

Re:Late to the race doesn't make Microsoft a loser

[BasilBrush]

Sometimes they catch up. Sometimes they lose. In the 90s they had a reputation for catching up and winning. This decade they mostly haven't. MS doesn't have the clout it used to.

Argh, DUPE!

[zataang]

How come nobody's noticed this YET? Or perhaps, it invited way too many hits last time /. posted it!

I hate AJAX

[barfy]

What was a nice thing for solving problems otherwise difficult to solve, has turned into something that is making my expensive computer grind to a halt. Currently no browser likes to have multiple commercial pages open at the same time (which is how I often browse). Everybody from the content hoster, the ad folks, the editorial, and design folks gotta have some Ajax running. VERY VERY little does anything useful from either a UI or Content view, but in the end makes browsing slower, makes my computer slower, and makes me hate the F77ck3rs who think Ajax is cool. I hope this comes to a quick near death like when Java was cool.

Re:I hate AJAX

[ScrewMaster]

So, what you're saying is that you like Ajax about as much as you like Flash?

Re:I hate AJAX

[fbg111]

I hope this comes to a quick near death like when Java was cool.

I think you mean Java applets. Java is alive and well on the server.

Re:I hate AJAX

[killjoe]

Today I'd take a java applet over an ajax app. Too bad nobody is writing them anymore.

It's called 'Atlas'

[1000101]

Microsoft has a project called 'Atlas' that has a set of prebuilt controls and javascript files that you can use for your projects. It can be found at asp.net. The nice thing about this project is you can define an Atlas (it's just AJAX really) control the same way you define a typical asp control ( vs. ) and then link in the pre-defined .js files. I have been reading about AJAX for a while now on Slashdot (my employeer has been using it for quite a while now and I didn't even know it) but hadn't tried it out. Atlas is so simple that I had my first page converted in a matter of minutes. An earlier submitter pointed out that not all pages need to be converted or built using AJAX but the customer is demanding it. This is an interesting topic, and I have considered this myself. I have found that almost every page in the types of websites that I create don't need this technology. Most of them are your typical form where you just insert data and update a database. If you don't need a high level of interactivity, AJAX might not be the best option.

Writing code....

[KJE]

After you said that writing code is a whole lot harder than writing a memo, I got to thinking: When was the last time Bill Gates coded anything? I mean I was just wondering. For all the supposedly evil things his company has done, albeit with him at the helm, he started out as a geek. Geeks like to do geeking things, I don't care how old you are... what do you think he's done recently?

Re:Writing code....

[Hosiah]

what do you think he's done recently?

What gets me to wondering, is: Does Bill Gates' computer at home (because it should be running Windows) Blue-Screen-crash and get virus-infected and get rootkitted by Sony just like the rest of the Windows' boxen? God, I hope so. I hope he also gets frustrated enough to punch holes in the screen when it can't install the driver for his new piece of hardware and it won't stop asking to every time it boots. You should at least use your own product, just to see what you're putting everybody else through. But that would be too honest...

Bill Gates was never a hacker, I don't think. In fact, I don't think he's even touched a computer in 20 years. As soon as DOS 1.0 began selling in the little glad-wrapped floppies, everything he did after that was delegate.

They developed the XmlHttpRequest

[rdean400]

to provide the "X" in AJAX, but the concept was envisioned by Netscape all along.

Re:Microsoft invented AJAX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, get it right. XmlHttpRequest was implemented as a standard long after, and only because of, Microsoft's ActiveX implementation, which has been around since IE4. Before that, Microsoft had a Remote Scripting library for ASP, which allows the same functionality as "AJAX". The Remote Scripting library even worked in Netscape 4, which was a common browser at the time I built my first "AJAX" application.

Do you know what "AJAX" is? It's a term coined by some overpaid design guru talking head to describe technology that has been around, and in heavy use by non-public webapps, for many years.

Microsoft pioneered this whole way of thinking, even if they didn't implement it very creatively on many of their sites, and many of their better ideas (CSS expressions & behaviors, XML data islands) have still not become standards, while others have.

And, yes, I am posting this from Firefox, running on an Ubuntu distro. I am not a Microsoft apologist, but mindlessly parrotting off commonly-believed falsehoods just pisses me off. When IE 5 was first released, it was a groundbreaking app, better than anything else on the market, and many of its innovative features are still unknown to most of the A-List, blogorati circle-jerk web-brochure designers who think making a glorified to-do list is "changing the face of the web".

Re:More MS BS?

[Mancat]

Whatever. Unix is a giant web of copycat implementations. We may love it, but it goes without saying that very few unique innovations have taken place in the Unix world for the past decade.

Why not use Java applets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Java applets have all the user interface/networking capabilities that AJAX has and some more.

I think that Sun missed the boat on this one. Instead of working on a lightweight JVM for every platform, they kept bloating the language and the implementation. I don't see many Java applets anymore, it's mostly Flash and now AJAX.

Re:Late to the race doesn't make Microsoft a loser

[Duhavid]

All you say is quite true.

Now if they could just learn ( say catch up a bit ) and
stop acting like they have to own everything software,
maybe slashdotters will stop treating them so terribly.

Re:More MS BS?

[Punboy]

Yes, but with lots of Unix software, they're licensed in such a way as to say "Dupe me! Comeeee on baby dupe me!"

Innovation in Unix is expected to be duplicated and improved upon, and is licensed as such.

MS says "Oh, ya, we have that too now." And copies it.

MS and Web 2.0?

[alexjohnc3]

"Now a barrage of memos signals the emergence of a new generation of web-based software, often called 'Web 2.0'. As in previous cases, what is new is not the idea itself, but the fact that Microsoft is taking it seriously." Funny how when Microsoft takes something seriously, I don't. This Web 2.0 crap is stupid. Just because the W3C and some developers who use XML are becoming better doesn't mean we have to dub the "World Wide Web" a.k.a. "The Internet" a.k.a. "Porn" a.k.a. "The Net/Web", "The Web 2.0". We already have enough names, can't it just be called, "The Internet" as it should be called, hence the interconnected networks?

Re:Microsoft invented AJAX?

[3) profit!!!]

Apple says you're wrong

"Microsoft first implemented the XMLHttpRequest object in Internet Explorer 5 for Windows as an ActiveX object. Engineers on the Mozilla project implemented a compatible native version for Mozilla 1.0 (and Netscape 7). Apple has done the same starting with Safari 1.2."

Re:More MS BS?

[SysKoll]

Hmmm, you sure about that? Last time I checked, hardware virtualization had been implemented on Unix way before it was brought to Windows by VMWare and Virtual PC. Same for RAID. Sun's NFS and RPC were way ahead of anything MS had until years later.

What's new about 'AJAX'

[Kaenneth]

Back in late 2000 I wrote a web page that displayed a SVG map, based on census tract data from the whole US, and when the user selected a different set of variables to view (say comparing population density to property values) the javascript on the page would request the data from my web server, which would run the needed SQL query, and return the result in XML to recolor/change the map, without reloading the huge map geometry, just the new data.

I don't recall using any ActiveX; just JavaScript and a little .CGI module to turn the request into SQL and the data into XML. The big thing was SVG, it just wasn't widly supported at the time, the Adobe SVG software choked on anything complex, and Firefox 1.0 didn't even include it.

I guess the distinction is in the asynchronous prefix, where you have an outside object on the client side, calling back into your JavaScript when it's done.

I just put an end marker on the data I was retrieving, and waited for it to appear, or for an error condition to occur.

If they could have enabled threads in Javascript, that would be more flexable I think.

Re:What's new about 'AJAX'

[Tavor]

What, besides a name spiffier than anything Microsoft can come up with?

Problems

[Tony]

I agree with your premise. Microsoft often can't afford to take advantage of truly innovative technology, because that technology might erode their desktop monopoly.

Some of the logic along the way is... problematic.

Microsoft introduced ActiveX to ensure the web was tied to their platform. The reason ActiveX was "much maligned" is because it was just DCOM wrapped up in web semantics. Since DCOM was poorly-designed, ActiveX inherited many problems, including extremely poor security. At the time, CORBA was the standard for remote execution, and although it was a standard, it had many drawback when compared to DCOM-- namely, poor implementations that often didn't work together properly, naming service issues (still a problem, though its getting better), and huge bloat / performance issues.

Their platform was hardly fantastic. It was cobbled together, riddled with stability and security issues, and was tied intimately to the MS-Windows platform. The primary reason nobody adopted it on the web, outside of the compatibility nightmare, was that ActiveX controls required a Microsoft server on the other end, meaning exposing an important service to the internet. I believe that was Microsoft's intent-- get application developers to use ActiveX (most app developers were MS-Windows developers), and force the sysadmins to install MS-Windows servers to support them. But that might just be paranoid delusions on my part.

I'm glad you remember to glory days of ActiveX and IIS servers with such a warm fuzzy glow. All I remember were the serious ActiveXploits, IIS worms, and performance problems created by this "fantastic platform."

Re:Problems

[ergo98]

Not to get too argumentative, but I do disagree issue with a couple of points.

The reason ActiveX was "much maligned" is because it was just DCOM wrapped up in web semantics.

ActiveX was a visual component standard that was really created for Visual Basic. ActiveX had nothing to do with DCOM (of course ActiveX uses COM as the communication method, but in no way does it imply that it's talking to the master via DCOM), but rather was a COM based component that implemented a particular set of visual interfaces to embed it in a container. It was invented for fat development, replacing VBXs (with OCXs), but the black-box type model worked well (at least in the Microsoft world) in the browser. The whole security model element of your comment I'm not really sure how to respond to - Apart from the fact that ActiveX was just a client-side technology, implying nothing about how it communicates with the server, DCOM was, and is, a highly secure (with highly granular ACLs) communication method.

The primary reason nobody adopted it on the web, outside of the compatibility nightmare, was that ActiveX controls required a Microsoft server on the other end, meaning exposing an important service to the internet.

I think you're thinking of something entirely different. An ActiveX control on your webpage is just an OCX resource file that you've stuck on your web server, and adding resource location and versioning info in your HTML. An ActiveX control can be used on pages served from LAMP servers. There is nothing about it that ties the server to Microsoft. I personally used ActiveX for internal webapps, and those controls used HTML to communicate with data sources.

I'm glad you remember to glory days of ActiveX and IIS servers with such a warm fuzzy glow. All I remember were the serious ActiveXploits, IIS worms, and performance problems created by this "fantastic platform."

Oh give me a break. Aside from your blatantly wrong knowledge of the Microsoft platform (BTW: Corba and COM were competing technologies. Your revisionist "COM was a lame ripoff of CORBA" is sadly very wrong, but it's the norm for history to be reinvented for some around these parts), I was specifically talking about internal development. It was a fantastic platform, though like every other platform it did have its hiccups.

Belated? bahaha

[aCapitalist]

Microsoft is far ahead of the curve on "AJAX" stuff its not even funny. Hell, Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest 7 years ago or so. And Ajax is a joke compared to something like XAML and a .NET runtime in the browser. It'll make all this html/css/javascript+dom look like the stone age, and it'll all be in the browser. Word and anything else they want to run will look and almost act native. I used Visual Studio ActiveX that responded reasonably years ago.

I tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[Allnighterking]

Microsoft DID NOT invent Ajax.

Ajax = Asynchronous Javascript and XML.

XML is a subset of SGML which existed before M$.

Javascript is a child of LiveScript, both were created by Netscape. Nothing in what is Ajax was ever created by M$ period. The fact that they are able to see the value and talk it up is cool, but they invented none of it.

Now I'm sure someone will bring up M$ Remote Scripting. It like LiveScript where basically in house products. Remote Script did not exist in the public realm. However at the time of it's "creation", M$ was lacking a viable browswer (Definition of Viable is it works.) IE 1.0 and 2.0 where total jokes, 3.0 was the equal of Netscape 1.0 and 4.0 began to work. By this time however both MS and Netscape were fully supporting LiveScript/JavaScript (Sometimes in name only, as each tried to extend beyond the other.)

But in short Please, stop say M$ invented Ajax. This is like claiming that Honda invented the Car. They build them yes but they did not invent them.

Now according to wikipedia something called. Remote Scripting supposedly pre-dated HTTP requests. (according to Wikipedia.) Nope.. sorry didn't. The concept of HTTP requests etc had been layed out for a long time before M$ existed (pre-dating the Altair) But it took Berners-Lee to be able to make it usable and, Stanford Linear Accelorator to do the most important step. Create a Distant End. In fact at the time the ONLY usable OS for this was ..... da ta da da! Next. Given that the only thing it (the web) could run on at the time was Next... I guess Steve Jobs had more to bring to bear in creating Ajax than MS did.

Since Remote Scripting required a Java applet to work .... it had to exist post Sun creation. Sun was created After the Http request was first used. Java was first created in 1991, and introduced to the public in 1994. LONG after javascript had existed.

So no, I had more to do with Ajax than M$ did. And I had nothing at all to do with the concept.

Re:I tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[schnuf]

Sounds like you are confusing HTTP with XmlHttp. Microsoft did add XmlHttp do their XML parser (and therefore accessible from IE) long before it was added to the other browsers.

I have been using XmlHttp and Javascript/VBScript to create AJAX style apps on Intranets for at least 5 years. Before that we were using Microsoft's Remote Scripting to do the same stuff.

I'm trying to remember when Remote Scripting first appeared, I think it was in 1999. We put together our first AJAX style functionality the same day it appeared.

The guy at Microsoft who created the Java applet that Remote Scripting used didn't really know his way around HTTP, he used GET to send the request to the server, thus severely limiting the amount of data you could send to the server. Thankfully Microsoft released the Java source for the applet, so I modded our version to use POST instead.

Re:I tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[j3tt]

mod parent up. AFAIK, MS was the one who created XMLHttpRequest which I believe is what is used by AJAX apps.

Re:I tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[Allnighterking]

Actually the first browser to incorporate XMLHttpRequest was/is the W3.org browser (now called I believe Amaya) W3.org is also the inventor if you will (or more acurately the incorporator)

Javascript again predates RemoteScripting by about 5 + years. During the time between the creation of Javascript and the Asynchronous access was done using databases and flat text files (I know this only because I was doing this, and I was doing things that others did.) So this concept is nothing new. (the async part)

As for Usage of RemoteScripting to do XML releated requests. Well I know a lot of perl cgi developers that could argue that they did this long before RemoteSripting came around. The real stopping point at that time with coming out with the XML 1.0 standard was MS. At that time they were trying to control w3 and force standards. As well intentioned as they may or may not have been, Sun vs MS vs IBM vs, vs, whomever, did slow things down in coming out with the standard.

Just like how everyone credits MS with Xenix. However what they forget is that ATT was busy getting online with computers and fighting the DOJ when they agreed to give up their computer business (which ran Xenix), sold the OS to Microsoft and the manufacturing plant for the systems to Tandy. So M$ bought what was really the best OS around at the time (Better IMHO than C/PM basic, pascal, dos or anything else I saw.)

Just because a company did something that is kinda sorta like someone else's technology doesn't mean they are the inventor, or even the concept creator. It simply means you did something in this area. Most importantly if you didn't continue with it to fruition ... you've no claim at all.

Re:I tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[topham]

The guy at Microsoft who created the Java applet that Remote Scripting used didn't really know his way around HTTP, he used GET to send the request to the server, thus severely limiting the amount of data you could send to the server. Thankfully Microsoft released the Java source for the applet, so I modded our version to use POST instead.


I expect it wasn't his lack of experience, but rather just a piece of experimental code that turned out to be useful, but wasn't fully implemented.
Especially considering you said Microsoft released the source. They aren't know for being all that generous.

AJAX and information

[FlippyTheSkillsaw]

AJAX is a great way to make it harder to get at the data you want without following the intended process. Take flash as another good example of this. Unless a flash author goes out of his/her way to make the thing indexable, the information is locked in. You can't link in to the middle of a flash script the way you can with an html site.

You have to walk through the silly flash stuff to get to the data you want. I tried to get information on automobiles recently, but the trend there is flash in a big way. Well, they didn't really say anything useful about their cars, anyway. The only information I could get was from the third-party sites. It's like any advertising in that they make you walk through the data in the fashion that most influences you to ignore the things you don't like (or don't know) and pay attention to the pretty color.

AJAX, as far as I can tell, is a great way to limit the indexability of information and provide a single point of entry for it.

Of course, XML was supposed to do exactly the opposite by making the information completely indexable, and Mr. Bossman totally got on the hypetrain to Nowhere.

MOD PARENT UP.

[killjoe]

The anonymous user has an informative post.

Re:Microsoft invented AJAX?

[killjoe]

The early implementations of remote scripting was done with a tiny little java applet. That's why it worked in both netscape and IE. MS decided to re-do it because they decided they hate java one one day and also to make it a MS only technology. Needless to say that killed the technology until it became cross platform again.

[off-topic] tired of fud... and this is a big one.

[Zentac]

If the wiki is wrong you should do something about it, sure any senseble person should take into account that its not (at) all hard facts that's Wikipedia, but people do tend to get there knowledge from it. If you are aware it is wrong on a certain point, do something about it please.

Re:Microsoft invented AJAX?

[schnuf]

Apple are nearly right. IE 5.0 was the first version of IE to ship with MSXML and the XmlHttpRequest object.

However MSXML 2.0, which was where XmlHttpRequest first appeared was available for download before that. We were using MSXML 2.0 with IE 4.0 to do AJAX style apps before IE 5.0 was released.

constantly

[idlake]

Microsoft's patents on the C#/.NET APIs have already greatly stifled progress. If Microsoft didn't have those patents, Mono would likely be far more widely used on Linux. It has taken a lot of work to determine that those patents are likely not relevant or enforceable, and nevertheless they still have a bad PR effect for Mono.

In general, merely having a patent stifles progress and is an anti-competitive practice because it forces competitors to work around it, in particular given that Microsoft has threatened to enforce its portfolio and clearly has the means to do it.

Microsoft also uses its patent portfolio to negotiate patent cross licensing agreements and they use patents in the negotiation of individual business deals. And Microsoft uses patents to threaten countersuits when they are threatened with a legitimate patent lawsuit, usually resulting in a cross licensing deal and settlement.

cheaper than software ?

[bud_davis]

'Writing memos is cheap,' he says, whereas 'writing software is a whole lot harder.'" Bullshit I say, do you have any idea how many hours that can be wasted writing a memo.

The point of web apps

[tkrotchko]

"As a user who has had to endure every application being a web application, even if it never needed to be"

The whole reason web apps took off IMHO was because distributing these big apps, both stand-alone and C/S was difficult and was requiring a degree of coordination that was difficult to pull off. Anybody who did C/S apps and tried to make sure all the Windows clients out there had a consistent ODBC driver will tell you what a pain these things are (plus these types of apps tended to be 2-tier, which is harder to scale than a 3-tiered app).

Web apps for all their flaws got around the entire software distribution issue and has allowed people to cut costs by allowing a more rational back-end intrastructure. While some apps suffered, overall, people like them because web apps tend to work in a very consistent way. AJAX is simply restoring the balance by allowing more complex UI's to be distributed centrally. Personally, I think its a bit of a fad, but it will probably have a long-lasting impact on people's expectation of functionality.

Re:The point of web apps

[kimvette]

AJAX (or reasonable fascimiles) are definitely here to stay (see gmail, google maps, OWA), but much like Flash, it will be overused at first without thinking of the ramifications.

Companies looking to lower deployment costs may look to hosted Microsoft Office, hosted email (I know this is old hat but I'm talking corporate email which is usually internal), hosted database apps, and so forth.

Then when something happens - e.g., when it dawns on them that they've now outgrown the T1 and now need a DS-3 just to run Office, or their ISP goes under or simply doesn't give a hoot when your connection breaks, or a pole gets hit by a truck and Verizon takes a week to get out to fix it and your company comes to a HALT because you've decided to host your whole enterprise with Microsoft, you'll realize just what a bad idea hosted apps are. Remember ASPs and why they didn't work for most services?

Microsoft is proposing that the ASP model be taken to a whole new level, and when it works it will work great for moderate use in a small company, but as you get larger you'll outgrow it. Also: if your ISP goes under and you need to source a new T1 provider, it can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to three months to get Verizon's ass in gear to actually run the cables.

Remember: in computers it all comes down to picking the right tool to fix a problem. AJAX is being touted by some as the BFH for all problems, and there is danger that AJAX will gain a bad rep like Flash has when people turn to it for everything.

Great uses for AJAX which immediately come to mind (getting the two best-known ones out of the way first):

• Email clients
• Mapping
• Content Management System administration
• Messageboards
• Database administration (think phpMyAdmin on steroids
• System administration (think Webmin on steroids)
• webhost file management
• CRM systems
• e-Commerce storefronts
• Online banking
• Knowledgebase systems

Things I expect AJAX would suck for:

• Office suites
• MOST desktop app solutions
• Anything the web isn't ideal for

In conclusion, IMHO, pretty much anything with dynamic content for which the web is currently the ideal interface for is an ideal problem for AJAX to solve, and anything not currently on the web (e.g., Office suites in particular) is something that AJAX is the wrong tool for. If you think I have Microsoft's hosted Office solution in mind with this post, you're right.

Note that I am not even taking into account things like handling of confidential data and the obvious security risks, but I took it for granted that most here are sensible enough to see those problems up front.

Insightful? Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"and a .NET runtime in the browser"

Just what we want. A non-portable solution that only works in Windows in IE.

Great solution.

I'll bet you think everybody should install the jet engine on their desktop, because its so fucking standardized. Whee! Throw whatever MS wants onto your desktop and make sure the next application crashes because of version incompatibilities. What a terrific idea.

Let me know when the .net runtime works in firefox on the mac or linux and then we'll talk. Until then, you bear the mark of somebody who just doesn't get it.

AJAX has its limits.

[9-bits.tk]

Unfortunately, I just can't see an Ajax version of MS Office products taking off. An Ajax-based document retrieval system implemented on a network could work, though.

Re:Well, its called "becoming the boss"

[jallen02]

Sad, really.

Jeremy

3 or 4 languages? Pfffft!

[dzfoo]

I hope you're not one of those who count HTML and CSS as "languages"...

I coded -- and still code -- in more languages than that even before my company decided to label me as a "Web Developer" for working on web-enabled applications. That "age of simple web pages" that you speak of was the time when Webmasters were just that, and nobody thought of considering them "developers". I still do not consider making web pages "software development" as such, but more like User Interface implementation. Multi-tierred, full-featured, web applications are another matter.

          -dZ.

--
        "There can be only Juan!"
                - Juan McCloud from the Clann McCloud, El Highlandero.

Re:3 or 4 languages? Pfffft!

[Now.Imperfect]

HyperText Markup Language Even if it doesn't earn the title, it is still a language... CSS.... not so much.

Re:3 or 4 languages? Pfffft!

[dzfoo]

You can infer by context that the original poster was talking about Programming Languages, and thus my response. HyperText Markup Language is not a programming language, but an SGML-based language designed to describe hyper-text documents. My comment was a response to the common perception, particularly by the lay-person, that making a web page using HTML and CSS qualifies as "programming", and that when you add something like JavaScript to it, the creation now involves 3 "[programming] languages".

      -dZ.

Ok, but...

[speedbump]

If Microsoft has suddenly realised that they need to 'exploit' AJAX, great. Make it easy to code. I've been looking at Atlas (atlas.asp.net) and I am unimpressed with the difficulty of getting it working for my application. MS either needs to get better documentation out there, or rethink the framework.

I've also been looking at OpenLaszlo (Openlaszlo.org) and although it is designed for a much jazzier UI than I need, it might do the trick for me. I'm still pondering about whether I want to deal with the Tomcat/Java dependency on the server or not...

My last option if I want to implement a bunch of AJAX behavior is to write a bunch of JavaScript routines myself. I did this for my last project, which is OK, but I feel sorry for the next web developer who comes along and has to maintain that application.

I'm leaning towards Laszlo, just because my development timeframe is very short (hey, what else is new?)

Re:Ok, but...

[1000101]

"and I am unimpressed with the difficulty of getting it working for my application. MS either needs to get better documentation out there, or rethink the framework"

How difficult is it to define an Atlas label as "" rather than ""??? After that, all you have to do is define its properties and what WebService it is calling.

"My last option if I want to implement a bunch of AJAX behavior is to write a bunch of JavaScript routines myself"

The whole point of Atlas is that it has PREDEFINED javascript functions so you don't have to write them yourself. You simply link in the .js files and off you go. In a nutshell: 1. Link in .js files 2. Declare an Atlas control (i.e. atlas:Button) 3. Define the WebService the control will call and what control the result is pushed to 4. That's it! Atlas is a 'framework' that encapsulates all of the 'major' controls functionality so you don't have to write all of the tedious javascript. AJAX is a pain in the ass to implement from scratch, but Atlas has made the process much, much simpler.

Re:Open Love Letter To Bill Gates..

[Bush Pig]

I actually got a BSOD the other day (XP Professional on my work laptop) - no idea why. I must admit it's the first in a while, but they do still happen.

Re:Open Love Letter To Bill Gates..

[etsolow]

Dictionary.com weighs in thusly:

Usage Note: Momentarily is widely used in speech to mean "in a moment," as in The manager is on another line, but she'll be with you momentarily. This usage rarely leads to ambiguity since the intended sense can usually be determined on the basis of the tense of the verb and the context. Nonetheless, many critics hold that the adverb should be reserved for the senses "for a moment," and the extended usage is unacceptable to 59 percent of the Usage Panel.

Re:Well, its called "becoming the boss"

[kimvette]

Has Bill Gates ever architected or implemented any code at Microsoft? He's known to have bought BASIC and DOS pretty much done and spent his time peddling it, struggling to make deals in the beginning, and when those deals came through he had a heck of a lot more to deal with on the business side of Microsoft. When did he ever have time to implement any code - especially after he scored that deal with IBM? Also by then Microsoft was busy licensing BASIC left and right, and started acquiring other companies to diversify their product offerings as soon as they gained some success. I'm not knocking Gates, but really - how much does he really need to know about the details of writing a class to decide "AJAX good, posting back then reloading the entire page bad?"

Being technically savvy when it comes to decision making at the exective level doesn't mean you have to know how to properly allocate memory and implement proper thread management - it requires a basic knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks to each technology, and quite often you'll be referring to your department members for the nitty-gritty technical details and advice. If you're, say, a VP of development (in a reasonable-sized company) and are spending your time implementing a data abstraction layer, you really ought to either not be a VP, or you need to hire someone else to be the VP and go back to being a coder.

So I think AC has hit the nail on the head with that post. Having execs at Microsoft code would be a colossal waste of time and money. What their execs DO need to do is a) take input from engineers much sooner b) start listening to customers again and c) don't shoot the messenger (the engineers) when they tell you that you're making the wrong decision or that the company needs to change direction with the industry.

Re:Open Love Letter To Bill Gates..

[kimvette]

They won't happen in Vista - you'll get the "Red Screen of Death" because when Microsoft finally got sick of the BSOD jokes they had to do something about it. ;-)

In all seriousness though (actually the RSOD thing is real, the untrue part above is the rationale for it) WinXP can and does BSOD. It doesn't happen for "Floppy not found" or "reinsert CD" crap, but "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL" BSOD messages stemming from a damaged (or simply buggy) driver, flaked-out motherboard, bad memory, or even viruses still do occur. Microsoft has made great strides in improving Windows' ability to handle errors but it still has a long way to go (hence the rumors you read online about Microsoft switching to a BSD-like architecture after Vista, I have no idea how true or untrue that is).

Andrew Tanenbaum is uninformed.

[elvey]

"3, Insightful"? How 'bout "0, Uninformed"? The crimes laid out in Thomas Penfield Jackson, U.S. District Judge's COURT'S FINDINGS OF FACT are criminal under any reasonable legal system, including those of a 'truly free society'. There is an old saying: "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose" that is applicable. 5-year perspective on the case is interesting. Microsoft regularly flexes their patent muscle by refusing to grant use of patents it owns to competitors. E.g. Bill Gates himself has turned down patent licensing requests for use of Microsoft patents proposed as IETF standards. (google Microsoft IETF patent or read this) Their anti-competitive practices most certainly do involve patents. Patent abuse is even an incriminating component of the above FINDINGS OF FACT. And Microsoft's abuses go far beyond those discussed in the FINDINGS OF FACT; see http://kmfms.com/whatsbad.html.

Not Really - Re:Microsoft invented AJAX?

[Maxmin]

Microsoft pioneered this whole way of thinking

The earliest example that I've noticed of "ajax"-like functionality was on Amazon.com. When you vote on comments for a product, there's a javascript snippet that communicates with the server, using a hidden image object. No XMLHttpRequest object necessary.

While it was a good idea, what doomed Microsoft's effort was that they implemented it as a feature unique to only their browser, based on ActiveX.

It wasn't until after the Mozilla team implemented XMLHttpRequest that it became widely used. So, all this talk which implies that Microsoft is responsible for AJAX's popularity today is hogwash. They invented it, but it took others to make it cross-platform and useful.