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Microsoft Releases Atlas
Jason Lind writes "Much earlier than anticipated, Microsoft announced the release of Atlas this afternoon at MIX 06. For those who don't know, Atlas is Microsoft's AJAX API for ASP.NET 2, which they claim will greatly reduce the effort in developing AJAX style applications on their platform."
When do they release Thiluth, the Athyrian Thrangler?
If it's anything like the rest of ASP.net, It will require that you use Microsoft's wonderful web technology, with __viewstates, and other wonderful features. You won't be able to customize it nearly enough to do a professional job, and will only work for really quick and sloppy applications that don't really need AJAX anyway. I use ASP.Net on a daily basis. We've found the best thing to do is to ignore all the form/component stuff that microsoft has built, and just use tools we have built ourselves, which although they do many of the same features, are much more extensible and easier to use.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Are there good uses for Ajax? Sure. Google Maps is probably the single best example out there at the moment, and I would expect some more to show up soon.
BUT, will Ajax supplant the client app as the workhorse of productivity applications? Not a chance:
The funniest thing for me about Ajax is it basically is just doing what Java Applets can do, only Java is better. WTF?!?!
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In mythology, Atlas and the Titans revolted against the Olympians, lost, had his brothers betray him, and was punished to carry the world. Is this some sort of metaphor for the IE development cycle?
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
ASP.NET 2.0 has a lot more options, including XHTML.
All of those problems can be addressed by creating a good AJAX toolkit; a toolkit can fall back to plain HTML when Javascript isn't available, it can do the right per-browser customizations, etc.
...), but, again, with a good toolkit, you don't have to ever think about that.
However, from an interaction point of view, AJAX is enormously useful and a big advance over plain HTML pages. It's unfortunate that the underlying technologies are so ugly (Javascript, XML,
1. You shouldn't be testing for a UA, but for object support.
2. You can build accessibility into an AJAXified application, but it will take more work. I find that the people who care enough about accessibility on normal websites are the people who are also willing to put in the extra work making applications accessible.
3. Another attack vector? Sure, but introducing any technology introduces new risks. That doesn't mean you should dismiss it entirely. Bad code is bad code - no matter whether it's AJAX or PHP or Ruby.
4. This goes back to accessibility. If a client doesn't have Javascript at all, you need to account for that. If you're writing an app that absolutely requires Javascript, then you need to accept that some users won't be able to use the site.
5. This is the crux of your argument, I think. Some applications are dependent upon Javascript for a good reason - they aren't normal websites. The example I use is of a university that has thirty or so platform and browser combinations to support. Deploying an internal desktop app is expensive, difficult to support, etc. But a web app can be brought up on all of the supported environments - which means you can build for those and ignore anything that's unsupported (like Lynx). We're talking about interfaces which replace a desktop app - but still need comparable functionality, speed, and interfaces.
The web has always been a quickly changing landscape. AJAX is a feature on that landscape, not the future of it. Like anything else it has its valid uses and invalid uses, can be abused, and can be done poorly. But so far, none of this is a reason to dismiss it entirely.
What is it with Microsoft and its penchant for product names that are virtually useless for doing searches?
Access
Word
Windows
Excel
Publisher
Sequel
Contrast that with:
linux
mozilla
firefox
mysql
php
At least with these, you have a reasonable chance of finding what you're looking for without a ton of other non-related crap.
*shrug*
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Well, the AJAX wars have started, and M$ maybe just got off the first shot. We'll see. With http://www.morfik.com/'s public beta just around the corner the RAD IDE AJAX tools are finally coming on scene. We'll see what people can do with these tools, and whether AJAX is REALLY as overrated as some are claiming. Personally I'll bet that once people can get their hands on tools that let them build web apps as easily as they can desktop apps (and unplug them, i.e. run them locally or over the 'net, as you can with Morfik) you'll see a huge increase in web applications.
The number of AJAX tools that are on their way is staggering. http://www.tersus.com/ is one designed for the absolute noob, and http://www.backbase.com/ is also a potential option.
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Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Are you completely retarded?
How this got moderated up is beyond me. It's obvious that you haven't used Atlas, much less even LOOKED at it.
The whole point of the library is to hide away the details, so XMLHttpRequest and it's ilk are tucked away neatly in the variety of external scripts that ship with Atlas.
There are only 4 or 5 controls that come with Atlas, and they're mostly non-visual anyways. The UpdatePanel is a "panel" like control that can automatically reload it's contents on a postback sent via xmlhttprequest. You don't need to do a thing.
Whomever moderated this all the way to +5 is just as retarded as the original poster.
It is Slashdot though ...
I'm not really a fan of MS, but I recognize they have a lot going for them. I'm a PHP developer so please don't assume I'm defending it because I like ASP. Really, I don't.
I think a bunch of people commenting read the press release and made their judgements without actually investigating how incredible the technology is. There was even the flamebait who posted something about cross browser compatibility. Well, watch the freaking demo video before you go trolling. You can find their first of many such demos here:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/uifx/asp_net_atlas.wmv
Maybe I find it amazing because I'm not that used to ASP development, but I'm thoroughly impressed how far MS has come in making developing for their platform easy. The demo I pasted above shows him making a pretty standard data grid. That part is cool, at best, to anybody familiar with ASP, and flat out amazing to anybody who's never seen ASP sites being developed. About 2/3 into the video he busts out the new Atlas code (so fast forward to there). It was maybe 3 additional ASP tags to implement full asynchronous functionality plus one more to setup a "updating..." dialog. Suddenly, a page that required refreshes on any action could add, edit, and *sort* paginated data without any refreshes.
And then he fires up the same code in Firefox and goes to show that it works exactly the same in both browsers. 3 ASP tags.
I'm sorry, but how can you blindly bash that? Sure there's equivalent technology in the works out there (such as rails), but it doesn't make this any less amazing. If there was a development platform as complete as MS's offering but based on Python/PHP, people would be pissing their pants. To ASP developers, this will make creating AJAX functionality unbelievably easy.
MS just scored major Hype 2.0 points today. But the hype isn't all unjustified. Again, go learn about this before you bash it.
I code Javascript, no two web browsers seem to be able to use the same Javascript and you have to rewrite them for each browser. Then there are those who use web browsers without Javascript like Lynx, or people who disabled their Javascript for fear of Spyware/Adware infecting their system via their browser. Ajax uses Javascript. ASP.NET is supposed to have been designed to be able to run scripts at the web server without running scipts on the client, yet it fails to do this. My old employer tried to switch to ASP.NET when 1.0 was beta back in late 2001. They are still having problems getting ASP.NET working with different browsers that various clients of theirs use, that are not under their control.
My solution was to use Java, instead of client-side scripting in Javascript and VBScript. Then any browser that supports Java can run a Java servlet and it can be programmed to be easy to use. Just make sure that their JRE version matches the one we use to develop the web applications for and everything should work out. I even worked out XML transfers to be used between the corporate web server and the client web server. We only need write one version of the Java application, instead of several versions of the Javascript support for each web page. The time we would have saved on production would have allowed us to do other things. But, nooooooooooooooooo, they went with ASP.NET because Microsoft promised them the moon, and now they are making posts to Microsoft's Newsgroups asking why ASP.NET is not working as Microsoft said it would. I am just sitting back and enjoying the fireworks and relaxing and being glad I am no longer one of those programmers being lead by Managers who have no idea how technology really works.
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