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AJAX and IE7?
Moochfish asks: "Recently, my company took a brief look at AJAX to see if it was worth implementing on a few of our administrative pages to speed up certain tasks. I had created a demo that made an interesting use of live edit fields that showed some promise. However, after a little debate on the issue, we ultimately decided to skip AJAX implementations anywhere in our codebase due to concerns about things breaking when IE7 comes out. I haven't personally tried IE7, but I completely understand and mirror the concern. For you testers of IE7, does it successfully render current, non-ASP AJAX enabled sites without errors? And finally, does IE7 introduce any new functionality that may enhance the current capabilities of AJAX?"
"Many of the AJAX libraries out there have tons of duplicate functionality to handle cross-browser support. Recalling Microsoft's history of IE quirks, it seems likely that the new IE7 will have its own set of problems with regards to JS implementation. With the AJAX craze only growing, how are other developers and IT departments addressing this problem? Is this even a valid concern? While this is probably not an issue with ASP developers - especially with the release of Atlas - is this an issue for sites that use non-MS technologies?"
Why not just install the beta and see how it behaves? I can't imagine they're going to change the interface to the XMLHTTPRequest object now, but even if they do, you can isolate that change. Bam, AJAX still works.
Seems your question might be more about DOM manipulation, but I have the same advice: install the beta.
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Since it seems you want AJAX for internal uses, why do you care if it'll work with IE7? Seriously, maybe your organization should consider deploying Firefox...
If I recall, MSIE 7 has XMLHttpRequest - no more using MSXML. The same code should run on Mozilla and MSIE 7.
MS has also released their Atlas Ajax library/framework in the past couple of weeks.
I hate IE 7's interface. Tabs are ok, but the buttons and layout are not placed well on screen.
No. The answer is clear. They should postpone doing anything until Microsoft is ready for them to start, with IE7.
How DARE anyone think of innovating without Microsoft!?!
How DARE anyone think of doing anything with a computer that isn't the One Microsoft Way!?!
(That's sarcasm, for the impaired. Ordinarily I wouldn't think it necessary, but this IS Slashdot.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It works fine. GMail runs smoothly, Outlook Web Access runs smoothly. IE7 is just IE6 + more features and better CSS support. And they're using the standard HTTP request object now, not the MS* one.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
While this doesn't exactly answer the question posed, the question made me consider the impact IE7 will have on browser usage, and Microsoft's design decisions for IE7. Given the current market of browser distribution basically mandates that web designers and programmers fix IE6 issues, I am not so sure that IE7 will be considered in such forceful terms, or, that Microsoft will be forced to try harder to make the browser standards compliant and have fewer idiosyncrasies. Should web designers and programmers be forced to make frustrating fixes for so many generations of the same broken browser? From the numerous times I have been pissed at IE6 because it rendered something just slightly off, I know I might advice organizations I program for to tell users to use Firefox or Mozilla or Opera or nearly anything aside from IE6, or in the future, IE7. For Microsoft's sake, I hope they have considered the possible backlash from the generally non tech savvy users of IE6 when they get an update to IE7 and all the new AJAX applications break. I know that if I were trying to use Gmail or Flickr, and they just stopped working when I moved to IE7, I might just switch to Firefox or Opera if I hadn't tried before.
I think you're a little confused about what AJAX technologies are and where they run.
AJAX is a presentation philosophy (AKA: a client-side issue). It runs independent of the server technology used. On various projects, I have implemented AJAX on servers running PHP, ColdFusion, and static HTML. AJAX is server platform independent.
As for the particulars of IE7, I can say that using script.aculo.us and Prototype libraries run the same if not improved on IE7 in comparison to IE6. The fact that the libraries themselves are actively being tested for IE7 as new beta comes out means that I don't have to do anything extra for the changes; It just works.
I understand the initial concern for IE7/IE6 compatibility, but sticking with a popular library solve this problem and make the concern a non-issue.
As for the server-side of AJAX, what you'll be coding are pages that output either HTML, XML, or JSON. Any server platform can create this kind of output, so questions of server compatibility are moot.
But my word of cation is this: Know why you are changing a component to an AJAX philosophy and how best to implement it. There are good reasons to use AJAX as there are bad ones. Please proceed with cation and purpose.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
How hard is it to download the IE7 beta? The app is in-house so if it breaks tell IE7 users to fuck off until support is added for it. Is moochfish totally inept or just trying to fan the 'IE7 is the suck' flames? My guess is the latter.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
Runing IE7 Beta 2 Preview next to IE6.