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What's Spreading "the AJAX Wildfire"?
An anonymous reader writes "AJAXWorld Magazine is running an article entitled "What's So Special About AJAX?" in which the majority of the contributors agree among themselves that AJAX "heralds a new, global sense of what the web can be and what the web can do, in ways that are so different but so much better than what we have been used to." While many of those the magazine consulted adduced technical reasons for the spread what one of them, Rich Internet Application pioneer Coach Wei, calls "the AJAX wildfire," only two mention how human nature — including that of software developers — is, well, notoriously susceptible to the latest fad. Which side would you agree with?"
AJAX is becoming popular because it helps do away with the concept of pages that have to have every element transmitted and redrawn on every roundtrip. AJAX does one better and essentially eliminates the roundtrip altogether. A button click just sends the data that's pertinent and redraws only the pertinent parts.
Ruby is more likely to be just another fad, AJAX is actually something new. That's not to say someone won't make a better way to do what AJAX does (they probably will), but AJAX is definitely something unique, new, and important.
It would appear to be slashdotted already.
They should have invested in some more bandwidth and better servers to cope with all that AJAX overhead.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
Computing power and responsibility has oscillated between the user's terminal and central servers for ages. With a user environment composed of unreliable, insecure software such as Windoze, it's really no surprise many users would rather that application data be held by the application maker. Application makers oblige by trying to take advantage of the most convenient platform universally available on user computers.
Unfortunately, that platform is the web browser, and attempting to run applications in it gives as AJAX, since Java failed to provide a suitable cross-platform environment. We could be running NeWS (NEtworked Window System by Sun, not the stuff you see on Slashdot), Flash, Java, or even remote-PC programs that transmit I/O across the network, now that sufficient compression is being developed. However, history overrides technology and gives us AJAX.
To be fair, while Microsoft introduced the XMLHTTP object in 1999, other browsers didn't implement a similar interface until 2002 or later (2002 being the first implementation of XMLHttpRequest in Mozilla). So if your definition is of "forever" is "the last four years" then this has been aroud forever. (Note: I'm ignoring hidden iframe solutions that really have been around "forever", where "forever" is defined as "since rich web browsers have been around, such as IE4 and Netscape 4".)
I do agree that "AJAX" is just a flashy name for an already-existing technology, and any good web developer would've already been using the technology in appropriate places prior to the name change. However, "AJAX" does put a fancy name on the technology, and while it certainly can be overused it's not really a bad thing for the technique to get more publicity. "AJAX" as a fad will eventually die down just like "enterprise", "push", etc have in the past. The technology behind it won't, and will continue to be used where appropriate long after the Web 2.0 bubble has burst.
It seems like XUL has/had so much potential to provide rich user interfaces via the web. Apart from Firefox extensions that may use bits of XUL, what are people doing with it? I remember an example of a XUL interface to Amazon.com that was quite impressive. I kept expecting web sites to start having XUL versions with very rich UIs. I seem to recall that Oracle was even interested in XUL for a while.
How is this on topic? Well, it seems like AJAX is delivering a lot of the rich UI stuff that XUL was supposed to, but in a slightly less elegant way (from my peripheral understanding of both technologies). Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something here, or is AJAX a popular but pale immitation of what XUL was supposed to be?
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
We have all been seeing DHTML being an incredible fad for so long time and without there ever being anything really dynamic to it.
Now that we finally see dynamic HTML happen (even if the name has changed), how could we not expect the hype about the real thing to at least match the past hype about the early attempts?
Sure the name is stupid, but who cares! We do need some good hype to get standardization of something like that xml request object done and a catchy name can only help.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
The ideas are as follows:
None of these ideas were really important enough to push through to the web developer consiousness and have just kind of quietly developing while no one was noticing- Then some dude calls this stuff AJAX and BAM! the web 2-dot-whatever avalanche begins in earnest.
AJAX is not a fad. People aren't using AJAX just because it's AJAX. It's not for buzzword-compliance, although it has become a buzzword. It's not for adding useless frills, although it can be used for useless frills. AJAX is a tool to enable web developers to build sites that are actually better for the user, in a very real way. Better functionality, better usability, overall a better user experience. Things that simply weren't possible to do before.
Slashdot's new comment system uses AJAX to make my Slashdot experience better. They're not done with it yet, but what they've got so far makes it easier to browse Slashdot. The link to read the rest of a very long truncated comment now loads the rest of the comment inline into the page, instead of reloading the entire page like it used to; I can read replies without opening the links in a new tab and switching back and forth like I used to, I can even change my thresholds without reloading. Sometimes I like to open several articles on my laptop and read them when I'm offline; that works better now. Next will be a more convenient way to moderate, and a better way to write replies.
Will AJAX go away? Sure, after a better technology comes along. But until then, AJAX is genuinely useful.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The AJAX hype is like the DHTML craze all over again. IMO if you can't create a site using remote scripting without suppressing the urge to advertise to the world that you're doing so, chances are you're abusing the technology. Why should your user base care what the hell technology you're using? It should just work.
Dirty countertops everywhere are the number one cause.
Never underestimate the power of a catchy name. AJAX's underlying technologies have been around for a while, but it wasn't until someone slapped the acronym onto it that it's really taken off. AJAX is easy to say and easy to remember, evokes a bit of mystery and jargon (one more conspiracy against the layman), and is named after a legendary Greek hero. What more could a marketing person want? The name is simply an inspired choice.
I'll admit that the concepts behind AJAX excite the hell out of me. It's really something when you think about the fact that...it's really nothing new so much as, a theory that finally has some real practical applications and examples. Everyone I think has always known that...the worst thing about the web is the idea that you'll be in the middle of a process, like filling out a financial form, or managing a shopping cart of items, whatever and then be interrupted by a need to click a link. How many of us will be filling something out, not understand it, and see a Help link and for a brief second worry that when you click it, you won't get a nice friendly popup but get whisked away to some help page and have to start the whole damn thing over? (raises hand) That's the kind of ugliness that breaks things like webmail or shopping carts or financial forms. I can't tell you how many times I cussed a blue streak because I accidentally lost focus from the mail field in Hotmail, hit backspace meaning to erase a word and ended up back in the inbox where, thank you dynamic pages, pressing forward takes me to a new empty compose mail window.
Now obviously, that's the programmers fault...webmail should never throw anything away regardless of the user clicking Back and Forward on their browser. And I think that's the theory behind the AJAX effect. Really, back and forward are supposed to be the last things I'll ever hit. In fact, Google Maps I believe has to go through considerable kludges to even have entries show up in the Back and Forward browser list...and I can tell you there are plenty of times I wish I could go "Back" to my previous map location but instead, got taken back to the original empty Direction page I started at. So, if AJAX is done right...everything I ever need to click is right there. And that's what have been valuable since Windows was born. A poorly written web application/interface is like having to use Calc.exe Notepad.exe Paint.exe and CharMap.exe to make a document instead of WinWord.exe doing it all in one place.
In fact, I'm a little upset the whole stampede behind AJAX apparently caught so many developers and programmers napping. I've been hiring PHP/MySQL programmer for years now but, I start asking questions like... can't we have it so when someone clicks this header it just drops down a propigated list of choices instead of having to pop them up in a window or regenerate the page? And they stare at me like I'm asking for the moon or wanting an entire database of 400 items preloaded on the page before it renders. The guys with "AJAX" on their resume are...well they apparently know what that buzzword is worth and have their hands full writing the next Flicr or Digg or whatever.
And I'm one of them. I've had an idea for a web-based application but...because it involves just so darn much data, I've been having it developed as a template/macroset in Word because I can piggyback on the already present features like AutoText and Toolbars to provide an interface and packaged output. Now, I'm excited that I can have something just as dynamic and immediately accessible, but available on any platform and any location and without relying on software I don't control (I've already found two critical bugs in AutoText that Microsoft has admitted are bugs present since Word 2000, cannot be fixed by any option/registry setting, and will hopefully be fixed in the next version but possibly the one after that...oh gee thanks). So I want to start my own wildfire by creating something that would make a wonderful application, but have ability to distribute that application to thousands and tens of thousands of users as easily as sharing a link. That's amazing. That's why it's a wildfire. I just wish the store wasn't sold out of all the matches.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
It seems to me that you have to separate out why Ajax is spreading among developers, and why Ajax-based applications are popular with users. These are not totally independent, of course, but worth thinking of in different ways.
... well, boring.
I see Ajax-based applications as being very reminiscent of the what used to be called "full-duplex" applications. Unix, because it was based on using teletypes for I/O to the user, and because teletypes were inherently full-duplex, seemed much more interactive, at least with some applications. Nothing quite like Ajax, but a step in that direction. Conventional main-frame apps, based on either half-duplex (I type, then I hit carriage return, and the keyboard locks until the system responds) or electronic versions of that (such as with the famous 3270 displays, which would lose characters if you typed when the system wrote to the screen), were much more
So, it seems to me that, from the user's viewpoint, Ajax can allow the app builder to effectively decouple user input and system output, and make the whole "flow" between system and user be much more continuous, and less synchronized. Another way of seeing this is thinking of an overseas phone call in the days of poor channel allocators, which really made it necessary to stop talking when the other person started, or neither of you would hear the other. Nothing at all like a really engaged, face-to-face, conversation.
This is on-topic, because this week Google ajaxified their home page a little, moving Groups to an web 2.0-ey submenu that takes me 1 extra click to get to, and replacing it with the ridiculous Video web-2.0 ey thing. I view these actions as evil, because they are more about making Google money and less about what I want to do - which is quickly search groups for answers to programming questions. (When you ask a programming question on the web page all it takes you to is one of 40 spyware/spamware awful wrappers around usenet anyway, and if you just click to groups you see the exact same text minus the horrible ads and popups).
Google drifts evil every once in a while, and then to their credit they drift back, but currently they are drifting evil.
Okay, so, it's a little off-topic, but since there was no thread about Google's big change this week I needed to vent. (They also switched dictionary.com to answers.com which is more spam-mey and popup-ey).
The Calcuim carbonate, sodium carbonate, anionic surfactants, bleach, the quailty control agents, fragrance, and the color!
Whether AJAX will satisfy it or not, Web interfaces are clunky and weak. Retrofitting technology meant for e-brochures to be business GUI's instead has proven problematic. Everybody misses real GUI's, both developers and customers. Whether usable thin-client is possible or not, current efforts have failed such that people are becomming impatient with it and want features of fat/rich clients back. We want MDI forms, useable editable data grids, drag-and-drop, form tabs, etc.
If we have to rely on JavaScript tricks to get it, then that is fine by me. There may be better ways if we start from scratch, but it takes years to mature such technologies, and JavaScript/DOM is already in every browser.
I don't like fads either (look how I bash OOP, see sig), but this one at least tries to satisfy a big existing need instead of try to sell you on a problem you didn't know you had.
Table-ized A.I.
It's pretty simple, the two dominant browsers now are no longer broken and can actually do this! I remember trying to make nice tabbed pages, and all kinds of other widgets without using applets or activex. But alas ie and netscape differed a hell of a lot and netscape was extremely broken in many areas of this kind of rendering. Now ie and firefox are the top dogs and they both work.
I remember finding out about the XmlHttpRequest object in 1999 and thinking this was how Microsoft was going to take over the web. Web pages would become little client-server apps. State maintenance headaches between pages would go away. Instead of a web app being a suite of pages to navigate, a single page would just sit there and make data requests and update parts of itself. I happily started coding XmlHttpRequest in my own job and waited for the revolution to happen. But it never did. For three years Microsoft had the lead with this really cool capability, and they did absolutely nothing to hype it or encourage it. It only rated a few pages in MSDN. Right before IE6 was introduced I remember asking a manager on the IE team what kind of new features to expect. He said it wouldn't be anything much, because Netscape was pretty much dead and therefore there was not much point in putting any dev effort into IE anymore.
Three years later when Mozilla started supporting off-channel requests they did it in native mode, while Microsoft was still using an ActiveX object. MS had all that time to set a new standard for dynamic web pages and they just sat on it. Finally, somebody comes along and invents a buzzword for it and somehow gets it in everybody's face. A few people write packages to make it a little easier. Now Microsoft is playing catch-up with their own version called Atlas. At least that's a cooler name, but jeez. AJAX is a case of Microsoft dropping their own ball and then showing up late to join the game.
- The <marque> tag in IE
- The animated GIF89
- The <iframe>
- Flash animation
- The HTTP XML Request/Response in JavaScript
Answer: When people first used them, they way over-used them, but then they just kinda sank into the mix. In time they all became useful, but in small doses. AJAX is no different. For a great example, see finance.google.com.Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
Isn't that how most things spread on the internet?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Don't forget about AJAX's ability to SAVE you bandwidth. If all you do is strap AJAX on then yeah, it increases bandwidth. If you use it cleverly to say, change the table and only the table instead of reloading all the sidebars as well as teh button to update the table, you can SAVE bandwidth. Or if you use a drop down to avoid wildcard searches, you can save unnecessary queryies from ever being ran. Precious long running wildcarded queries at at.
A problem with it being all new is that developers want to slather it all over themselves and talk about how Ajaxified their site is. Used correctly it can provide a benefit. Otherwise, it's like reloading your page every 3 seconds. Just because it seems so doesn't mean it's no longer a distributed app.
Ever done a `man` on `top` ?
Ever since google used this thing to make google maps everyone and their dog is talking about Ajax! I for one would like it to stop along with all the other HYPED up fads in the webdevelopment world ( RUBY most noteably ).
However, these Ajax yappers completely miss a few points.
Just like 'FLASH' Ajax will have adverse effects if used in a site:
1. Makes it unreadable for the blind or anyone else using a browser that doesn't use a fancy javascript.
2. Makes it less readable or unreadable to google and yahoo search engines.
3. Adds yet another step in the web development pipeline
4. Further supports M$'s "we'll make our own javascript" cause. IE handles AJAX differently then the rest ( big surprise ).
5. Breaks the standard accepted policy of unified pages ( essentially re-introducing frames )
Lastly and most importantly,
AJAX yappers talk about response and app like look and feel. If you encounter one of these people then rest assured that they don't know what good layout design and CSS are!
They more than likely have 5+ things happening on the screen at the same time or have too much information on the screen such that user interaction causes the page to have to be completely reloaded.
With proper layout and CSS you can make a web site or application respond and look just like an Ajax one without having to use Ajax or code up some JavaScript piping. The browser will cache the layout correctly and thus the extra 3k of information that AJAX supporters say they avoid is in fact already avoided.
try { println( SigString ); } catch( Exception e ) { println( 'Who cares?' ); }
These AJAX sites expect you to have JavsScript enabled, before they will work at all, and this is where they sneak in tracking crap like Google Analytics, Tacoda, etc. NoScript lets me see the sources of the scripts in each page, and whitelist only the ones required to get the site to work. I regularly see tracking scripts that are not declared, that have nothing to do with the service provided by the site.
Slashdot is embedding Tacoda scripts in every page: have a read of their privacy policy for details of what they admit to collecting and selling back to OSTG. If you examine the source code of a Slashdot page, get the script URL and open it, you can how see the script is obfuscated, it generates another script as it runs. Why are they hiding what they do? Why does Slashdot collaborate with these bloodsucking bottomfeeders? How much are Slashdot reader eyeballs worth?
(this is not a
You'll especially save the bandwidth formerly used by those customers which left you because they can't bookmark your pages any more.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.