The Current State of Ajax

Dion Hinchcliffe writes "Ajax hasn't even been big a year yet and already open source development tools by the dozen are pouring out. Not to mention big names like TIBCO and Microsoft already have previews on the way of full-fledged IDEs for developing Ajax applications. Ajax may be the biggest software development story of 2005. Dion Hinchcliffe has a detailed article about how Ajax has evolved over the last six months and assesses the current state of tools, libraries, and mindshare. He also points out that Ajax will inadvertently end up being a driving force for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for many organizations since it requires high performance back-end XML services."

AJAX and Centrino

[cerelib]

Does anybody think of Intel Centrino when they hear AJAX? They are quite similar in the fact that it is just giving a name to using a combination of technologies. Also, has anybody ever heard a Best Buy computer salesman say "This one has a Centrino processor."?

You know..

[Anonymous Coward]

He also points out that Ajax will inadvertently end up being a driving force for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for many organizations since it requires high performance back-end XML services.

Advertising programming languages with a pre-com-bust-style-buzzword-overload isn't very useful for gaining the attention of developers.

accessability guidelines

[sammy baby]

Does anyone here know of a good reference for balancing the "gee-whiz, nifty" aspects of ajax techniques with designing towards accessibility? I like the thought of, say, livesearch, but dislike the idea of breaking support for text-to-speech readers, assistive devices, et cetera.

In fact, the article in the story might have a terrific section about just this issue. But I wouldn't know, because the server fell over worse than I do after a gin-and-tonic bender.

Re:What is it?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Have you been in a coma, a cave, or just high on dope for the past year

Not all of us follow the latest fads. My programming library is kind of like my closet. It's neither worth rebuying your clothes or relearning your skillset annually.

Re:More than a year thanks

[buro9]

AJAX = Asynchronous Javascript And Xml

It's a terrible name because it says nothing about what it is, only what it is made of. Even then it poorly describes what it is made of, as it can be made of other things too.

So from this CBL (Carbon Based Lifeform) to another, I say, "Goodnight".

Popularization is an important job ...

[__aadkms7016]

The person who makes a technology popular receives technical fame for a good reason -- by making more of the world aware of a good technology, in a way that leads to deployment, the world becomes a better place. Sometimes, popularization adds more value than invention to an idea.

This is laughable

[ikekrull]

We need to write out business apps in Javascript now because this is the only standard browser vendors can agree on?

Javascript, it's non-standard browser-specific extension syntax and the restrictive, incomplete and non-standard HTML DOM is an awful environment to write apps in, and it illustrates clearly just how dysfunctional the modern software industry is today.

AJAX is a shit way to write apps, it's central concept revolves around badly hacking around a problem that shouldn't even exist in a language that was never intended for use in such a way, its like we've got the worst aspects of every major technology available today, grudgingly provided by browser vendors who are want to take their ball and go home since nobody wants to use their proprietary ActiveX or XUL - in an incompatible fashion and we're supposed to see this as a step forward?

It's stupid, AJAX is stupid, and browser based apps are crap.

excellent idea for a script!

[Tumbleweed]

That's something a script should be handling for every site - it has an account on Slashdot, and can see the mysterious future posts - if there's a link to their site in it, it sends an alert to the sysad.

Re:This is laughable

[Tumbleweed]

It's stupid, AJAX is stupid, and browser based apps are crap.

Dear Sir or Madam,

You rock.

Sincerely,

Moi

Re:Thin Clients, Fat Pockets

[C.Batt]

Hypothetically you could set up a site that had a bunch of frames that interacted independantly and achieve a similar result to Ajax, but who would want to have to handle the cross platform and cross browser problems that arrive when you rely on frames?

I can speak as someone who has in fact done just that and would have killed for an XMLHttpRequest object back in 2001.

Today I'm architecting a significant new web project and my first order of business on the UI side was to specify XMLHttpRequest (buzzword catchphrase, yuck.) as the core around which the client would be developed. It's working fantastically. It simplifies just about everything, imho, once the basics are in place.

It is now possible to do highly-reactive monitoring applications in a browser without applets, plug-ins, or frames+script chicanery. Download the core app, then stream in the rest of the bits behind the scenes. Sweet!

The clients love it, we love to develop using it. Win, win situation - a strange place to be on an IT project.

Why the hype?

[prophecyvi]

I have to ask why all this is news lately? There's nothing new about using JavaScript to asynchronously update a portion of a page. At my company [lightyearxstream.com] (where I am the Web Services lead) we have been using this technique since 2001, and I don't begin to think we're on the leading edge of that. There have been people doing this since probably 1999.

I ask the question, but I really know the answer. Somebody stuck the word "XML" in it and it suddenly became the holy grail of Web programming. It's a good methodology for doing certain things, and I've honestly got to say if you didn't know how to do this before the last few months of hype, you're either not a Web programmer or you're on the bottom end of the Web programmer stack.

(Why complain? It's really, really annoying to have the things you've been doing day-to-day for 4 years be ignored while new people doing it are suddenly "powerful" and "cool" just because someone said it had XML in it.)

Critique

[N8F8]

Normally I'm not one to comment on someone's coding style, but:

• You do realize you can print/echo multiple lines of output at once in PHP? I also recommend using "print" for normal stuff and "echo" for debugging - that's just my preference though.
  
• You also seem to program very linearly (I see a lot of stuff that should be functioned off).
• Endless "if" statements can be written more clearly with the "switch" [php.net] statement.
• Stay consistant with HTML case. I would suggest sticking with XHTML lowercase for tags.
  
  

  If you want to get the most out of AJAX, pass the information back to the client in a compact XML form. I recommend a format with one element per record with attributes for record columns. The whole point of AJAX is to keep the information tyou pass for each request between the client and server to a minimum. Of course, I couldn't fin the XMLHTTPRequest declation in your code either.

Re:Thin Clients, Fat Pockets

[AstroDrabb]

Huh? This doesn't sound anything like AJAX. AJAX uses asynchronous/synchronous calls backs to the server and you will usually get just XML as a response. From your link you were talking about sending down heavy Java Applets and PostScript. Not even close to AJAX. The link you posted even pointed out the problems:

You see, when Sun created NeWS they

charged a licensing fee to developers for the use of the technology. This wouldn't have been so bad if Adobe didn't also charge a licensing fee for the PostScript technology. Not only that, but PostScript turned out to be a very difficult language for developers to work with due to its Reverse Polish Notation. Combine this with the fact that NeWS was not an open standard, and you end up with a lot of customers who wanted something a bit more open and less expensive.

Hmm, it doesn't even sound close to AJAX IMO. I don't blame developers from passing on a "technology" that they would have to pay Sun _and_ Adobe to use and then be a "difficult language for developers to work with".

I blame W3C

[Elixon]

I blame W3C! W3C is too slow to address hunger for RIA on the Internet. W3C becames to be more playground for big corporations trying to extend their influence (or sabotage anything that could harm their business) and not a forum for consensual agreements to benefit everybody (if it ever was the meaning of W3C).

Re:This is laughable

[Anonymous Coward]

someone mode the parent up to 12. It can't be stressed enough how ghetto AJAX is. I would absolutely hate to maintain an AJAX over, say, 5 years.

We have one from the 90s, and fixing problems in it is like performing voodoo.

Re:Thin Clients, Fat Pockets

[vcv]

It WAS available back in 2001. In IE ;)

Re:Thin Client, My Ass!

[Bogtha]

AJAX requires a client that supports javascript in the first place, along with XML and whatever other bits of things (hidden frames.. god knows what else) to get and manipulate all this data.

No. "AJAX" uses the XMLHttpRequest object to dynamically load things from the server. You have been able to do such things in the past with hidden frame hacks, but AJAX doesn't require hidden frames. Anybody who has actually used XMLHttpRequest knows this.

So truly thin-clients (think Lynx circa 1996, guys) are SOL. Now it's AJAX or bust.

No, it's perfectly possible to develop a website that uses AJAX and is compatible with Lynx. It's no different to any other use of Javascript.

I'm thinking about the non-human factor, computer applications that come in whatever form to consume the information available on the web. Many (though not all) don't have a javascript engine to execute the various instructions needed to get at the data.

Except a Javascript engine is not required to get at the data unless you've constructed your website incorrectly. Furthermore, AJAX typically exposes data in an XML format as well, making it more useful to applications consuming data.

So once AJAX becomes ubiquitous (enough), search engines will either need to start using smart crawlers that can execute javascript, or their indexes will start to really be meaningless.

The only thing I can derive from this statement is that you haven't got the first clue about AJAX or Javascript in general. There is nothing about either that locks out search engines. It is only clueless developers that locks out search engines. Unfortunately, many developers listening to your rhetoric about "AJAX or search engines" are going to choose AJAX, not realising that they don't need to choose.

You still can't (really) bookmark a single page inside a Flash movie... so if there's vital data you need, you have to watch/move through the movie to get to the key page you're after. AJAX will prove to be no different.

You seem to have the misconception that bookmarks are incompatible with AJAX. This is not the case.

But RSS,SOAP,etc. is simply re-inventing the HTML wheel. They exist simply because HTML isn't being used the way it was always intended to be.

Again, you are giving the impression that you don't have experience with RSS or SOAP.

RSS is a format for providing a list of items that is intended to be updated on a regular basis. While you could use a subset of HTML for the list, HTML doesn't provide the semantics for the "updated on a regular basis" bit. For example, there's no equivalent to the <ttl> element type.

SOAP is a protocol for exposing objects, their properties and their methods to remote systems. HTML doesn't do this. HTTP comes close, but the only way to get browsers to be flexible enough to use HTTP's verbs and resources as substitutes for SOAP's methods and objects is to use AJAX.

I'm sorry, but your whole rant comes over as being rather uninformed. Sure, AJAX is no panacea, but your criticisms don't make sense.

Re:This is laughable

[Some Random Username]

Funny, I've never had to do anything based on what's cool at the time. In fact, I've heard statements like "I don't care what you use, you are the tech guy, you make the tech decisions. That's what we pay you for". I also migrated a couple hundred machines away from cool and trendy linux onto reliable and secure openbsd.

Maybe if you are desperate for a job, any job, than you will end up with a crappy job. That doesn't make it the "real world", its just settling for crap. Or do people eating at McDonald's prove that that's the "real world" and people who want to eat a nice steak are living in a fantasy world and will never be able to have that steak?

Re:Thin Clients, Fat Pockets

[skrolle2]

When did you move your email handling from a fat client to webmail? My first move was from Eudora to Outlook, then Outlook (yuk) to Pegasus (don't ask) and then to Hotmail and now Gmail. I don't think I'll move away from Gmail, but you never know.

Ajax unplugs you because you get the immediate, targeted response from the server that wasn't available before. So refreshing a whole page when I only need to see a small widget change is really what Ajax fixes.

Oh, you mean the kind of responsiveness and bandwidth conserving that every IMAP-capable email application can deliver? The kind of application that you don't need to download from a webpage every time you want to use it, but instead is installed locally? The kind that runs natively on your machine, instead of living in a webbrowser?

The emperor is naked.