Ajax Is the Buzz of Silicon Valley 336
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Ajax, or 'Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,' is allowing webpages to update as quickly as desktop software, powering applications like Google Maps and attracting money from Silicon Valley investors, including for a collaboration-software company called Zimbra. The Wall Street Journal reports: 'Zimbra's chief executive, Satish Dhamaraj, says that when he started his company in December 2003, "I really thought that Ajax was just a bathroom cleaner." Now his San Mateo, Calif., business has amassed $16 million in funding from venture-capital firms including Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Benchmark Capital, the firm that famously funded eBay Inc. Peter Fenton, an Accel partner, says Ajax "has the chance to change the face of how we look at Web applications" and could boost technology spending by corporations, because Ajax is also being used to develop software for big companies, not just for consumers.'"
AJAX is just an acculmulation of failures (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing special about this other than the incredible amount of sheer dependencies that exist. You cross browser incompatibilities you have inexact everything. This is not a good solution people.
This is also a good example of how bad Java and Sun has failed. If Sun would've opened up Java, let people distribute it, as well as from day 1 enabled easy RMI over HTTP we wouldn't be up to our necks in a horrible mixture of presentation logic and business logic.
So here we are, requiring gargantuan browser which are brought to a halt with this AJAX technology when we had many other technologies which did so much better but failed for various other reasons.
JUST BECAUSE AJAX NOW FINALLY WORKS DOESN'T MEAN IT IS A GOOD SOLUTION.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing new. Calling AJAX "new" is like calling email "new", when it's over 25 years old... AJAX-like techniques being about eight years old.
I'd have written more cool "AJAX" interfaces if only my damn managers knew what in the hell I was talking about back then.
AJAX: Beyond The Hype (Score:5, Insightful)
AJAX is just buzz. Yes, it's a great tool for making better use of the web. Yes, it's relatively simple. Yes, it's flashy.
But it's still just a tool - and it can be used for good (see any of 37signal's apps) or evil (sites that use AJAX for navigation and break the back/forwards buttons). It won't make a badly designed web app better - in fact, incorrectly used, it can make things worse.
The Web 2.0 is about more than just flashy technologies like AJAX: it's about open architectures, semantic code, separation of content, presentation, and now behavior, and better user experiences. AJAX can enable any of those, but it can also destroy any of those. In fact, it's probably made web designers lives harder: now designers need to be familiar with separating not only content from presentation, but behavior from content and presentation as well. That can be very tricky, and it's tempting just to slap on some onclick handlers to your links rather than using the DOM and separating behavior from content. Furthermore, it's very tempting to have AJAX-enabled sites to that don't gracefully degrade in browsers without JavaScript - which defeats the point of the accessible web.
AJAX is a great technique, but it's not a panacea, and it's not a replacement for sound design and UI architecture.
Ajax and Productivity (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah Google maps is great, but as more and more companies move to 'web-based solutions', the use of ajax could have really improve productivity. I mean isn't that why Microsoft created it in the first place
...update as quickly as desktop software. (Score:1, Insightful)
Whoa venture-capital firms? (Score:3, Insightful)
Joking aside, isn't it interesting/sad that it takes a lot of hype backed up by a big name like Google for a old technology tricks to get serious attention from investors? "They are doing it, so it must be good" type of reasoning. Hopefully this bubble won't burst into flames because hype aside, doing what ajax does has been pretty useful and it would be a shame for 'ajax' to be associated with failure.
IP? (Score:4, Insightful)
How will a new platform emerge when its components are owned by multiple licensors? The answer is obvious; Microsoft (or Google, Canopy, etc) will buy them all and own the whole enchilada. Don't count on any Open Source implementations escaping the IP lawyers this time around.
Re:So, nitpicking... (Score:5, Insightful)
"AJAX" is so irritating and non-descriptive. It should be clumped with other turds of terminology, like "blog," and ceremoniously flushed down the toilet bowl of language integrity to rid of us these awful, awful buzzwords that make people think they're suddenly technology masters. "OMG I'M USING AJAX D00D BECAUSE OF MY LITTLE SCRIPT TAG SNIPPET, LETS START AN AJAX COMPANY."
No, why don't you shut the fuck up and get out of my Internet!
Sorry...it's been a shitty day, and seeing the word "AJAX" on the front page of Slashdot yet again was the final straw. Rawr.
Re:Pulling Tiers (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't.
So far, I haven't seen anyone manage a proper, pixel-perfect page layout or drawing program with AJAX - people seem to pee themselves with excitement [walterzorn.com] when they manage to get Javascript to draw basic lines and circles.
I'd like to see someone implement, say, Google Earth (not Maps) in AJAX, or Adobe Photoshop. If you desperately needed network transparency then the prehistoric X11 and GLX wouldn't break a sweat running such kinds of programs remotely, whereas AJAX wouldn't know where to begin.
This AJAX thing is a buzzword for an interesting and useful technique for making existing web applications a bit more dynamic and responsive (it's ideal for email or database-type tasks) - it's not some glorious new application framework which will revolutionise the whole computing world. Computers can do far more, and it seems ridiculous to have to limit new software to the tiny little niche it provides.
Re:So, nitpicking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ajax breaks the web (Score:5, Insightful)
My complaint with Ajax is that it makes scripting the web much more difficult. I write scripts that grab content from the web and do things with it as well as scripts that post content to the web. I was trying to write one of these the other day for a site that used Ajax for the login form. If I still felt like it was worth writing, my script just became ten times more complex.
How do you link to content that is behind or otherwise encrusted with Ajax? How do crawlers find it? Without Ajax, you can look at the source of a page and get a good idea of what it's doing. With Ajax, you basically have to reverse engineer it (for an example, go look at the Gmail code).
The web should continue to stay one URL leads to one document which is a self-contained chunk of plain text containing everything you need to view its contents.
Ajax breaks the transparency and simplicity of the web for no good reason. It offers only increased responsiveness, which unless you are on a modem or something is minimal and mostly imagined by the user.
Can we get off the Ajax name issue, please? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I know some people are unhappy with the name Ajax. I understand that. I am not a huge fan of the word as used, myself.
But we need to get over it. That's the name we're using. There is no other word for it now. We can rant and rave all we want about how it should be called DHTML or DXHTML, or Dynamic Web Pages, or whatever. Truth be told, the word we use is almost entirely irrelevant so long as we are on the same page as everyone else.
In any case, we did need a need a new word. DHTML has been used for a long time, and describes such a huge variety of techniques that it's not terribly useful when we want to talk about the use of XMLHttpRequest usage and the recent movement towards more complex Javascript effects that abandon the dark-age IE5.5 and other early browsers.
Ajax is as good a word as any, and it's better that web developers have an identifiable term for that kind of tech, so that customers can refer to that general level of interactivity easily. Even if you don't use the exact "AJAX" model as described, when someone says "Ajax" we all know that we think about Prototype, Dojo, Google Maps and other apps along that vein.
Seriously, if you have enough spare energy to rant and rave about the terminology used in the web hype, then you need to find a better outlet for your energy.
Re:Can we get off the Ajax name issue, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dynamic web pages were just as good a term, and the big thing is that the term existed before AJAX. Then some clueless tech press bought a buzzword and spread AJAX, so that managers could make money off it.
It's like "Web 2.0." I mean, seriously, what is that? It's the same Web as before. "Oh, but now it's CSS presentation using Javascript to dynamically modify the DOM to provide an instant user interface." Uh, yeah, welcome to five years ago.
The point is that this is not new, but based on hype from Gmail it's been rebranded to appear as new, and people are buying into it.
Re:So, nitpicking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple.
Its taking off because firefox can do it without any extra plugins.
What's wrong with you guys?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same people lamenting about this 'undeserved' hype are the first ones complaining that we're all being outsourced and that it's almost impossible to raise funding for an IT startup these days. So, here's a company that somehow coaxed a VC out of $16 Million (which in turn will create jobs for people like YOU!) and you're bitching and moaning acrimoniously about how you guys did that 4 years ago. If you are really sooooo smart, then go out there and grab a piece of the action! VCs are sitting on huge portfolio funds right now and have no clue what to do with them (well, almost
Re:Can we get off the Ajax name issue, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path coined the term [adaptivepath.com]. Say what you will about Adaptive Path and their self-important website, but clueless they are not.
I don't particularly care how or why the term came into existence, to be honest. What I do care about is meeting my customer's needs. Like it or not, Ajax has entered the collective consciousness of web clients. Bitching and moaning about it will not get you any money, and correcting your clients over such a small issue ("My acronym is better because it's older!") may actually net you less money.
Besides, it's not managers that are making more money with this stuff. At least in my case, it's actual web designers, developers, and their support structure that do it. Given the recent popularity of small teams handling web development, a unified and well-publicised set of terms means we have everything to gain by falling in line.
So what? Lots of things are like that. DHTML may be more literal, but I fail to see where you get it as more or less descriptive. Both are greek to clients, and you can find books about "DHTML" starting as early as 1999, detailing techniques that are neither platform generic nor terribly useful compared to today's techniques.
Ajax means Web2.0 means whatever-term-they-use-next-week means Better Web Apps and leaving behind legacy browsers. I'm all for it, whatever people want to call it.
Re:Ajax breaks the web (Score:4, Insightful)
you hit the nail on the head here -- one URL, one document. but web applications aren't documents. you could just as easily say that POST breaks bookmarks or something similar.
in fact, most AJAX is used for stuff that shouldn't be crawled or scraped anyway. it would be much better if people published their APIs so you could just fetch the XML and process it directly, if there was a need to accommodate non-browser UAs.
-esme
Re:Ajax breaks the web (Score:3, Insightful)
When you simply need to pull data, AJAX, and more specifically the "X" in it, means that most of the data presented is available in XML form. You'll find that most AJAX scripts still require server side handlers/interfaces written in PHP/ASP/etc. which return "text/xml". It would be very easy for developers to include an XML link or allow it to be saved directly from the page. While I can't speak for all developers, for the intranet application I am building, most users do not need or want raw data, they would like it nicely formatted and understandable; otherwise it'd save me lots of time and just have people all use phpMyAdmin.
On your point about having page content easily readable, I feel that it is true, however it depends on the nature of the content. AJAX is currently used for user-specific tasks: your e-mail, your to-do list, your etc. Those types of pages do not need to be indexed, and most of the time users do not need to access them by viewing page source. With things such as e-mail, calendars, etc. the content will constantly change. Your bookmark should only point you to the page of a calendar or a particular date, the page data can still be dynamic.
While some may attempt to fit different views for applications (e.g. month/week/day view of a calendar) into a single page, from experience I can tell you it is far easier to do the opposite, as AJAX pages are still heavily reliant on CSS and (X)HTML for the presentation layer, and those do not easily adapt to the large package/dll structure well.
To me the strength of AJAX is not that it will replace existing web standards, but it will help make doing things online much easier. Best AJAX implementations I have seen do not focus on AJAX for page rendering, etc. But use it as a non-abrasive way to allow users to perform small actions (send some data, refresh small section of site, etc.), just look at Blinklist or Backpack to see what I mean.
As other posters have noted Sun has failed miserably to get Java adopted, the web browser is a tool everyone has and wants, thus it is the easiest way to ensure your application can be used by the highest number of people. For me, as a developer, that single point will always make AJAX applications a serious contender for programs that use a remote data source.
Re:AJAX is just an acculmulation of failures (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AJAX is just an acculmulation of failures (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all HTML, JavaScript and XML are not failures. They may not be ideal for whatever it is you think they should be doing, but as technologies they are incredibly successful. Secondly, AJAX requiring a 1 ghz processor is complete bullshit. I use google maps on my 400mhz G4 all the time, and I'll tell you that the operating system slowness itself is more of a source of frustration than javascript.
Oh wait, except if you use a decent toolkit you can write AJAX apps that work in 99.99% of new computers running any operating system, right out of the box. Shit, I guess we better go write some Java Applets or DirectX because AJAX is so horrible.
Okay, that's just outta left field. There's a huge market in between monolithic business applications and pure content documents. Using something like Java to do lightweight web development might satisfy your pedantic idea of proper coding practices, but it wouldn't make anybody more productive. Not to mention assuming that a specific language would somehow make people better software engineers.
Oh boohoo! You didn't perchance work on one of these superior technologies did you?
Well it makes it a good solution if you want to:
Unfortunately it doesn't do anything to:
Re:AJAX is creative glue (Score:3, Insightful)
With Ajax, you're basically using 100% of what a web browser can do. Ajax is too crappy. html + css + javascript + xmlhttprequest +
The *REAL* ajax will not be ajax, it will be either microsoft's xaml or w3c's "xforms" or whatever name it has. That technology will allow you to what ajax does but with a DECENT TECHNOLOGY NOT THE CRAP THAT AJAX IS. If we've waiting 5 years to get a fucking email interface out of the xmlhttprequest thingy then it's clear the technology is BROKEN by design
It's not new, but mainstream acceptance is... (Score:2, Insightful)
What is new, is that big sites like Google and Yahoo! are willing to stop supporting older browsers. And when two big sites like that stop supporting older browsers, it allows everyone else to start ignoring them as well.
DHTML is nice, but without the AJAX part of the equation, you don't get the 'desktop app' feel that everyone wants.
Re:Can we get off the Ajax name issue, please? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I'm aware of that, and it proves my point. Some website invented a term for technologies that already existed, under different terminology, and the tech media adopted it to have a buzzword.
Same with "Web 2.0." It's ridiculous.
DHTML may be more literal, but I fail to see where you get it as more or less descriptive.
Well, for one, DHTML doesn't sound like a window cleaner. Also, there's more to dynamic webpages than XML and Javascript.
Re:So what? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:AJAX is just an acculmulation of failures (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AJAX is just an acculmulation of failures (Score:1, Insightful)
Several posts have pointed out the flaws in HTML and HTTP... and I have to agree. It's an old tech. I don't think it's easy to replace, but we really should focus on that. Where is the W3C on this matter? Why can't we focus on making HTTP/HTML a better system? Let's improve it. Let's get some standards together.... Sure we might have to break things to fix things, but that's the nature of the business.
Yes, you can create an API to abstract the complexity of this stuff -- but I what I really want to see is a common framework, useable by all that makes this stuff easy for the *average* developer. Not gurus.
You and I might be able to understand these technologies. But a lot of my peers (and students) cannot. This is a huge problem that we must solve.
Re:Not an "open" standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ajax breaks the web (Score:3, Insightful)