adaptive path � ajax: a new approach to web applications
A Quick Note: In taking a moment to do a site design status check I noticed that if you attempt to leave a comment on the main blog it sends you to a search results page with no results, telling you how to properly enter your search phrase. I've kind of been wondering why the last 3 weeks have been "dead in the comments water" and now I know why. I will get that fixed a bit later this morning. My apologies to you if you have left a comment and it was never approved. I never got it!
If anything about current interaction design can be called “glamorous,” it’s creating Web applications. After all, when was the last time you heard someone rave about the interaction design of a product that wasn’t on the Web? (Okay, besides the iPod.) All the cool, innovative new projects are online.Despite this, Web interaction designers can’t help but feel a little envious of our colleagues who create desktop software. Desktop applications have a richness and responsiveness that has seemed out of reach on the Web. The same simplicity that enabled the Web’s rapid proliferation also creates a gap between the experiences we can provide and the experiences users can get from a desktop application.
I've got two comments regarding this post.
- This is a really cool article and worth every moment of your day spent reading.
- Wow! Thats a *REALLY BIG* picture of Jesse James Garrett there on the left hand side. If the idea is to intimidate the reader into buying into Ajax -- well at least its intimidating -- 'er something :)
Enjoy your day!
[UPDATE: In reading through this again I am left with this impression that the "Ajax" approach is something that Adaptive Path is attempting to label or define as their own innovative idea. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong so my apologies if I am but this "idea" is nothing new and certainly companies like Google and Amazon, while no doubt there is an "engine" of some sort in place, are not calling it an "Ajax Engine." I bring this up only because I have seen companies make an attempt before at suggesting *THEY* are the ones that developed these ideas and "see, companies like Google, Amazon, and Flickr are using *OUR* engine." I don't want to make accusations but I do want to point out that these "ideas" are nothing new and in reality it was the introduction of XMLHTTP from Microsoft that made this "idea" a reality which is exactly where XmlHttpRequest in Mozilla etc... has blossomed from.
Again, my apologies if I misinterpreted the content of this article. Its a good article as long as "Ajax" is thought of in the sense Adaptive Path's label of an approach already in place in a number of main stream web applications such that Google, Amazon, and Flickr have developed.
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I don’t think they were claiming anything in particular with the acronym; it just seemed a convenient label.
Also, let’s not get into the issue of who invented what here. Yes MS introduced xml-httprequest, but that’s only one piece of this puzzle. Surely they didn’t invent Javascript, and XHTML, and CSS, nor did they do anything interesting bringing them together (as GMail et al did).
The promise of the approach is really about standards, which — it seems to me — are all about openness.
Yeah, these are all good points. Of course this just brings more credibility to my theory on the Adam Bosworth effect. While I have no idea what, if anything he had to do with the XMLHTTP control I think its safe to say that his impact at Microsoft was strong enough to suggest that if not a direct prodcution of his own it was a result of his work in the Dynamic HTML and MSXML areas that brought it about. So its no surprise that as soon as he arrives at Google suddenly we see it spring back to life.
Actually, with that said that also lends well to the fact that MS did have quite a bit to do with it. Intellectual Property is IP, no matter where you work or who its for. While you are correct that CSS and Javascript were not the byproducts the more I use CSS the more I realize how much of a piece of shit it is and how I can’t wait to be a part of digging a VERY DEEP SVG, XAML, and XUL hole and burying it such that its existence is never known by any of my current or future offspring. And while XHTML is not a direct result of MS the success of XML can very much be pinned on Redmonds tail so its tough to seperate anything that is a direct result of the success of XML and suggest that without MS it would even be in existence. Lets not forget that to Java XML is a fairly new “add on”, not even worthy of becoming a direct extension of the core language, instead implemented via extension projects like JAXP — which is basically just a wrapper into open source products, Sun not being responsible for any of the XML processors that ship with the extension.
The bottom line is that no matter how you look at it MS has embraced XML since day one. Given the fact that I was a part of the Site Builder right before I went to Windows CE land I was able to see and play with the Channel Definition Format which at that point was the very first implemenation of XML - almost 2 years before it became a recommendation in 1998. So I can say from first hand experience that nobody was there sooner and nobody has stuck by it through thick and thin, building the entire messaging infrastructure of the .NET platform on top of it.
So you take XML, and that leads to XHTML. You take Dynamic HTML and MSXML and that leads to XMLHTTP. From a standards-based graphics rendering point of view MS doesn’t fair well but neither does Mozilla until recent years with Mozilla’s CSS implementation but to be honest they had no other choice. Develop anything BUT a standards-based implementation and they’ve dug their own grave. And lets not forget the infamous “Declaration of War” by Mozilla upon all things XSL (FO and T) and its easy to see that they were of the belief that CSS was FAR SUPERIOR to both flavors of XSL. TransforMiiX is the supposed result of that lost bet so it has been more out of reluctance than commitment that Mozilla even has client-side XSLT capabilities. And neither have an SVG implemenation, each focusing on their own home-brewed declarative XML syntax to encapsulate the same basic funtionality of SVG — XUL is not even close, XAML is.
Take all of this into consideration and from my viewpoint Microsoft looks like like a bright shiny penny compared to Mozilla’s pissed-off-they-lost-so-they-copy-cat implementation of XMLHTTP not-so-shiny version.
But then again, maybe you’re right ;)
Peace, love, hope (for CSS to hurry up and DIE! that is :)!