AJAX- may stand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (we have seen variations on this theme). And AJAX is the current darling of the web development community. And to a great extent it deserves to be. DHTML is coming out of the cold as Google proves that vendors such as Isomorphic werent wrong when they said a very thin yet feature rich client could be delivered with minimal network overhead. This is also the message of the Java Rich client vendors and with their Rich Internat Application interfaces that are slowly but surely getting traction. With AJAX now getting “foaming cleanser” attention on the Web both set of of ISVs are getting more and deserved attention.
And for that JavaScript and Java developers can thank Infoworlds Jon Udell(two influential articles on the topic), Firefox (for starting to break the Microsoft hold on the browser and therefore promoting the idea that cross browser DHTML could flourish) and Google (for its innovative use of JavaScript and AJAX) – the interest they have generated in the AJAX set of JavaScript DHTML has been astounding.
Among other things, AJAX is uses XMLHTTPRequest to provide asynchronous and small increment communication between a JavaScript client and the backend Web server processes. This has become extremely popular, generating over 400 different website articles in the past 3 weeks. But much of AJAX is “do-it-yourself” and so that is focusing attention on the more comprehensive (and sometimes XMLHTTP using)Java solutions . We cover the topic here at the OpenSourcery.
But regardless of your source of info, developers and architects in general (not just Web developers) should take a look at what is happening in and around AJAX the foaming cleanser in both its Java and JavaScript forms.
(c) JBSurveyer 2005