Ajax spurs Web rebirth for desktop apps

(continued from previous page)

businesses, that don't want ads, Warnock said. The number of registered users is in the "five figures," but the company hopes to grow to 2 million users, with many expected to be outside the U.S.

Still, displacing Microsoft Office is not the company's goal.

"I think (gOffice) can hold a natural place alongside an Office suite in perpetuity. They don't have to beat out the other," Warnock said. He noted that people still use Web-based email, such as Hotmail or GMail, even though Microsoft's Outlook is pre-installed on many PCs.

Using Ajax and a Web-delivery model is allowing his start-up, with about 15 employees, to "bootstrap" the company, he said. "It's just a pragmatic way of getting out in front of a large number of people without raising money," Warnock said.

Business and consumer
Writely, gOffice and other Web-based productivity applications, such as 37signals' to-do list and personal information management tool, or Web-based instant-messaging applications are aimed primarily at consumers. But IT executives and analysts say the impact of Ajax-style browser development will be felt in the business world as well.

A business could add more interactivity to an existing corporate Web site with Ajax and use XML-based data transfers to create "mash-ups" that pull information from different sources. For example, a real-estate Web site could pull information on schools and present it with house listings, noted Monson-Haefel.

Scott Dietzen, chief technology officer of e-mail and calendaring start-up Zimbra, expects Ajax to have a significant impact on business-to-business applications, such as financial services and telecommunications customers that demand a richer user interface. Zimbra's business-oriented products use Ajax extensively for data exchange, allowing a calendar entry, for example, to show a meeting location on Google Maps.

One corporate customer, Iconix Pharmaceuticals, has used Ajax with a toolkit from General Interface, a company later bought by integration software provider Tibco. Iconix built an application to give technicians at pharmaceutical companies a massive database and a sophisticated front end for tracking the effects of drugs on people.

Using Ajax, the company was able to build a complex user interface and connect to different data sources. Being Web-based means the product can be delivered over the Internet or installed on-premise, said Alan Roter, Iconix vice president of informatics.

"If we didn't use a Web-based UI (user interface), we would have to use a thick client and implement some type of client-server interface, as well as all the work to do the rendering. The advantage of being Web-based is that there is zero install, which is great," Roter said.

Roter said that Tibco's Ajax tools are slick, making the development time faster than with other languages. But, by and large, Ajax tooling still is not as mature as well-established products, according to analysts.

Monson-Haefel said the market "ecosystem" for commercial Ajax tools is immature. He expects Ajax eventually will become a mainstream development technique like Macromedia's offerings from Adobe or Microsoft's tools.

In the meantime, Writely's Schillace predicted that the growing popularity of Ajax will result in an excess of interactive features on Web pages. Indeed, some executives and analysts have feared a backlash against the over-application of Ajax techniques, resulting in highly interactive but poorly designed Web pages.

"Ajax is not a panacea," said Zimbra's Dietzen, noting that some applications, such as complex spreadsheets or presentations, demand desktop storage. "It's excellent for enriching traditional Web apps that need it. But not all Web applications need to have a richer UI. For the ones that do, Ajax is by far the best choice."

[Captain_Spock]

Looks like a duck, Walks like a duck,

... and quack like a duck..... it is a duck; and, if this holds true then "These new techniques are even reviving efforts to create what was once considered impractical" are apparently nothing "new" as if one is to review earlier developments of WorkSpace-On-Demand which was introduced by IBM almost a decade ago where it is pointed out in a paragraph about -- What WSOD Can Do for You" in an article which describes where "In business, a local financial consultant is giving serious consideration to WSOD. He currently uses OS/2 and NetWare. In his office they run different tax programs for each year. OS/2 does the best job of running some of those old DOS programs. The planners and assistants only use a spreadsheet, word processor, and their planning/tax programs. So the constrained interface of WSOD is a perfect fit"; see link;

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.sundialsystems.com/articles/workspaceondemand.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.sundialsystems.com/articles/workspaceondemand.html</a>

[technewsjunkie]

Does MS own patents on AJAX?!

I'm sure if MS owns patents on AJAX they'll find a way to pre-empt it if it goes too far (further threatens Office)

[cilquirm]

invented by microsoft?

ajax was not invented by microsoft.
in fact, if anything, it was invented by Netscape/Sun when they introduced javascript and liveconnect.

[Tanjore]

Ajax is made possible by xmlhttp introduced by microsoft

It is the xmlhttp object in the browser that made ajax possible.

IE dabbled with Remote Data Script(Not great security wise).

Microsoft is definetly deserves some credit for AJAX.

Google deserves credit for making it popular.

[Earl Benser]

An on-line application....

.... means that all your data and information and whatever which
you use in the application are essentially published for others to
read as they wish. Many organizations look at this as access to
provide targeted ads, But that's about the most benign option.
Security is totally shot to h--- in this approach.

I don't intend to get paranoid about it, but I'll stick with
applications that aren't built to blab.

[bobsil1]

Yes, invented by MS ~ 1996

IE's implementation of DHTML, and MS' invention of asynchronous HTTP requests for Outlook Web Access, is where "Ajax" (man I loathe that fake marketing term) started. To claim as the article does that it came out earlier this year is hogwash.

[doogie04]

Enhanced by MS - Not Invented

I would have to disagree that "AJAX" was invented by Microsoft. I know that AJAX means asynchronous JavaScript and XML. However, AJAX captures two real ideas: asynchronous communication with a server and the ability react to this communication and render content in a web browser. How you accomplish this is really inconsequential, JavaScript and XMLHTTP are just the most convenient way we have to do this (for now).

Early versions of Netscape supported JavaScript. This is the technology that really created opportunities to bring the browser to life. Combining JavaScript and HTML created a number of ways to communicate with the server asynchronously. One way was to use hidden frames and do form submits. Form submissions thru hidden frames allowed sending and receiving information without the user experiencing page reloads. Another way is to take advantage of the capability to dynamically load images. The capability was created for image rollovers, but you could co-opt this capability via a technique called "GIF data pipes" (<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://depressedpress.com/Content/Development/JavaScript/Articles/GIFAsPipe/Index.cfm" target="_newWindow">http://depressedpress.com/Content/Development/JavaScript/Articles/GIFAsPipe/Index.cfm</a>) By attaching cookies or query string parameters to the request for an image you could communicate with the server and the server could respond by sending cookies down with the new image.

JavaScript provided a number of ways to render content on pages. The earliest that I am aware of is "document.write()". I used to call this poor mans DHTML because it worked in nearly every browser even Netscape version 2. The capabilities in browsers have definitely evolved for the better. NS 4 introduced layers, they were limited in functionality, but wow were they exciting at the time. With the later introduction, IE 4 Microsoft introduced some eye popping DHTML capabilities.

My point is that even with old non-Microsoft technology you could AJAX. I totally agree that Microsoft took these technologies and enhanced them, but they by no means invented them. I'm sure there are earlier examples of this capability, I just wanted to point out that in browsers this capability has been around for quite some time.

Another point is that developers didn't just realize that AJAX was great; many have known it since the Netscape 2 days. The problem is that users had all sorts of browsers. Some supported X some supported Y other didn't even know what X &#38; Y were (links anyone?). When google released google maps it was just an "ah-ha" moment. All of the sudden the mantra beaten into web developers heads: "build to the lowest common denominator" seemed very outdated. We still though of the lowest common denominator as NS 3 or NS 4. The real change here is that people have upgraded their browsers. Now we can pretty much be assured that the user is running IE 5 -6, Firefox 1.x, Safrai, Opera, KHTML or some other browser with all these great capabilities. Consumers of the web have been slowly changing browsers all these years, the thing is we just noticed it all at once.


Regards,
-eric

[bobsil1]

Yes, invented by MS ~ 1996

IE's implementation of DHTML, and MS' invention of asynchronous HTTP requests for Outlook Web Access, is where "Ajax" (man I loathe that fake marketing term) started. To claim as the article does that it came out earlier this year is hogwash.

[Captain_Spock]

Just how "concatenation" challenged is Microsoft...

... along with some other companies who "have already done online productivity applications" which appear to lack certain "spreadsheet" functionalities - Economic Rate of Return -- ERR (even the quite recently released OpenOffice.org 2.0). Hopefully, the OpenOffice.org community whose goal is to 'create the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format will in the not too distant future achieve this objective as users will find these functionalities very compelling.

[tomyeh]

AJAX versus Flash/Flex

&gt;&gt; These so-called rich Internet application
&gt;&gt; tools will continue to exist for
&gt;&gt; sophisticated tasks, but AJAX fits the
&gt;&gt; need for simpler jobs

Not quite.

AJAX not only revives the user experiences, but also explores better programming models that make sophisticated app easy to develop.

The ZK project, an open-source Web framework, is an example. Details at <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://zk1.sourceforge.net" target="_newWindow">http://zk1.sourceforge.net</a> and demo at <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.potix.com/zkdemo/userguide" target="_newWindow">http://www.potix.com/zkdemo/userguide</a>.

[Sentinel]

Not invented by Microsoft

People, Microsoft did not invent AJAX. The writer of this article is misinformed. AJAX is a combination of already existing technologies. The only part MS invented was the XMLHTTPRequest browser object, which is used in AJAX. But to claim that Microsoft invented it is preposterous.

[mlamonica]

Origin of Ajax technologies

To say Microsoft invented Ajax is an over-statement and inaccurate. They created the XMLHTTP object, which is part of the Ajax combination. We're changing the original text. Thanks for pointing out the error.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29" target="_newWindow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29</a>
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHTTP" target="_newWindow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHTTP</a>

[mj_junglemungle.com]

Microsoft did invent AJAX

and the browser, and the internet...
mj
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.junglemungle.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.junglemungle.com</a>

[orencs]

An article about this topic

A Software Architecture Toolset for Choosing the Right Type of Client Application
Choose "web application" or "desktop application"? Rich-Internet or a Smart-Client Application?

<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_misc/designtechniques/article.php/c13369/" target="_newWindow">http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/csharp/cs_misc/designtechniques/article.php/c13369/</a>

by Oren Cohen Shwartz