Software As She’s Developed

I just added an Ajax Searchroll with Rollyo, the new search engine that lets you “roll your own” (get it?) search. For example, click on the following link to search for “xmlhttprequest” on my selection of Ajax sites: http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=xmlhttprequest&sid=2220 (The 2220 ID corresponds to “Michael Mahemoff’s Ajax Search”.) Rollyo lets anyone add up to 25 sites, and then […]

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Don Norman questions the conventional wisdom on Google: Anybody can make a simple-looking interface if the system only does one thing. If you want to do one of the many other things Google is able to do, oops, first you have to figure out how to find it, then you have to figure out […]

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Ajax, AjaxPatterns, Chat, CSCW, Forums, IM, Patterns, Web, Web2.0, Wiki Meta - new Ajaxian forum software - has been released (via Ajaxian). Like wikis, forums will look and feel very different in a couple of years. Multi-user systems like wikis and forums and Groups/Clubs have traditionally communicated on a longer-term, asynchronous, timeframe. If you write something and […]

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Further to the previous post on new Ajax programming patterns, it’s also worth noting there’s a new bunch of corresponding online Ajax demos too. Being programming patterns, they tend to be “pure refactorings” rather than enhancements, thus the user experience is mostly the same - you have to look under the covers to see what’s […]

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I’ve uploaded full text for 18 new Ajax patterns, completing a first-cut draft for all Programming Patterns content, which will be one part of the book. This section bridges the gap between the very basics of Ajax - XMLHttpRequest, DOM, etc - and the high-level stuff like widgets and visual effects. For instance, how do […]

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If there’s one certainty in this industry, it’s the ongoing hilarity of job ads. David Heinemeier Hansson found a job ad that mentions “Rails” in the same breath as “enterprise” and “whitepaper”, and “struts” in the same breath as “latest and greatest”: Should have ideally 5 years experience with all of the latest […]

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Alright, it already is a household word, but how about our Ajax? Will it too become a household word? I’m seeing a trend that it will be. Some terms should never really have escaped the tech world, but they somehow did. For example, Java and Flash. Okay, maybe not quite household, but well beyond the realm […]

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Scott Isaacs on a new Start.com feature (quoted on Ajaxian): DHTML-based Gadgets: Start.com consumes DHTML-based components called Gadgets. These Gadgets can be created by any developer, hosted on any site, and consumed into the Start.com experience. The model is completely distributed. You can develop components derived from other components on the web. Remote portlets take […]

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Researching JSON-RPC for the “JSON Message” pattern, I came across this interesting slashdot posting from January 24, 2005, a few weeks before “Ajax” was coined … Seen those funky remote scripting techniques employed by Orkut, Gmail and Google Suggests that avoid that oh so 80’s page reloading (think IBM 3270 only slower) … Now […]

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A little Aussie geek humour. Apparently Joel Spolsky named a server “Qantas” in honour of the airline’s immaculate safety record - the server that never crashed. As Jeff Attwood alludes to in that article, Rain Man is what made Qantas’s record famous. Further Aussie geek humour. I was recently reminded of this classic software tale. […]

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