Software As She’s Developed

Check out Alexander Kirk’s new website: Blummy. A blummy is a kind of bookmarklet that opens up a kind of pop-up portal, giving you access to various web services. Just like a portal is made up of Portlets, a Blummy is made of Blummlets, which essentially do the kind of things bookmarklets do. e.g. […]

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It’s that time in a technology’s lifecycle when myths abound and someone wheels out a collection of “myths” and retorts. Here’s my contribution to that time-honoured genre. Nine myths in 37 minutes. Myth: “AJAX” Reality: Ajax Myth: Ajax is rocket science Reality: It’s an incremental progression Myth: Javascript sucks Reality: It doesn’t Myth: The URL’s always the same Reality: Unique URLs are […]

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The publicly-editable Ajax Frameworks Page got a nice kick along in the past few days, presumably due to a recent link from Ajaxian. If this list is anything to go by, the most common language is pure-Javascript, and Java is, as you might have guessed, highest on the server-side, followed by .Net and PHP. Sections for Python and Perl were opened […]

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Many equate Ajax to “Is it using XMLHttpRequest?”, which I think is taking the acronym too literally. There’s a reason why I’ve learned to say “Ajax” rather than “AJAX”: the term is user-centric, not techno-centric, and best defined in terms of what it gives users rather than how you deliver it. And what it gives […]

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Day Barr: Chat is not quite the Hello World of Ajax, but it’s one of the simplest yet useful things I could do. I didn’t learn very much by writing an Ajax Hello World example and it’s completely pointless As many are learning, an Ajax “Hello World” is pretty easy, provided […]

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A new DHTML boxing “game” from the Man In Blue. Not quite DHTML Lemmings or Super Maryo World, but still more fun than it should be. A bit like the Ruby On Rael thing in reverse. Also from the same presentation is an eerily lifelike OSX clone (Firefox-only). More evidence that Ajax might be useful […]

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Recent Ajax apps like Kiko are sluggish according to Alexander Kirk’s “Rise of Slow Ajax Applications (via AjaxDeveloper): Pages get more voluminous because so much code has to be loaded to the browser (which makes the browser slow again) so you could just begin to use the application. This somehow reminds me of all […]

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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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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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