Software As She’s Developed

Today’s Ajax framework is JsRia. Yesterday’s was ZK, with the Backbase entries updated too. In the past week, there were Smartclient, Ajax JSP Taglib, Ajax JSF Framework, Cajax. Here’s the diff. The week prior to that saw introduction of XOAD, Rialto, and Lotus Notes info. Have the Ajax frameworks entered the enlightened age of singularity? (I’ve […]

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James Strachan: Is Ajax gonna kill the web frameworks?: So is the web application of the future going to be static HTML & JavaScript, served up by Apache with Ajax interacting with a bunch of XML based web services (maybe using SOAP, maybe just REST etc)? If so, do we really need a web […]

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Looking at the best practice/process patterns gave me some ideas for Ajax frameworks. Here’s a few thoughts. I know some frameworks already do some of these things, though most don’t, and none do all of them. Logging frameworks should provide a sensible default, ie log to a div, but allow for more flexiblity on the logging strategy, as […]

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Cool! The Best Practices/Processes Patterns are now complete. They are the final eight Ajax Patterns for now - “final” in the sense of “the list is not yet finalised”. The patterns had been sitting there unattended for about four months now. More details on the new patterns later, but here’s a quick summary … First, there’s a […]

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Ajax Basics 2 of 3 This is the second of three podcasts on the basic Ajax patterns. Podcast 1: Display Patterns and the DOM. Podcast 2: Web Remoting - XMLHttpRequest, IFrame Call, HTTP Streaming. Podcast 3: Dynamic Behaviour - Events and Timing. Podcast 2: Web Remoting (XMLHttpRequest, IFrame, HTTP Streaming) This 75 minute podcast covers web remoting concepts and the […]

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“A Mock Is Not So Stupid After All!” Dave Crane’s been talking about Mocking the Server-Side: A Mock Object is a stand-in for the real thing. Few modern programs are really standalone, and enterprise apps require a very complex context in order to operate; containers, databases, directories, web services, etc. This can make testing difficult, […]

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This 47-minute podcast is a discussion with Alexander Kirk, creator of the recently released Blummy (which I mentioned last week) and also Bandnews. A few things we discussed: The design behind Blummy. (Interestingly, I was incorrect to guess it uses XHR - basically, the Blummy is like a Greasemonkey script - it uses DOM manipulation to alter […]

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The Basics of Ajax: A 3-Part Podcast Series I’m beginning to podcast about specific Ajax patterns. To start with, a three-part series on the basics of Ajax development, covering all the Foundational Technologies patterns: Podcast 1: Display Patterns and the DOM. Podcast 2: Web Remoting - XMLHttpRequest, IFrame Call, HTTP Streaming. Podcast 3: Dynamic Behaviour - Events and Timing. These […]

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I just updated the ajaxpatterns.org “What’s Ajax” page to include more info on Ajax Benefits, and added a new section on Downsides. Have I missed any? Benefits of Ajax Web as a Platform: The web is no longer just about websites that expose some information; it’s increasingly being used for full-blown applications. These applications demand richer […]

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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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