It recently came to our attention that not everyone knows about two critical free tools for any type of AJAX development.

ajaxpatterns.org has a nice listing of AJAX frameworks; everythign from .Net to Coldfusion, from Java to Smalltalk and C++.

http://ajaxpatterns.org/Ajax_Frameworks

There is even the beginnings of a Comparison Matrix.

Years ago, Adam Bosworth coined the term DHTML - as in Dynamic HTML. Jesse James Garrett re-labeled DHTML as “AJAX” If you have not seen this clip - you should. Watch it and pay close attention to what is said, as well as what is not said. Notice that AJAX is not just about Email, or Maps, or Calendars; it is in fact about providing a rich user experience when it is needed. Everyone knows this already or at least they should.

The GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is essentially VB for AJAX. The first version is nice, but the next version will be more realistically usable. There will come a point in time when writing AJAX guts like XMLHttpRequest will be like writing Assembly code. You’ll be able to do it, but you will probably want to use a GWT-like library and some type of AJAX library aware IDE.

The browser, is a platform in and of itself. In some ways it is kind of like Windows 3.1 on top of DOS. The browser is windows and the logic and file-access is all DOS. So at some point it’s possible we’ll see a better integration between the UI and the back-end. Right now, the best tool for this is probably GWT, however, it’s not perfect and it doesn’t let you use Java 5 yet. The whole key to GWT is the compiler. It essentially translates code into separate pieces that allow you to break the app into two pieces the server side and of course the client side. (Feels like the early 90’s all over again).

The single thing that is going to make AJAX frameworks/toolkits/libraries great is when the client-side runtime is standardized. This means, at some point the framework code that runs in the client (events, rendering, code-management, et al) will need to be unified so that it won’t matter so much what the back-end is. Ideally anyways. The other added benefit of this is that you should be able to have the same experience regardless of the host platform (Operating System) and regardless of the browser. That being said, their will probably be two: one for Microsoft and one for everyone else. Which is kind of a necessary evil for Microsoft to preserve their platform. The irony of this is that as Microsoft keeps building their product pyramid and enhancing their platform, they inadvertently create a platform to compete against which is the obviously named “non-MS platform”. Oh – it has other names like “Open Source”.

Please share your thoughts.

Check out
this talk on Google Video for an introdocution to XML11.

Buttonator is a cool AJAX app, here’s a blurb from the folks at Buttonator.com:

The Buttonator is a 90’s idea with 00’s twist - professional looking buttons in seconds. It utilises the latest Rails 1.1.2 release and the RMagick image processing library. A big thanks goes out to Rails team for an awesome framework and the RubyForge RMagick forum for their assistance.

Following plenty of positive feedback regarding version 1, we plan to release a 2nd version with additional functionality such as:

* Creating you own button styles via a personal account
* More configurable generation parameters
* More free styles

In addition to Buttonator, we at Lopini (lopini.com currently under construction) intend to release several web applications in the coming months including an online virtual office (coming very soon) and a web developers collaborative chat system.

Thanks

buttonator-dev@buttonator.com

My name is Amanda White, from the team behind http://www.TheBroth.com, “the Global Mosaic”, a massively multiplayer Web 2.0 application based on Ajax, Php and Mysql.

The Global Mosaic is made of 1,000 colorful tiles that are shared by everyone. When someone moves a tile, others can instantly see it move on their screens!

Here’s our press release: http://www.thebroth.com/press.html

Open Ajax and its associated community may be especially interested in our developer blog, where we share what we’ve learned while making TheBroth, revealing Ajax, Php, Mysql and JavaScript tips, tricks and techniques!

A review of TheBroth and perhaps discussion of the techniques and tutorials is very welcome. We also have our support forum that includes a developer section.

Kind regards,

Amanda White
http://www.thebroth.com

In a posting at C|Net, Google has formally entered the world of calendars and scheduling. The interface is nice, smooth, lots and lots and lots of AJAX code, combining all major patterns and techniques. Check it out!

Product Manager Carl Sjogreen, formely of BEA and WebLogic Workshop, has done a great job. Go Carl!

Some things to check out: sharing events with others that aren’t Google Calendar users (easy!), searching (duh!), quick add (awesome!)

Firefox-only Word Processor (http://ajaxwrite.com/) is available for testing. Looks nice, but there are still some bugs. Definitely worth checking out!

Additionally, GooglePages has gone to Beta. There is an interesting screenshot here You can view the live site of the screenshot here.

So if you havent, please check out http://finance.google.com/. There is a lot of flash and AJAX running this service. Note how when you add/remove items from your portfolion, the page doesn’t reload completely, just the data sections that display your data. This is how traditional apps work, however, without AJAX, this would be near impossible to achieve. Great job again Google on leveraging the buzz and buzzing the leverage.

In a side note, Bill Gates taunts Google.

Gab on OpenAJAX.net - This is really a marvelous idea. Great job people!