THE AJAX ERA: REVOLUTION AND
NIGTHMARE
We are
living in the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) era, there is no dude, the
AJAX approach has revitalized the old DHTML stuff, DHTML is not new of course
but today is a real option, the times of Navigator 4.x and Internet Explorer 4.x
were definitively back, these browsers hurt seriously the DHTML promise of
highly interactive web sites with almost no reload. Fortunately current browsers
like Firefox, Safari 3+, Chrome or Opera 9+ are highly W3C compliant and
Internet Explorer 6 is not doing very bad in the web standard space (of course
v7, v8 and v9 are better) and today some mobile browsers have the same
capabilities as desktop counterparts. DHTML and the XMLHttpRequest approach to communicate with the
server, have introduced the web programming world in the AJAX era, the core technology of Web 2.0,
achieving the web RIA (Rich Internet Applications) utopia.
But any
“new” paradigm ever drives to “real” FUD: Fear Uncertainty Doubt.
Too many
new AJAX
frameworks are out there, ajaxpatterns.org lists[1] 50
Java AJAX frameworks at the time of writing!
When a
senior Java developer tries to enter in the new AJAX world, fear, uncertainty and doubt are
perhaps the first feelings. Of course this document is not done to propagate
FUD against AJAX, AJAX has come to stay. ItsNat main objective
is to combat the reasonably FUD about AJAX: “AJAX without FUD”.
