August 1, 2005 Mountain View -- LouisRoehrs [at] yahoo [dot] com

The Holy Grail of web application technologies is here. Ok, well, it has been around since IE 5 and used in the Web version of Outlook. But not many noticed. Then XMLHttpRequest, the key component, was implemented in Firefox and Safari and then Google told us with Google Maps that it is safe to make applications based on XMLHttpRequest. Together with Javascript, XML, HTML, and CSS, we can now safely make the decision to build Ajax-style web applications. I'm so thrilled. I built a few tools based on the Ajax concepts before I even knew it was called Ajax a year ago to help get me through a year long project.

The end of the Submit button is here!

Imagine a web page that behaves like a client server application but downloads in a web page and runs using only javascript.

Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) are here and work with Firefox and IE. Ajax enables round-trip server communication in the background, updating data and HTML in the web page without page reloading. There has been much talk about Web 2.0 and Ajax is certain to big a big part of it.

With Javascript and simple server-side communication using Java, J2EE, PHP, or any of your favorite server side technologies, web applications will be easier than ever to build, maintain, and wow users with quick response and less bandwidth than before.

Remember the last time you wrote on paper?

Ajax will enable more effective user interactions where users will be able to move through data faster at granularities that make sense to the user. Today, reports load with columns of data, rarely the ones we want and then at a different point in the data's hierarchy. We tweak, twiddle, and frob the pull downs to get the report we want, maybe going from web page to web page to configure the report. Imagine, with a Rich Internet Application, we can delete a few columns from one report, load another report on the same page, add a couple of columns to it, and print it all on one page neatly after having changed the table legends to your liking. With Ajax, that can be done, with reloading the page and saving all of your changes in the background automatically.

Imagine the games we can build with Ajax. Character stats updating in the background, near real-time, chatting with other players, all in a single web page without frames, without downloading plug-ins, applets, or java.

Imagine your favorite portal updating without hitting the refresh button, or drag and dropping your layouts and not having to save. Preferences are saved while you move on to the next portlet.

That is where be are headed and very quickly now. There is sure to be a barrage of news and information as we enter the biggest boom in this convergence of user interaction and the global environment of the web. We will be even closer to each other than before. Each keystroke and mouse click can make a difference in less time than before. We will move ideas to each other visually faster than ever before. I can't wait, let's get going!

I have been working with this technology for a couple of years now, and will be adding more going forward and showing some of the things this can do...