kepo-ing Zz85

Sometimes when I wonder too much about computer technologies in mind, I wonder if I would become a computer philosopher. Just like many computing theories were already established long even before computers were practical.

You are free to feel that AJAX is just a hype, or just a overrated term. Some of you might already know that it basically revolves round the XMLHttpRequest javascript object. Nevertheless, Ajax..

1. sounds nicer/cooler. Ajax is also the name of Greek Hero of the Trojan War. Removing r from Greek, now you can Geek.

2. is changing the way people develop and use Web Technologies.

What I like to touch on now is how can you accomplish the same stuff you do with ajax without ajax (that is before ajax came about).

1. Flash. Perhaps it was more popular before to use flash for server communication, now the developers are trying to redo their implementation in ajax.

2. New window. Javascripts popup a new window, closes it, then updates the main page. Javascript controls the new window, which sends and requests information from the server, then does some checks, updates the parent window, then closes the new window. Of course, popup blockers nowadays might pose a problem to this method.

3. IFrame. The cool little feature (started in IE) that can magically changes in a corner of your webpage. Of course, this was what lead to development of the “ajax” support in browser.

Now the last thought. Its cool that the ideas of widgets are gettig “in” (even for wordpress). Now if wordpress plugin writers all were to implement all ajax codings with their different libraries, and a wordpress user were to use them all, i think the mere load of the js/ajax libraries is a killer itself. Now, how do you implement a ajax library to download other libraries only when that ajax plugin/script is needed in that page?

sidenote: the 3 giants. google, yahoo, msn are fighting closer each day. In competiting with gmail (beta?), Yahoo! Mail beta and MSN Live Mail beta throws in more eye cindy, 3 pane outlook like style, and ajax. And google fights back with their Calendar.