Agile Ajax

RIA and AJAX: Another Perspective

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, May 10, 2006 @ 9:00 am

        Marc Domenig over at javalobby.org has some thoughts on selecting the best product for RIA using AJAX. He gives a decision tree approach to deciding which technology solution to settle on. Given the headlong rush to embrace AJAX for everything from stock tickers to CMS systems, I think it's wise for product managers to carefully consider A) why moving to an RIA model is good for them and B) if AJAX is in fact the best solution.

His view on AJAX is a bit outmoded, however:

JavaScript was designed for scripting rather than full-fledged rich
client development. For this reason, a JavaScript/AJAX product may not
necessarily support all RIA functions mentioned. Partial screen
updates, asynchronous communication, modal dialogs and menus will
probably be available. But other RIA goodies may be severely limited in
functionality or missing altogether. Typically, the set of rich UI
widgets that supports direct manipulation will be poor compared to
those we find in toolkits for desktop applications.

Yes to everything except the idea that AJAX means Javascript apps. While frameworks like ZK and Echo2 certainly make use of Javascript for their display manipulation, it is at such a low level that the development of new component widgets and the porting of widgets from existing desktop GUI frameworks is simplified.

He's preaching to the choir when he points out the benefits of a thin, Javascript rendering engine:

JavaScript code can be limited to an application-independent
presentation engine that comes with the product, as illustrated by the
rightmost option in Figure 4. This pure thin-client approach has
several advantages: applications can be written entirely in Java, with
a single programming environment. Moreover, there is a homogeneous
server-side programming model, and no need to distribute the
application code between client and server, nor between different
programming languages. This simplifies both development and testing
substantially. Finally, the application code will execute primarily in
the robust server-side environment.

He goes on to evaluate the Java and Flash alternatives to AJAX. Overall a well thought out and informative article. Well worth the read.

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agile ajax Agile Ajax

Comments: 1 so far

  1. I would like to refer you to Visual WebGui (http://visualwebgui.com) which I happy to work in the company that created it. Visual WebGui lets you develop in WinForms like API including design time capabilities in pure .NET language with no scripting. We to felt that it is not productive to use JavaScript for building applications.

    It seems like the world is obsessed on using the wrong technologies for the task although the big guys have got to the same conclusion and that is way GWT and Script# where developed.

    As opposed to GWT and Script# which compile Java/C# to JavaScript Visual WebGui is a run time environment extending ASP.NET by providing an alternative HTTP handling pipe line. Instead of looking at web development as serving pages we have events coming in and update commands return to the browser using an AJAX layer.

    You can see a live sample here (FireFox support will be available in a few days) http://samples.visualwebgui.com/mainform.wgx.

    You can see some videos showing what it means to develop using this concept here
    http://www.visualwebgui.com/Developers/Videos/tabid/116/Default.aspx

    We are planning on providing a Java version as well based on swing API and design time capabilities.

    Comment by Guy, Wednesday, September 20, 2006 @ 8:59 pm

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