Pathfinder Development » Ajax Predictions for 2008

Ajax Predictions for 2008

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, December 27, 2007 @ 9:54 am

I'm a little early this year for my 2008 predictions. No matter. I seem to have been a bit early with my 2007 predictions as well, and as they say in the venture capital biz, "too early is the same thing as wrong." Some of my predictions did come true -- Ajax is no longer such a big buzzword; a number of framework specific books (GWT, jQuery) have been published at the end of 2007; Microsoft's Ajax stack continues to limp behind the rest. A few others did not, notably the ho-hum release of IE7 and the delay in FF3. So, let me try my hand at some more prognostication:

Elegant, good looking frameworks like Ext and myGWT will gain traction. The more out-of-the-box good looks you can give them with CSS and bundle images and icons, the more acceptance they will gain.
The JavaScript framework chaos will continue. The OpenAjax alliance will continue to be ineffectual in promoting things like widget interchangeability.
Security will become a big headache, as less sophisticated developers start to venture into the wonderful world of Ajax, littering the web with state and control logic on the client side.
Towards the end of 2008, FF4 and IE8 will start to change the landscape of Ajax and Web 2.0 with an update of JavaScript and new browser features.
MS Volta will do nothing. It is just a FUD shot across the bow of GWT.
Everyone except Craig's List will have some form of Ajax on their site.
Desktop RIA's through Google Gears, Adobe AIR, etc., will start to make an impact in the second half of 2008. Look for desktop/web hybrids of the office productivity tools, such as word processors and Powerpoint clones, to see greater use in the corporate IT space.
GWT's compiler will produce more efficient code than 98% of JavaScript developers can do by hand.
With the new browsers, a cross platform Canvas/SVG will be a reality by the end of the year.
IE8 will still leak memory like a sieve.

Have any of your own predictions? Feel free to add them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: ajax, 2008 predictions

Topics: Ajax Applications, Ajax Development, Ajax Frameworks, Analysis

agile ajax

Comments: 6 so far

>>> 5. MS Volta will do nothing. It is just a FUD shot across the bow of GWT.
Yup. I 100% Agree.

>> 9. With the new browsers, a cross platform Canvas/SVG will be a reality by the end of the year.

Uhm… we are there now?
Opera, Safari and Firefox all support Canvas.
With excanvas you have support for Canvas in IE.
Even the next version of Konqueror (subversion) has Canvas support.

This is pretty good support in all browsers.

I don’t see any use for SVG right now thanks to Canvas and excanvas.

>>> 10. IE8 will still leak memory like a sieve.

I myself feel that FireFox has some serious memory issues too…

Comment by Robert Schultz, Thursday, December 27, 2007 @ 10:34 am
I myself feel that FireFox has some serious memory issues too…

Have you used FF3 at all? For personal use it’s now become my default browser (still develop in FF2 because of the plethora of plugins).

Here’s some of my own additions.

11. Standards will see a huge push forward. Large websites will start designing with accessibility and usability in mind due to the coming influx of mobile browsers. While this includes things like HTML/CSS (due to HTML 5), it also means ajax frameworks and server-side communication will become more standardized. Every mobile device manufacturer will try to implement their own browser with full application support, so some standards will be required to ensure your content is accessible to everyone.

12. Widgets will rule. Everyone wants all their content in one place. Expect more and more websites to support customized widgets for others to use on their pages, as well as developing their own widgets for Facebook, iGoogle, etc. This will also push stand alone desktop web apps to the mass market (via Adobe AIR and Google Gears).

13. Microsoft will release IE8 about ~6 months behind FF3 and will try to one up its feature set (and fail). They will slim down IE8 (remove the bloat), then add more features to stay competitive, and the bloat comes back. About the same time FF4 alpha will come out. They will also add better extension support (similar to Mozilla), however will restrict the functionality of it, causing it to be to much of a hassle for most developers.

Comment by T.J., Thursday, December 27, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
how about this pardigim, Visual WebGui which lets develop pure WinForms with complete abstraction of the AJAX connection, running Silverlight on the client side, with by desgine secured connections (no-logic, no - data client. you get extra productive,you get security, you get unlimited size and wighet application support (client side is indiffrence to application size and wieght, you get your eye canddy and it is all available open source…sounds like the ultimate solution? it looks like it

Comment by navot, Friday, December 28, 2007 @ 2:28 am
WinForms and running Silverlight?
Yea…that definitely sounds like it’s following the open source spirit.

Comment by Scriptor, Friday, December 28, 2007 @ 9:40 am
uhmm craigslist already uses ajax

Comment by ilia, Tuesday, January 1, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
What about Silverlight?

Comment by Michael Sync, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 @ 8:13 am