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Is AJAX something revolutionary?

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AJAX seems to be the new "buzzword of the day". In short, AJAX stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML", an acronym coined by Jesse Garrett recently. The basic idea is very nice - you can actually perform client-side programming directly in the DHTML code, in the embedded JavaScript. And, while the DHTML page interacts with the user, it talks asynchronously in the background with the server through a variety of methods, notably by sending/receiving XML fragments.

This acronym is mostly used today in the context of Google Maps. I admit that it looks pretty cool - I even posted a while back a technical article about how it uses the AJAX concepts here.

But is this AJAX concept something new? Well, it quickly turns out that it's not. Although we don't see it all over the place, people already used this idea pretty heavily in the past few years. I would pick a notable example: Outlook Web Access.

OWA has been out there for years, since the good old days of Microsoft Exchange 5.5. I was always amazed by this application, especially in the most recent versions, by its ability to mimic pretty closely the look-and-feel of the Outlook client. The latest incarnation of OWA has two flavors. The rich OWA uses a combination of several technologies at the browser side (JavaScript, WebDAV, XML, XSLT, etc) to create a pretty interactive application. The reach version uses very few browser features, and it even works with IE 4.02 or earlier (although I am not sure if anybody is using that browser version :-)

[update: more AJAX-related posts from Microsofties: here and here]

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Yeah,it seems some people noticed XmlHttp object only few days ago while it existent for years(starting from msxml3 I suppose;-)
  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Been writing AJAX apps since IE4SDK came out but I used RemoteScripting and my own xml posts using invisible Iframes to acheive it , pre-xmlhttp.

    Notice that .NET introduced a similar AJAX style technique of invisible iframe posts and dhtml with the SmartNavigation option on ASP.NET pages.
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    Yep, it's been around for 4 or 5 years+. You can use MSXML, or the Web Service Behavior (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/webservice/overview.asp) to accomplish this. Note that ASP.NET 2 will support this (http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/01/CuttingEdge/default.aspx).
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    No no no, you're wrong. HTML and XML are boring.
    It's Asynchronous JSON And XUL

    Take a look here:
    http://www.georgenava.com/applauncher.php

    PS. Firefox only!

    ;-)
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
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  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    Oh, and in regards to OWA, it doesn't run very well on Mozilla/Firefox. Google made theirs run in a much more cross-platform manner.


    The argument thrown back at me is "but OWA is intended for intranet use where companies can control the browser." If someone says this then they've never had to actually convince people to use an intranet app they created. People (users) will hang their hat on anything that they can use to resist change.
  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
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  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2005
    This is Ajax !!! a soccer club of more the 100 years old.
    http://www.ajax.nl/home/
  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2005
    This is Ajax !!! a soccer club of more the 100 years old.
    http://www.ajax.nl/home/
  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2008
    PingBack from http://drinksandbirthdaysblog.info/antimail-is-ajax-something-revolutionary/