AJAX Publications

dougal85

As some of you may have noticed from other posts around I am doing a project on AJAX for my final project in university. Allot of it seems to be in relation to the JavaScript language since its so different from the classical object orientated style.

Anyway, I was wondering if anybody knows of any good reliable sources for publish articles or books on the subject. It's easy to find things on Google but we all know I can't use random people for references. The best things I have found are from the YUI team. In particular the video's by Douglas Crockford. I was pointed to these on another thread on this form 🙂

I'm not talking about books to learn how to develop with AJAX (most of these are not that good btw). I am looking for articles discussing the future, current state. Discussing the subject in detail, but not talking about how to start developing with AJAX.

I'm very close to finishing my prototype system and I'm in the process of writing my report on the subject and the development process.

Oh yeah and I looked through my universities system for journals, publications etc. but I didn't find any that are particularly good.

Thanks in advance.

Roger_Ramjet

Well, I don't know that there are any problematic theoretical issues involved in ajax so I don't suppose it is a fit subject for most academic journals.

Sun Developer Network is a good place for quality papers because of the efforts that go into advancing Java. Have a look at what they have on ajax.

Probably the most important initiative at the moment is The OpenAJAX Alliance

Here is an article on the OpenAJAX Alliance. Root around in the links for more.

Remember, AJAX is just the web catching up on classic Client/Server architectures so most of the issues have already been ironed out. The only thing that is unique to it is the XML, which does have a lot you can say about it.

Weedpacket

Roger Ramjet's mention of SUN reminded me of coming across IBM's resources on the subject (see for example this search). While it is of course the same sort of material you've already see, the bibliographies make for some pretty good pointers (the first chapter, for example, links to http://adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php (Garrett is primarily suspected of inventing the term) and something billed as a strategy white paper.)

dougal85

Roger Ramjet wrote:
Remember, AJAX is just the web catching up on classic Client/Server architectures so most of the issues have already been ironed out. The only thing that is unique to it is the XML, which does have a lot you can say about it.

I wouldn't say all the problems have been ironed out after using JavaScript for a while and noticing the problems the language has. Not to mention the DOM issues across browsers and so on. As an application plat form, it has a large number of problems really that people are finding ways around but I wouldn't say they where fixed. After all, the browser was never designed to be a general purpose platform.

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out

Weedpacket

dougal85 wrote:
After all, the browser was never designed to be a general purpose platform.

That's exactly what Mozilla is designed to be 🙂. Speaking of Mozilla, Firefox's entire front end functionality is written in Javascript.

Roger_Ramjet

When I said 'all the issues have been ironed out' I meant all the theoretical issues have been identified and solutions devised. The actual implementation of any chosen solution eg stateless or statefull, push or pull updates, etc will always have its own platform-specific problems.
Also, that there are no end of publications and references for you to choose and use in your project dissertation. So just google for client/server instead of ajax and you will find what you want. Indeed, lots of the stuff will use the web as an exemplar of client/server architecture - which is a bit simplistic to my mind as LAN/WAN C/S have had a richness of application and functionality that java apps and ajax are only just beginning to enable.

dougal85

Weedpacket wrote:
That's exactly what Mozilla is designed to be 🙂. Speaking of Mozilla, Firefox's entire front end functionality is written in Javascript.

That is something I didn't know.

But there are surely problems with using the DOM as it is and so on aswell?

Roger_Ramjet

There are always problems whatever the language and platform. Besides, it is not really a problem with the DOM so much as a problem with the browser publishers who implement it badly.

dougal85

I guess so, but as far as I'm aware the standards are not that great either, afterall if browsers didn't make there additions when they did that later on got adopted we would be missing quite a few key things.

innerHTML was added by Microsoft for example and wasn't in the standard but later made it there.

According to Douglas Crockford from Yahoo if the browsers implemented the standards strictly and nothing else we wouldn't be able to do half of the things we currently can.

Elizabeth

dougal85 wrote:
Anyway, I was wondering if anybody knows of any good reliable sources for publish articles or books on the subject. It's easy to find things on Google but we all know I can't use random people for references.

I keep Ajax Magazine and ajaxian.com in my feed reader - occasionally they will publish opinion pieces or interviews. You might find something there, or at least get some good references to contact for their opinions on the future of Ajax.

Weedpacket

dougal85 wrote:
According to Douglas Crockford from Yahoo if the browsers implemented the standards strictly and nothing else we wouldn't be able to do half of the things we currently can.

I'm too lazy to find a citation myself (and I'm short on time) but I'm guessing the fact that while ECMAScript is an industry standard, the Javascript used in browsers is only de facto, managed by Mozilla.org (seen the developments for the new version lately?) Either that or it's "half the things we do now would have to be done differently". I blame Internet Explorer for holding things back, but only because it's an easy target.

I remember something vaguely like this coming up before. Ah, http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?p=10587600&postcount=23

Have web applications that are actually built and act like applications, not applications that have been forced to look like web pages.