Interview: Microsoft, Apple eyed for AJAX alliance
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(InfoWorld) - In February, a group of technology vendors, including BEA Systems, Google, IBM, and Oracle, formed the OpenAjax Alliance, with the goal of promoting the popular AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web development technique. Since then, more vendors, such as Sun Microsystems, have joined, and the alliance has launched its OpenAjax Hub project to boost interoperability among AJAX libraries. One of the founders of OpenAjax was David Boloker, who holds the titles of distinguished engineer and CTO of emerging Internet technologies at the IBM software group. He also serves on the alliance's steering committee. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Boloker at the AJAXWorld Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., on Wednesday about AJAX, the security issues around it, and the possibilities of other vendors such as Microsoft and Apple joining the alliance. InfoWorld: Why did you found OpenAjax? Boloker: If you go back nine months, the key problem that folks were having was, one, What exactly is the definition of AJAX? The second [problem was], How do you get [a] message out to all parties that would be cross-vendor? The third thing was, From a technology standpoint, how can you basically start looking at what was going to happen when looking across toolkits? So you can have one personâs UI widget working with your UI widget, and these are all in JavaScript. And each and every one of the toolkits today, actually, expects to own the whole page; so theyâre going to basically take control, and expect to; then, when you leave their page, they lose control. Well, what really is going to have to happen is, you may like someoneâs Accordion control from one toolkit and want to use it, for example, with Tibcoâs. So one of the things which we started working on was something called OpenAjax Hub inside of OpenAjax, which is [aimed at allowing that interoperability], and thatâs going to be an open source plan. So [those were] the reasons why we started OpenAjax. Now, when you start looking at the bigger picture here and at what IBM is doing in this space, [you'll see that it] is in parallel to starting OpenAjax; what we did [at IBM] is, we started a project inside IBM to work on trying to bring down the level of complexity of writing and debugging applications, AJAX applications in particular. And the way we did it was, we built a piece of code called the AJAX Tooling Framework which went on top of Eclipse, which is the core foundation for tooling that we are using, and we can demo the AJAX Tooling Framework with the whole idea behind it [being] to bring down that level of not only complexity but also to allow someone to write a lot more AJAX code in a much shorter amount of time and get it published faster. InfoWorld: What about Microsoft -- which has its AJAX technology, Atlas -- not being a part of OpenAjax? Are there any more overtures being made? Are they just going to sit on the sidelines like they seem to do with other industry initiatives, like Eclipse? Whatâs going on there with Microsoft? Boloker: I actually just spoke with Microsoft yesterday about joining OpenAjax, and theyâve taken back the details and are thinking about it, and theyâll get back to us. InfoWorld: What do you think the impact is of Microsoft not participating? You have this massive PC software company, and theyâre not participating. Do you think it's detrimental for them to not participate, or does it not make a difference? Boloker: Well it makes a difference because Iâd actually like to have them at the table. They have some very, very skilled developers, and theyâve thought about the area a lot, just as Tibco has and IBM has and JackBe has and others. It would be actually great if we actually can get everyone to the table, and Iâm really hoping that we can do it. InfoWorld: Do you think you will? Boloker: Optimistic. InfoWorld: But they have not made any commitments to joining at this point? Boloker: None. Theyâre thinking about it at this point. InfoWorld: Are there any other major companies on the sidelines? I canât think of any right now. Boloker: Thereâs plenty of people that are in discussions with us, and those people in discussions with us are folks like Apple. Letâs see, who else would be in it? Weâre looking at Cisco as another. Cisco [is not] core to the Web piece of this. The other companies are mostly in Asia. InfoWorld: What about the issues of security around AJAX? Apparently there are a lot of them. What are you doing about that? Boloker: Security around AJAX is actually security around the Web. So thereâs many sets of issues here, and one of the things which weâre actually going to cover inside of OpenAjax is a whole discussion on security, at the meeting at the end of the week. And one of the topics is not only from a Web standpoint of cross-app scripting, which has been a problem in the Web for many, many years, when you have cross-application scripting between servers. But this whole concept of when youâre doing mashups, if youâre doing mashups all within your establishment or customer shop or you have trusted parties, mashups are secure. Itâs when you do unsecure mashups between, say, myself and someone I donât really know; that other personâs JavaScript could be misformed, or [it could] try to take control of my machine. And this is really where a question of needing to do some technology work between ourselves, the companies, as well as maybe even in the W3C to look at [the question], How do I basically bring an access list to give someone approval to use the mashup or not to use the mashup? InfoWorld: Apparently there are issues with inexperienced developers, there are issues with the cross-site scripting, there are issues with Web services. Even Jesse James Garrett who founded the term AJAX said there are a lot of issues and weâre going to have to almost patch them one by one. So how can people rely on AJAX if itâs got all these security issues? I talked to one AJAXWorld attendee yesterday, and she said she wasnât using AJAX yet, but the one thing she knew was that it apparently had a lot of security concerns. Boloker: So there are security concerns. Actually, if you look at the security concerns you have when doing Web services, there actually was work done for Web services in the area of WS-Security. A lot of folks who are looking at this are looking at it for the first time. Well, the folks that actually have looked at service-oriented architecture said, "Well, if Iâm actually going to start calling something, I want to, No. 1, ensure that I can call the resource, and then if I can call the resource that Iâm actually entitled to, go deeper and actually access the data." The second piece of this is this cross-site scripting; this has been a known problem in the Web, and itâs a server-side problem that people have been dealing with. Now, the other issues that you start looking at in the area of mashups, again, this is -- youâre absolutely correct. You have people that are writing JavaScript that donât really know how to write it, and if you create a mashup, you could end up with a serious problem. Now, if you look at the mashups that have been created up to this point, theyâve been done by very highly skilled and very knowledgeable Web programmers who know what theyâre doing. Now, one of the reasons why we founded OpenAjax was this exact problem was when Scott [Dietzen, CTO of Zimbra, who helped co-found OpenAjax,] and I looked at this problem in late 2005, we pretty much decided that the number of problems that would be confronting people, youâd probably find one in 40 developers actually having all of the right capabilities to actually write good AJAX and secure AJAX. InfoWorld: So what are you going to do? Boloker: The first thing we started doing is weâre attacking the problem not one at a time, weâre doing it in multiple fronts. The first thing was, How do we basically build AJAX, and how do we debug AJAX? And how do we see whatâs going from the client side of this to the server? And thatâs what IBM was working on, and Bob [Goodman, a senior programmer at IBM,] was doing with the AJAX Tooling Framework. The second side of this is that we needed to get the knowledge out about what are the issues. You donât want to scare people away, but at the same token, you need to basically educate them. And this, again, was part of this whole side of what OpenAJAX was about. The third side of this is, How do you then look at it from an industry standpoint of coming out with the best practices? So this is a document that people [would] write to give to AJAX programmers. And then the fourth thing is to look for the technology side of it. How can we basically start securing the technology? And that work is under way right now. And [while] there are no great answers at this exact second, thereâs a very good understanding of the problem, and people are discussing whatâs the right way to do it. InfoWorld: What is the attraction of AJAX? Boloker: AJAX enables you in a Web browser to actually have some of the same qualities of an interaction that you used to have only in a fat client setting. InfoWorld: How does it do that? Boloker: Well, what happens is, AJAX is actually, if you want to look at a set of standards that were [to] form a programming model, and those standards start off with DHTML and JavaScript and XML and thereâs Cascading Style Sheets, thereâs Web services, thereâs all of these things that are falling into this, and each and every one of these is a standard. And the use of them all together creates a toolkit. And today there are probably 200-some-odd toolkits, between closed source and open source, and each of the toolkits does things very differently. So the first thing you have to worry about is, How does it work within Firefox? How does it work within Internet Explorer? These are all different. And then, once you get beyond [that], how do I get it render effectively? Then you can start looking at, well, What are the qualities of the AJAX implementation? Can I do drag-and-drops? Can you do cut and paste, for example, from the browser and move it somewhere else? But the key thing you start looking at is, if you [look at] a great example of an AJAX application, and there are many on the Web today, [there] is one that started off with the folks from a company acquired by Yahoo called Oddpost. And the Yahoo Beta Mail actually uses Oddpost, some of the core pieces. â¦ Thereâs a group of developers that did very early work on [finding] how do I get a very, very high-quality Outlook-type mail client into a browser? And they basically were acquired by Yahoo and became Beta Mail. And if you look at what goes on inside Yahoo Mail, the first thing thatâs so apparent to you is you have the full services of a drag-and-drop all within the browser. The second thing you start looking at is the setting that youâre having is they allow you to do RSS feeds. You can look at RSS and Atom feeds. I mean, theyâre just one example. InfoWorld: Before AJAX, or theoretically before AJAX, you had Flash. Do you see Flash as a competitor, as a complementary? It just seems like it is kind of a competitive technology even if Adobe says itâs not. Boloker: I was going to tell you to ask Adobe what their opinion was. Flash is yet another example of a Web-based technology, and there are reasons why customers might want to use Flash to have an environment, a full environment, and you know there are reasons why people might want to do something just purely in DHTML and JavaScript. I mean the first obvious reason is DHTML and JavaScript [are] installed on everyone elseâs desktop today and is immediately used, whereas Flash was a plug-in. Now, that plug-in happens to be pretty much on most peopleâs machines. InfoWorld: AJAX is a technique. Is there going to be an AJAX 2.0, 3.0? Do you see an evolution of it, or is it just that this is the technique for doing something and if you get too far away from it, then itâs not AJAX anymore? Boloker: Well, itâs a programming paradigm, and with all programming paradigms, whether itâs AJAX 2.0 or AJAX 3.0, it started off as AJAX. And itâll always be AJAX. And what youâre going to do is learn, as an industry weâre all going to learn nuances to do something easier or make it much more secure, the points you brought up before. InfoWorld: So OpenAjax is not going to come out with the next version of AJAX, right? Boloker: No, OpenAjax is definitely not going to come out with another version of AJAX. OpenAjax is really going to be looking at [this] from a full industry partnership on how to move AJAX forward. Now, one might say that as we start looking at AJAX Hub and things like that, that people might say that, well, thatâs another version of AJAX. But in reality itâs the same version of AJAX. Weâre just working to build it out. InfoWorld: Any final thoughts that you want to add? Boloker: I think my only final words really come back to, Iâve been working in technology for many years, and as with any technology thatâs coming on the scenes, there are initially problems. Some of the problems have to do with, first of all, education of the audience, and the second thing has to do always with security, manageability, scalability, and things like that. Our friends from Google proved that AJAX can scale through Google Maps. For that matter, in a lot of cases I think that theyâve proved that you can run a pretty secure shop with AJAX. There are security problems that the industry.
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Over on our sister site, AjaxDeveloper.org today, there's a note about the latest release of Joshua Eichorn's HTML_AJAX PEAR package - version 0.3.1.    HTML_AJAX 0.3.1 is out, lots of good bug fixes, and iframe fallback support for Opera and IE with activeX turned off.  More details are available on the release notes on the wiki.  Feature wise were getting close to beta release, its mainly getting a browser compatability test suite added in and doing some basic API review. If you have experience supporting an API without breaking bc, it would be great to get your feedback on HTML_AJAX.    In the release notes, there's mention of several bugs with Internet Explorer implementations and some yet unsolved problems (IE memory leaks and table support in Konqueror). Check out the rest of the notes for more of the bugs and issues they've taken care of...
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The Microsoft Chairman discusses where the XO laptop fits on his radar screen (not too high) as well as other efforts to bring low-cost computing to emerging markets.
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(InfoWorld) - Looking to bolster AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and development of Web 2.0 applications, the OpenAjax Alliance on Wednesday plans to introduce a project that addresses AJAX interoperability issues. The alliance, which features vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, will roll out its OpenAjax Hub project. This effort involves developing a standard set of JavaScript functionality to tackle problems with interoperability arising when multiple AJAX libraries are used within the same Web page. With the hub, multiple AJAX run-time libraries would be able to coexist on a page. Version 1.0 of the OpenAjax Hub is planned for completion by the end of this calendar year; integration of the hub into AJAX toolkits expected in early 2007. "[In] today's world, AJAX libraries in general believe they own the entire browser [and] JavaScript environment, that they're the first one and the last one, so they assume a consequence-free environment where they can do whatever they want to do," said Jon Ferraiolo, acting director of the alliance and a Web architect in the emerging technologies group at IBM. What results, he said, are collisions of JavaScript objects and the toolkits managing HTML markup, and an inability to integrate functions such as drag and drop events. With development of the hub, the alliance is dealing with its top priority, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail response to questions. "There is a critical need for OpenAjax at this point in time, because each vendor's AJAX implementation is generally incompatible with the others," Bloomberg said. "Basically, even though each AJAX widget leverages XML and JavaScript, both of which are open standards, that doesn't mean that one widget from one toolkit will work with another widget from some other toolkit. The most important goal of OpenAjax is figuring out how to resolve this interoperability problem. Clearly, Ajax will be far more successful if any widget works with any other widget, toolkit, or platform." Support for the hub is expected in toolkits such as Dojo and script.aculo.us as well as in AJAX frameworks such as Tibco General Interface and offerings from Backbase, JackBe and Nexaweb. "No one has made any commitments [to use the hub yet] but generally, [the parties cited] are all active in the alliance," said Ferraiolo. The unveiling of the hub is part of an update on the alliance's activities that is being provided Wednesday. The group will announce a near-doubling of its membership since its formation in February. New members include The Ajaxian, American Greetings, Bling Software, Curl, edge IPK, eLink Business Innovations, ENOVIA, MatrixOne, Finetooth, The Front Side, Ikivo, ILOG, IN2, IT Mill, Javeline, JWAX, Merced Systems, Nexaweb, Nitobi, OpenLink Software, Seagull Software, Sitepen, Sun, Vertex Logic, Vircon, Webtide, and Zoho. Previously announced members of the alliance include: Adobe, Backbase, BEA Systems, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Fair Isaac, Google, IBM, ICEsoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla Corporation, Novell, Openwave Systems, Opera, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Scalix, Software AG, Tibco, XML11, Zend, and Zimbra. While the alliance already has an impressive list of members, one name remains conspicuously absent: Microsoft. "Yes, we have extended an invitation and attempted to recruit Microsoft to join," Ferraiolo said. "We would love to have Microsoft participate in the alliance." "The purpose of the alliance is to make interoperability successful such that you can take AJAX technologies from one source and use it with another vendor's. Microsoft is one of [those] vendors and an important vendor in the AJAX community and it would be to everybody's advantage, particularly customers, if Microsoft's products would interoperate well with other people's products," said Ferraiolo. He added he was not making a statement that Microsoft products currently do not interoperate. Although Microsoft has promoted AJAX via its Atlas technologies, Microsoft currently does not have plans to join. "Microsoft has no firm plans to join the OpenAjax Alliance. However, Microsoft is very committed to working with the developer community and is engaged in dialogue with the OpenAjax Alliance organizers to learn more about the initiative," Microsoft said in a prepared statement. The alliance seeks to serve as an industry catalyst to boost AJAX-enabled Web 2.0 applications. Ferraiolo defines Web 2.0 as a new generation of the Web focused on collaboration. OpenAjax technologies are intended to produce lower development costs, faster delivery of applications, vendor choice, interoperability, and a richer Web experience. Greater collaboration capabilities that can be added to existing HTML sites or used for new applications is another goal. Also being unveiled on Wednesday is the organization's Web site and a white paper covering a description of AJAX, the AJAX value proposition and a technical section on AJAX architectures. These architectures include single and dual DOMs (Document Object Model), in which the single model involves processing everything in HTML browsers, while the dual approach involves using an XML parser that holds the description of the UI. The dual model offers a richer set of functionality but requires a larger download, typically, Ferraiolo said. AJAX in the open source world also is being included in the alliance's list of issues to cover. One of the goals for the alliance is the ability to have a zero-cost option, but it's not trying to lock out vendors from making money at all," said Ferraiolo. A second meeting of the alliance is planned for Oct. 5-6 in Santa Clara, Calif. The alliance on Oct. 5 plans to announce it has moved to a formal governance model that includes a steering committee. Goals and procedural issues also will be discussed. Security of AJAX also will be on the agenda, Ferraiolo said.
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Microsoft's CEO tells financial analysts that the company has a plan to take on its major rival. Yahoo could speed up the plan, but it will build its ad business, regardless.
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(InfoWorld) - With Microsoft's antitrust appeal now decided, the next U.S. technology company to get a place on the European Union (EU)'s regulatory hot seat may be Apple, an antitrust expert said Tuesday. "The decision by the Court of First Instance is a clear signal to the European [Competition] Commission that it has the leeway to go ahead," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and a noted antitrust scholar. "[The commission] now has a license to go ahead, and they have a pretty aggressive posture. I think this bodes ill for some companies." Among those already facing investigations or accusations from the EU antitrust agency, which is led by Neelie Kroes of the Netherlands, are chipmakers Rambus and; Qualcomm, a wireless technology vendor; and Apple. Apple, in fact, will face two days of hearings before the commission starting Wednesday to answer charges that it and its four music label partners are violating EU laws with the pricing structure and purchase restrictions of the iTunes music store. In early April, the commission confirmed that it had sent an SO (Statement of Objections), the agency's term for an official complaint, to Apple and partners EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Universal Music. The SO claimed consumers are restricted in their choice of where to buy music -- because each country's version of iTunes only accepts orders from customers who live in that country -- and at what price. ITunes tracks sales for varying amounts, depending on the country. But the commission steered clear of calling Apple another Microsoft in April. "The Statement of Objections does not allege that Apple is in a dominant market position," the group said in a statement at the time. Yesterday, Kroes downplayed any link between the court's rejection of Microsoft's appeal and possible action against other U.S. technology companies. "You may hear scare stories about the supposed negative consequences of this ruling for other companies," she said during a news conference Monday afternoon. "Let me be clear. There is one company that will have to change its illegal behavior as a result of this ruling: Microsoft." Microsoft, however, thought different. During his own news conference yesterday, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, repeatedly pointed to Apple. "Apple has something like a 70 percent market share for digital music," said Smith. "ITunes is far and away the leading source for music on the Internet; the iPod is far and away the leading hardware device for digital music." Even the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in. Thomas Barnett, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, yesterday said: "We are concerned that the standard applied to unilateral conduct by the CFI [Court of First Instance], rather than helping consumers, may have the unfortunate consequence of harming consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition." Hovenkamp was confident that yesterday's decision would embolden the commission. "This was a landmark decision and a landmark case," he said. "It stands for a couple of important things. First, it's a declaration of independence, a statement that their anticompetitive policy is not going to be dictated by U.S. policy. Second, it clears the way for the commission to pursue new cases. "You're going to see a more aggressive commission that will go after high technology companies, especially those that are involved with networks or standard setting," Hovenkamp said. "Rambus and Qualcomm, certainly," he said, are among the companies at risk from a combative commission. "Intel? Perhaps. As for Apple, there are some undeveloped issues there." In Apple's favor, he said, are European antitrust traditions that may let the iTunes operator and iPod maker off the hook. Europe's antitrust agency has typically looked differently at two kinds of pricing discrimination. The one where a company prices products differently in different countries in order to squash competition -- pricing products lower in nations where rivals exist, higher where competitors are lacking -- is usually treated harshly, said Hovenkamp. The other type of pricing discrimination, where a seller prices products based on what it thinks a particular country's buyers can bear -- more in Germany, for example, less in Portugal -- are not generally considered a competition problem. "If Apple is pricing differentially because of economies and consumer buying power," said Hovenkamp, "it is probably safe. But if [it is] doing this to suppress competition, the commission may act." Among the possible results of the hearings: fines levied to the tune of 10 percent of global net revenues. Kroes' agency could also dismiss the SO after the hearing. "Europeans are much more comfortable with regulation," said Hovenkamp. Apple did not reply to a request for comment on the court ruling yesterday or on the hearings that kick off tomorrow in Brussels. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems will shine more light on accommodations for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in the Java realm at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. next week. Featured on Sun's agenda are the latest details on Project jMaki and Project Phobos, which are two open source efforts. The company also will provide an update on the future of Sun's JavaServer Faces (JSF) component model for Web application development, said Sun's Greg Murray, AJAX architect with the company and the project lead for jMaki. Sun's AJAX efforts focus on making JavaScript more available to Java developers, Murray said. "The problem is, people are afraid of JavaScript," he said. "If we want to keep Java relevant, we have to support this newer programming model [scripting]," Murray said. Web 2.0 and AJAX are very important to Sun, Murray said. The next version of Java, Java Standard Edition 6, will support JavaScript and is expected some time in 2007. Sun's accommodations with JavaScript will make AJAX simpler, said analyst Rikki Kirzner, CEO of Centennial Global Research. "You should be able to make AJAX simpler than it is," she said. AJAX currently lacks accommodations with Java, according to Kirzner.Â  "AJAX is a way to add richness to 3GL code, to any code, and Java doesn't readily embrace it," Kirzner said. The jMaki project enables Java developers to use JavaScript in Java applications as either a JSP (Java Server Pages) tag library or a JSF component. "It's a way of wrapping some of the existing JavaScript frameworks out there and exposing them to Java developers," Murray said. Developers can access Dojo and other frameworks.Â  A Dojo widget could be included in a page, for example. "Basically, jMaki will generate all the JavaScript, everything necessary to put that in the page for you," Murray said. A beta release of jMaki is planned for release in November. "We've been working away just to polish the edges," said Murray. A general release is expected in January or February 2007. Phobos is a way to script server-side code in JavaScript, rather than write a JSP page or a servlet, Murray said. The technology is planned for release early next year. Sun anticipates making jMaki and Phobos add-ons to the Java Enterprise Edition 5 platform. The future of JSF, meanwhile, involves an upgrade being called Project Dynamic Faces or JSF 2.0. This version will extend the component model for server-side components to better support AJAX, Murray said. This release is driven by feedback from users who seek AJAX functionality but want a strict programming model for the server, which JSF provides, Murray said. Dynamic Faces has been available in an early access release since the May timeframe.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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A web applications company is hoping to legitimize the web operating system concept with the release of ajaxWindows, an application that behaves much like its Microsoft counterpart.
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After years of trying to make it easier for peripheral devices to work smoothly with computers, Microsoft is building in some difficulty. The upcoming Longhorn OS should allow companies to keep gizmos like iPod from stealing data.
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By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Jun. 12--Steve Jobs showed in his keynote speech Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference that the Cupertino company can maintain its technical lead over Microsoft in the quality of its operating system software.
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Microsoft and Sun may be going steady, but they aren&#39;t quite sure where the relationship is headed. The companies gave an update on Wednesday to their &quot;ongoing dialogue&quot; about product interoperability that
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Redmond isn't the only company interested in multitouch interfaces. Multitouch devices, in the works for some time, are cropping up all over.
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Jay Bazuzi: &quot;I work for Microsoft. I own plenty of Microsoft stock. I want Microsoft to succeed. But right now Google is kicking our butt.
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Microsoft's CEO shares his big plans in mobile software, and why he thinks the iPhone is "quite nice."
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By MAY WONG  SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. has set the stage for yet another rivalry with Microsoft Corp. by launching a Windows version of its Safari Internet browser and inviting developers to create Web-based programs for its upcoming iPhone.
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Jorgen Thelin and Rebecca Dias detail Microsoft's Strategy for Web Services, specifications and products.
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Blog: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs take the stage in this much-anticipated event at the D5 conference.