AJAX and 2.0 madness
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Does every new generation need the 2.0 tag? Comment Web 2.0 has a lot to answer for. Why, incidentally, is it not simply Web 2?â¦
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If you've ever had the frustration of working with Ajax in Internet Explorer and have noticed it caching the requests/results, you might want to check out this new post on the JSLabs blog for a helpful hint.   While working on an AJAX project over the weekend, I ran into the following issue: (through a GET request), every time I tried to call a certain function, It was returning the same data (which was supposed to be different each time)   First, he tried just changing the headers (via PHP's header function) to see if IE would understand the new message, but to no avail. He finally figured out that, despite whatever headers were sent or how much the content changed, what he really needed to do was to provide the script some kind of unique identifier with each request (just appended to the url) so that IE knew the request was different. His weapon of choice was a date/time value.
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O'Reilly's ONLamp.com website has posted a new tutorial that merges PHP with another powerful web technology - Flex.   With all the hype (and money) surrounding buzzword terms like Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Applications (RIA), it's easy to wonder, "How can I integrate that into my PHP application?" Certainly, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) technologies that use JavaScript code are a good option. But you should also have a look at the Adobe Flex framework. With Flex, you can quickly build functional, attractive user interfaces in Adobe Flash that communicate to your PHP web application through XML.   They go through the usual of showing what Flex is and how it flows in a web application. From there, they move into the tutorial portion - installing the Flex Builder software, creating a new project, testing using Flex Builder and the construction of a sample application (store/access a list of subscribers).
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The recently rediscovered Ajax technique makes the client side of web programming much more useful and pleasant. However, it also means revising your existing web applications to take advantage of this new power. Dominic Mitchell shows how to use CGI::Ajax to give your Perl applications access to this new power.
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Jim Plush passed on a note today about the latest release of his PHP & Ajax framework, MyBic, reaching the 1.0 milestone:   I'm proud to announce to official 1.0.0 release of the MyBic AJAX framework. MyBic has been stable in production for months now with 0 memory leaks and 0 outstanding bugs known to date. MyBic has been successfully flying in some of the worlds top aircraft with 0 supervision in kiosk based devices.   Major advancements for this release include the addition of support for the Firebug debugger with a Firefox extension bundled in. You can grab this latest update from the project's website.
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Our sister site, AjaxDeveloper.org has a new post today with a request from Joshua Eichorn, the developer of the HTML_AJAX PEAR package for success stories.    If you've used HTML_AJAX to make something cool I'd like to hear from you.  If what you've created is publically accessible that would be even better.  Just leave a comment on this post saying what you've created and given a link to it if you can. Any suggestions on improvements that would make further development easier are also appreciated.     With the HTML_AJAX package being as well-developed as it is, I'm sure that there are more than a few out there using it - so get on over and submit your story today!
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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.
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Russ asks: Where's the OpenSocial container API? I love Russ because he cuts through all the BS and gets right to the core, most basic question, and he doesn't care who he pisses off. That's my kind of developer. You can't lie to the compiler, when the bits hit the road, you gotta know what garbage goes in and what garbage comes out.  (Ahh programmer's humor!) In other words, suppose I wanted to compete with Google, MySpace, Plaxo and LinkedIn, well, where's the spec that shows me how to do that? Well, of course I don't know, they aren't communicating with riffraff like me, but I have some experience with this kind of stuff, so I can hazard a guess. If they publish a spec,all kinds of projects will likely get started to enable the API in (just for the sake of argument): Drupal, WordPress, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Scripting News (why not add widgets to a random blog), CNN, The New York Times, well you get the idea. There might be lots of implementations very quickly. And that would be it for changes. It would be frozen de facto, they'd have to live with what they have, which given how quickly it was thrown together, probably isn't very good. Not the kind of stuff you'd like to support for the next decade or two. Or maybe they would break everyone, something guaranteed to make them a lot of enemies, much the way Microsoft did, and they were good at migration of APIs.  Google is good at doing AJAXy web UIs, they make users happy, but they're not very good at APIs. This one is a loser, for sure. That's the answer to Russ's question. It's probably not malice that keeps them from releasing details to everyone outside their club, it's pragmatism. They have to try to hold on to it to keep it from becoming even more of a mess than it already is. Just my opinion, for what it's worth. I've been wrong many times before.
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A quick post from janschneider.de talks about questions regarding the PHP5 compatibility of Horde, IMP, or other applications on the Horde mailing list
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Project failure 2.0 Remember when Java father James Gosling got flamed for uttering the ultimate Web 2.0 heresy: scripting languages aren't good enough for enterprises?â¦
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It's not necessary to understand the characteristics of Ajax in order to use it. This article provides copy and paste JavaScript with an Ajax engine. No modifications are necessary. By William Bontrager. 1031
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This week we continue with our exploration of Ajax. Topics covered are sending a request using an IFrame, creating a hidden IFrame, creating a form, sending a request using a cookie and more. By Joshua Eichorn. 1016
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(InfoWorld) - SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web application development can be roller skates for the Web; it must be used appropriately or it can be dangerous, said Jesse James Garrett, the IT consultant credited with coining the term "AJAX." Garrett gave a keynote presentation at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo on Tuesday morning. While noting the benefits of AJAX, chiefly its enabling of asynchronous interaction over the Web, Garrett cautioned that AJAX is not usable in all instances. It is similar to how it would not be good to roller skate around a shopping mall, he said.  "We're going to introduce AJAX into places where it doesn't belong," said Garrett, who is director of User Experience Strategy and a founding partner of Adaptive Path. Afterward, Garrett elaborated. "I think a lot of people are trying to use AJAX for doing kind of more dynamic content navigation -- the stuff that the Web is already pretty good at, and that's a place where it starts to break down," Garrett said. This use of AJAX breaks the conventions of the "back" button, he said. Garrett's roller skate assessment struck a chord with attendee Vera Algoet, a Web developer at the Monterey County Office of Education. Although not currently an AJAX developer, Algoet cited the possibilities of fun and danger with using AJAX. "I havenât done any [AJAX development] yet, but I've read some things about security concerns," she said. But AJAX offers the possibility of improved applications, Algoet said. "I just want to make better applications" that are easier to use, she said. Recalling the genesis of the term "AJAX," Garrett said his company was hired by a large insurance company to improve an application to capture more business. Setting about trying to find a solution for responsiveness on the Web, Flash was first thought of as a solution, he said. But it became apparent there was a different way to approach the problem. "We built a prototype of this approach, we tested it with the insurance agents, and the response was overwhelmingly positive," Garrett said. "We actually had people laughing out loud with delight at processing an insurance policy." To persuade the insurance company president to fund the project with $2 million, Garrett came to the conclusion that he needed an easier way, just one word, to encapsulate what he was trying to do. He then came up with the word, AJAX. Garrett noted that AJAX is a concept involving asynchronous interaction and the use of browser-native technologies. Communicating the importance of these applications is critical, he stressed. "The challenge for us in designing these AJAX applications is in figuring out how to communicate to users the possibilities of using these applications," Garrett said. AJAX, he said, allows for incremental migration. "With AJAX, we can apply it in bits and pieces. We can incrementally migrate components of this new application to this new model where it makes sense, rather than having to move the whole thing all at once," said Garrett. Additionally, AJAX developers are able to learn from each other's approaches. While AJAX technologies have been around for a while, it was not until 2005 that everybody got behind this approach, Garrett said. This was because the end of the browser war presented a relatively stable landscape and scripting languages became prominent. The innovation posed in the AJAX-based Google Gmail and Google Maps applications also contributed, he said. AJAX usage figures presented by Evans Data at the conference show a promising future. About 1.7 million developers now use it and another 1.9 million have evaluated it or plan to use it, according to Evans. An Adobe official at the show stressed that Adobe's Flex and Flash technologies can work with AJAX rather than rival it. "Flex and the Flash platform [are] not here at all to replace or try to compete with AJAX," said Christophe Coenraets, senior technology evangelist at Adobe. "Flex and AJAX work together to deliver the right experience," he said. Coenraets also briefly discussed Adobe's planned Apollo technology for running browser-based applications outside of a browser. This technology, which currently is an alpha stage of development, enables users to run Flex and Flash applications offline and allows access to local resources. JackBe at the conference unveiled its Presto REA (Rich Enterprise Application) platform, for delivering enterprise AJAX applications that are based on SOA and Web services. "It provides a governed access to SOA services," said Rob Vonderhaar, vice president of marketing at JackBe. The platform goes into a beta release in November, with general availability planned for the first quarter of 2007.
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The Hiveminds Magazine has pointed out a new effort that's been kicked off today to try to get the PHP community (and providers) to finally make the leap and drop PHP4 support all together:   The idea is to make a unified, concentrated effort to drop PHP4 support and drive PHP5 adoption in the year 2008. Think of it. All CMS, forum and framework projects going completely over to PHP5 on a set date! This would be like a bomb dropping on the web hosting world and cause ripples throughout the open source world.   They point out some of the projects that are leaning either way from ezPublish hanging on to PHP4 and apps like Drupal that have embraced PHP5. In fact, it's the Drupal group that's written up the proposal on how it would all go down - the "Go PHP5 Effort".   It is a dangerous cycle, and one that needs to be broken. The open source PHP developer community has decided that it is indeed now time to move forward, together. Therefore, the listed open source PHP projects have all agreed that effective 5 February 2008, any new feature release will have a minimum  required PHP version no older than PHP 5.2.0.   There's tons of comments to the proposal in both parties (and some in between noting that there are already several PHP4 applications that run quite happily on PHP5).
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On the GeeksNotNerds blog today, Zeekay has posted about a PHP and Ajax free chat application he came across - phpFreeChat.   Occasionally I'll want some sort of chat app for a website, and the options are overwhelming unimpressive [...] This is by far the best free chat app I've found. It's so good in fact...it's one of those little scripts you find floating around that begs you to go design a new site just so you can use it.   You can find out more about this free application from its website (including downloading the latest release).
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Last week we looked at a brief overview of Ajax, relevant JavaScript 1.3 enhancements, how to run the example and using the script within your own Web page. This week we look at additional functionality that you'd like to add to scripts and an in-depth explanation of the JavaScript code. By Rob Gravelle. 0130
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JSF is so much better Oracle this week told developers to be wary of the hype surrounding AJAX frameworks and encouraged large organizations to back JavaServer Faces (JSF) to "Web 2.0-enable" applications.â¦