Icesoft improves AJAX environment for Web 2.0Â  apps
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(InfoWorld) - Icesoft Technologies announced availability of Icefaces 1.6.0, an upgrade to the company's AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) development environment positioned for building of Web 2.0 applications, on Tuesday. Featured in the open-source product is integration with the JBoss Seam 1.2 development framework for Java. Icesoft describes Seam as a framework for Web 2.0 application development with Web 2.0 characterized as enabling collaboration. "Web 2.0 relies on the rich user interface capabilities. Web 2.0 also needs collaborative capabilities," said Steve Maryka, CTO at Icefaces. Icefaces is based on JSF (JavaServer Faces) but features AJAX. Developers use JSF components and get interactivity based on AJAX. In addition to supporting AJAX, Seam leverages JSF, Enterprise JavaBeans, Java Portlets and business process management. With Seam, developers can assemble Web applications with annotated Plain Old Java Objects, componentized UI widgets, and little XML, Icesoft said. Icefaces 1.6.0 also features source code examples, such as the Icefaces + Seam Component Showcase that illustrates an Icefaces component suite functioning within a Seam-based application. Other features in version 1.6.0 include incorporation of Icesoft's Enterprise Production Suite for handling asynchronous push-style communications with a Web application. Previously available via a commercial license, Enterprise Production Suite is now part of the open-source Icefaces platform. Integration between Icefaces 1.6.0 and the Liferay Portal engine enables placement of portlets that can be updated without having to refresh an entire Web page. Compliance with the OpenAjax Hub in Icefaces provides interoperability between JavaScript libraries. An AJAX bridge in version 1.6.0 prevents security violations based on cross-site request forgery exploits. Other improvements include support for the Glassfish, SAP NetWeaver 2007, and Webtide Jetty application servers as well as integration with Spring Web Flow technology and support for Apache MyFaces Tomahawk components. Icesoft sells support subscriptions to Icefaces with basic support starting at $2,500 and enterprise-level support priced at $10,000.
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(InfoWorld) - While the landscape for rich Web development technologies is getting crowded, industry dignitaries at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Thursday nonetheless saw a place for the various entrants in this space. The field of technologies has grown to include AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript), Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun's JavaFX, said Neal Ford, application architect for Thoughtworks, who moderated a panel addressing rich Web development. Audience members also gave a nod to the Ruby, Python, and Groovy languages. Panelist Scott Davis, an author and consultant, said he originally thought that AJAX would rule the world. "It runs in any browser," Davis said. But his horizons have expanded. "Quite honestly, I've gotten really interested in Flex recently," Davis said. The recent open-sourcing of Flex has made it more attractive, he stressed. AJAX drew affirmations with reservations from panelist Jon Ferraiolo, an IBM Web architect who manages the OpenAjax Alliance. "My perspective is that AJAX works today. It's fantastic, it does nearly everything you want to do except for multimedia types of things," Ferraiolo said. "I think there's room for Flash, Flex; there's room for Silverlight. These things are going to be the cutting-edge applications that require the latest features," said Ferraiolo. With the proliferation of mobile devices however, HTML browsing will not be available on all these systems, and the iPhone does not have Flash and probably will not have Silverlight either, said Ferraiolo. AJAX, however, is always there and is open and can be counted on, he said. "There is a continuum of experience that needs to be looked at," said Josh Holmes, an evangelist at Microsoft who is speaking on Silverlight at the conference. There is the standards-based Web with HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and there is AJAX, he said. Moving on, there are platforms optimized for a particular OS or hardware that can render 3D graphics, said Holmes. "My personal opinion is that Silverlight and Flex are definitely on that heavy, rich but not quite platform-optimized edge," Holmes said. There are benefits to both, he said. Another panelist sided with Flex for enterprise usage. "In the enterprise space, I tend to recommend things like Flex because the development is much faster to get up and going," said Bill Scott, AJAX evangelist at Yahoo. "Creating a desktop style [application] in AJAX is still really hard," Scott said. AJAX does fit into a lot of areas, but none of the rich Web technologies will rule the world, he said. Panelists also addressed the question of application-testing. "Yes, testing is absolutely crucial, and as an industry, it's something we have not taken seriously for the last couple of years," Davis said. "I think this is a space that the market realizes isn't served really well right now," said Ryan Breen, vice president of technology at Web performance tester Gomez. The Crosscheck open-source testing platform was cited by panelist Stuart Holloway, co-founder of software developer Relevance. The issue of tools for JavaScript was raised. IntellliJ, said Davis, "has got killer JavaScript support, and it's got wonderful CSS support," he said. But lately, he has been developing with the simpler TextMate tool. "I've found that the overhead of a big heavy tool is less valuable to me than having something that's easy for me to bring up, bring down, refresh," Davis said. This lighter format seems to fit the Web development model, he said. Panelists and an audience member also mourned the lack of staying power of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). "SVG just breaks my heart," Davis said. "SVG had the opportunity to be kind of a unified solution. I wish it would come back strong, but I'm not holding out hope." Silverlight, Holmes said, uses XAML instead of SVG. "My opinion is SVG has kind of stalled and there were some things that were needed beyond it," so Silverlight uses other technologies instead, Holmes said. Ferraiolo said he was one of the initiators of SVG while at Adobe. "SVG was there in 2001, 2002, but Adobe decided to pull the plug on it despite the fact that it was on 200 million desktops," he said.
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Lorenzo Alberton is back today with another tutorial dealing with the PEAR::Pager class. This time, he focuses on using it with some simple Javascript and Ajax.    Not everyone has jumped on the (Ajax) bandwagon, though, and many libraries still exist without implementing this feature, so you're faced with the dilemma: should I keep using that old library and give up my cool AJAX ideas, or should I implement my own version?   If you're looking for a pager class with these requisites, I'm happy to reassure you about PEAR::Pager: it is AJAX-ready, and has been since a long time ago. 100% buzzword-compliance guaranteed!    He gives two examples of what he means - one just using the Pager package to create Javascript lists and divide them into paginated chunks and the other to work with an Ajax connection (via PEAR::HTML_AJAX) to grab the data and push it into a container DIV on the page.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft on Monday is unveiling its official Atlas technology branding for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming on ASP.Net, and will make the software available sooner than planned. The company hopes to ship its Atlas technologies around the end of 2006, as opposed to next year. Previously, Microsoft used the code name ASP.Net "Atlas" to refer to multiple components of technologies designed to assist Web developers with AJAX-style development, a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail. Now, the server-side Atlas functionality, which integrates with ASP.Net, is called ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions. Client-side functionality, which integrates ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions and other back-end platforms such as PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) or ColdFusion, is called Microsoft AJAX Library. This features the client-side JavaScript library. The Atlas Control Toolkit, meanwhile, is now called the ASP.Net AJAX Control Toolkit. Microsoft had planned to ship Atlas with the next version of Visual Studio, code-named "Orcas," which is due next year. By offering production-ready versions of ASP.Net 2.0 AJAX Extensions and the AJAX Library this year, enterprise customers will be able to take Atlas applications into production with fully supported APIs, Microsoft said. Development of Atlas has met some roadblocks. An Update Panel feature for page refreshes was beset with reliability problems, according to a presentation at the Microsoft TechEd 2006 conference in Boston in June. The company also has had to address questions on which browsers to support. Microsoft nonetheless has had tremendous interest in Atlas, Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, a general manager in the Microsoft Developer Division, wrote in his blog on Monday. "Weâve had an unbelievable amount of interest and excitement around the product, with more than 250,000 downloads this year alone," Guthrie said. "I am excited to announce today that we are going to ship this fully supported Atlas 1.0 release on top of ASP.Net 2.0 and ensure that it works with Visual Studio 2005," Guthrie said. To expedite Atlas, the company will focus on a core set of supported functionality, including common components needed to enable developers to build client-side controls/components. Server-side functionality for integrating with ASP.Net also has been deemed core to the platform. Other features will be available in a separate download but not offered in the core "bucket," Guthrie said. "Over time, we will be moving more and more features into the fully supported bucket," Guthrie said. The 1.0 Atlas technology will be cross-browser and cross-platform, he added. "Things will get even better next year with Visual Studio Orcas, where we are adding rich JavaScript IntelliSense, debugging and WYSIWYG designer support for the ASP.Net AJAX Extensions within Visual Studio and many other great features to take advantage of," Guthrie said. Microsoft plans to have a beta of its Atlas technologies soon, followed by a release candidate. In other development tools-related events, Parasoft this week is introducing Jtest 8.0, for Java code analysis and unit-testing, while AutomatedQA is upgrading its memory debugger. Jtest 8.0 is for static code analysis. "It essentially helps development organizations build quality into their code and by doing so, obviously release on schedule more functionality and release with higher quality," said Nada daVeiga, Jtest product manager at Parasoft. Featured in version 8.0 is Bug Detective, which traces and simulates execution paths to expose runtime bugs that otherwise would be difficult to find through manual testing or inspections, Parasoft said. Automated generation and execution of in-container Cactus test cases also is included to simulate a realistic runtime environment. This enables early exposure of defects that might go unnoticed until quality assurance, deployment, or production time. Cactus is a testing framework that extends JUnit. Additonally, Jtest Tracer replaces Test Sniffer as a named capability; it has been updated to boost its effectiveness. JTest Tracer allows users to create realistic functional JUnit test cases to reflect an application's functional behavior. Test cases can be run to identify when new code changes break or modify applications. A new code review module in Jtest 8.0, meanwhile, helps automate the review process for code reviews. Geared toward teams of developers, the code review feature enables users to define and manage distribution lists and groupings for code review modifications and routings, Parasoft said. Test case parameterization in Jtest 8 allows Jtest-generated or user-defined JUnit test cases to be extended and customized with varied, controlled test input values. This enables creation of test scenarios that reflect a range of realistic usage, the company said. Also featured in version 8.0 are rules for Java 5 and the Hibernate Java framework. Parasoft Jtest 8.0 is available for Windows 2000 and XP, Linux and Solaris. Single-license prices start at $3,495. Also on Monday, AutomatedQA is announcing AQtime 5, which is a new release of the company's performance and memory debugger. New features automate the analysis and debug process, the company said. Also featured is support for 64-bit Windows applications. Other capabilities include the ability to exclude known memory leaks from results, and integration with Microsoft Visual Studio and Borland Developer Studio. AQtime 5 is licensed at $599.99.
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In this new tutorial from WebReference, they show you how to develop a simple database-enabled Ajax application in PHP.   In this article you'll learn how to create database-enabled Ajax requests using PHP and MySQL. We begin by creating the front-end HTML and JavaScript files used to make requests to the server-side. The requested server-side is a PHP file which bridges the gap between Ajax and a PHP object that connects to a MySQL database and returns results as an XML response to the Ajax engine.   The application is a simple way to enter news postings into a database and pull them back out with this handy Javascript functionality. They also provide the complete source code for download to help you get started.
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Winter '07 will feature a new user interface based on Ajax, a group of software development tools and standards that help create interactive Web applications.
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Fixes made for "critical" JavaScript vulnerability in the Firefox browser and the SeaMonkey application suite.
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MicroNova YUZU is a BSD-licensed JSP tag library designed to augment JSTL (JSP Standard Tag Library) using EL (Expression Language).     YUZU is compatible with both JSP 1.2 and JSP 2.0 specifications (tomcat 4.x/5.x).  JSTL/tagfiles along with YUZU transforms JSP into a powerful framework-independent XML-style "scripting language" for web applications and DSL (domain specific languages).   Features include:    - stackable (nestable beyond tagfile boundaries) tags - nestable/encodable map with XML/JSON support - "codec" functions (useable as JSP 2.0 EL functions)  - structured parameters with support for file-upload/select/radio  - "subroutine" call passing/returning non-string Object  - embedded EL pattern evaluation for regular text and SQL query  - HTTP client and response control  - HTML-to-DOM parser  - multipart email and mailbox  - dynamic method invocation, iterator, map, resource message map    Tags included in YUZU package are:    set, out, map, eval, param, call, return, value, include, log, postData, throw, synchronized, query, update, transaction, response, system, filter, parseHtml, mail, mailFolder   All YUZU tags follow a simple common behavioral pattern (prepare/import/default/process/assign/export) for ease of learning and extension.    CHANGES (20080211)  - added System:serialize and System:deserialize codecs - added Type:ifContained codec - added File:close and File:flush codecs - made System:uniqueId named - added System:resetUniqueId codec - made JSON:encode sorted
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Free and independent Ajax developers are turning away from commercial development tools and opting for free, open source alternatives.â¦
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OpenLink Software are pleased to announce release 2.1 of the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT).    This release introduces the following new features:     * Enhanced RDF Parser (includes support for RDF/XML and RDF/N3)    * New Faceted RDF Data Browser    * RDF Graph Visualization Control with sidebar for Graph Density manipulation    * New RSS Reader Control    * Visual SPARQL Query Builder added to + Form Designer's Data Source control    * OpenAjaxAlliance conformance    * Inter-control messaging system    * Enhanced Tree and Dock Controls    * Enhanced Anchor tag that facilitates lookups to SQL, XML, and RDF Data Sources via In Page Activation of Data Driven Web Pages    * Updated Animation API  For further information, please see:   Project homepage on sourceforge.net: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat   File downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat/files   Live Features Demonstrations: http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/JS/demo/index.html
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(InfoWorld) - The inventor of the term AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), urged attendees at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif. Friday to emphasize user experience when designing products. Jesse James Garrett, founder of the Adaptive Path consulting firm and coiner of the term AJAX, stressed that users want a personal relationship with products they use. His emphasis on user experience echoed, to a degree, those made by Kevin Hoyt, Adobe Systems platform evangelist, during Hoyt's own presentation on Thursday. The brain mechanisms engaged when using an interactive product are the same mechanisms engaged when interacting with other human beings, Garrett said. "In other words, we relate to technology products as if they were people," he said. Garrett cited the iPod as an example of product that has presented an experience for the user. Even though it was not the first digital music player and has not had the most features, the iPod has been successful because of the experience it delivers, according to Garrett. Flickr is an example of Web company that has presented an experience, establishing itself as a hub for digital photography, Garrett said. AJAX, he said, has been about delivering rich experiences. He attributed the success of AJAX to the success of Google Maps. "I don't know if the concept of AJAX [would have] really taken off if it hadn't been for an example as compelling as Google Maps. With software development, there is a shift toward developing the user experience component first and working backward toward other components, Garrett said. Previously, developers started with a core of data and then dealt with business logic and then the user experience. Development of the Web, meanwhile, has reached an interesting point in time, Garrett said. Just as TV came into its own as a medium after 10 years, having first followed the paradigms of radio and theater, the central principles of the Web are starting to be understood after 10 years, he said. "For us on the Web, I think we're in a similar place in the evolution of the medium that we all work in," he said. But tools vendors have not seized the opportunity to make their Web development tools more compelling for developers, Garrett said. Noting the proliferation of AJAX toolkits and frameworks, Garrett said there would be a time when the good ones are separated form the bad ones. "I think there is an inevitable period of time that we're just going to have to ride out," Garrett said. Commenting on Web 2.0, Garrett said YouTube is the poster child for Web 2.0. "YouTube as a site has almost no value as a site if not for its users," said Garrett. "The value that people get out of it is the value that other people put into it."
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Yahoo on Thursday rolled out the beta version of its Mail product to all users, inviting them to switch to the new AJAX interface that acts more like a desktop e-mail client than Web site. The Yahoo! Mail revision adds drag and drop organization and instant preview pane.
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This week you'll go through the steps of building an AJAX DataGrid control, which is used to iterate over a list of JavaScript objects. Other topics covered are the behavior component, databinding, templating and the declaration. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. 0904
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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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InfoWorld - OpenLogic announced Friday it has expanded its library of open-source software packages as part of its OpenLogic Enterprise 4.6 platform, adding key AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technologies.
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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