Web applications with Ajax

Ajax Office applications

During September 2005 I've come across a number of references to Ajax Office - a bold attempt to do just that. Also, there's an application called Writely which is a simple word-processing capable application that fits nicely as an alternative to Microsoft Word in terms of typical office documentation.

Ajax desktop applications

Ajax is making serious inroads into productivity applications. A common application these days are web desktops that allow you to monitor other people's news feeds and add in a few different features. For example Google's Personalised Home, Microsoft's skunk-works project Start.com, and more recently, Net vibes. They are almost frameworks for additional functionality than just a plain old news feed reader or email summary.

Resurrecting the portal

Looking at these "personal desktop applications" its obvious that Ajax has brought the portal back into vogue. Portals died with the dotcom bust, also the emergence of Google destroyed Yahoo's and Altavista's portal visions. Ajax offers a breath of life to portals in that they are immediately more useful to the visitor. This is largely due to the interactivity, immediacy and customisability of the current crop of Ajax portals.

Ajax mind share

Ajax has dominated the web application arena for the last year. Well ever since James Jesse Garrett first coined the term for a concept that's been largely ignored over the last five years. Its got the lion's share of interest at the moment, but it needs to prove itself before alternatives like Flash and XUL start inheriting the mind share.

The one strength Ajax has is that its based on reliable web standards: The W3C gave us HTML, CSS, XML and DOM, and ECMA giving using JavaScript (or more technically correct EcmaScript). Its a wonderfully natural combination of technologies, especially for people involved in developing and supporting e-commerce applications.

XUL and Ajax

The technology behind XUL is almost identical to Ajax. Except the structure of the front end can be done in HTML, or XUL, or a combination of both. Like Ajax, XUL uses JavaScript, CSS and DOM. XUL and Ajax are so closely aligned that switching between the two is far easier than trying to get your head around Flash.

XUL and Ajax score major points over Flash because it requires nothing more than a text editor to develop an application. (In terms of deployment, XUL probably would require a zip application like WinZip). Flash scores on its user interface capabilities which easily outperforms HTML and CSS.