There’s so much talk these days about Web 2.0 and I’m soaking it all up like a sponge. It can get a little confusing.
However, I found a great primer on AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) that really helped me understand, at least conceptually, the technological underpinnings of AJAX and why there is so much excitement.
It’s Amit Asaravala’s AJAX Puts the Browser to Work in this week’s issue of InfoWorld, to me a model of clarity in writing about technology.
Highly recommended if you want to get some familiarity with this area of technology development and understand the reasons for the excitement it is generating.
The money quote:
“AJAX encourages developers to split Web pages into compartments of data that can be refreshed independently of the entire page, and to write applications that act on data within the browser rather than on the server. After all, why should a browser ask a server to run a simple task when the browser has enough processing power to do the job itself? The result is that considerably less data and display information has to travel over the network.”
The article is especially strong on giving examples of how AJAX approaches are being used in business settings and does a nice job of setting out the different tools being used today.
If you read this article, you’ll be able to follow some of the Web 2.0 discussions with a much better sense for what is going one.
By the way, it’s starting to become a running gag with us, but it seems like Matt Homann and I probably have tried about half or more of the Web 2.0 services out there. We are always trying out new ones. One of the ones I’ve grown to like is Writely, for quick and easy collaboration on standard documents.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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