What is ARAX

The term Ajax used to be a small term in a paper but slowly becoming the byword for RIA and slowly, the Web 2.0. Because of its popularity, more and more developers have come up with the same technique but unlike Ajax, it didn’t come out as a small report.

FJAX, SAJAX and AHAX are only some of the web development techniques pushed by other developers, hoping to grab a piece of Ajax’s popularity. Ajax on the other hand, just grew in support as frameworks after frameworks have been made so that developers can build their own Ajax based applications without learning JavaScript.

Now another web development language is trying to crawl up as an alternative for Ajax. Called ARAX, this web development technique helps the developers get over JavaScript by using Ruby on Rails entirely. If you’re thinking of a framework based on Ruby, you’re wrong. Developers won’t even be using the Ruby on JavaScript utility just to build an ARAX based website.

This web development technique is entirely new and it should never be confused with a framework for Ajax that would help developers build an Ajax based application using a Ruby. If you’re a Ruby developer, this should be good news for you as you might be on the verge of something really powerful in the future.

But ARAX as a brand new web development technique is only half of the story. What is even more interesting are the people behind this technique. None other than Microsoft has pushed this new web development technique. This web development technique was revealed in RubyConf last May 30. This technique was presented to Ruby developers by the creator of this technique John Lam. The project behind this development is codenamed IronRuby and has been developed under the supervision of Microsoft.

ARAX was created as a support web development application for the Silverlight project of Microsoft. Because of this, developers should be able to build ARAX within the environment of Silverlight. We really do not know if this should be exclusive for Silverlight but we will not be surprised if it does end up as an exclusive development technique for Siverlight given Microsoft’s ability to create certain exclusives so that users and developers will be forced to work within their environment.

On the other hand, considering Ruby as part of the asynchronous environment is a smart choice. The syntax of Ruby is very robust so it can easily pinpoint the information faster and probably safer. The ability of Ruby to run in client side is also possible even though it’s heavier compared to JavaScript. IronRuby answered this concern by using HTML and CSS as a simple source of information and interaction from the server.