Frameworks
Ajax has been riding the waves of popularity since it was conceived. Almost any application, frameworks and languages are now upgrading towards Ajax. Even mobile phones are upgrading towards this application and website development technique. The obvious reason for this of course, is to provide better looking and well functioning website.
Ajax is the first web development technique that enables developers to update certain parts of the website without refreshing the whole webpage. When properly coded it has proven to be faster and creates a better looking application or website. The real time interaction is there without even waiting for the whole website to refresh.
Personally, I have been thinking that something better that might come out to challenge the supremacy of Ajax – and there is. Although there is no official for that name yet, some developers have started calling it Comet. The name does not really connote everything but an Irish website has started to call this practice Comet and has slowly caught up with different developers worldwide.
This type of web development technique claims that it is faster compared to Ajax as it provides the same user experience while improving on interactivity with better overall speed.
An Ajax based application has three levels: the user interface which interact the client-side processing and the server-side processing. It relies on user input and activity. The client-side processing selects different parts of the webpage or the application while the server side processes the information and delivers it to the client. It is a simple user-server interaction except that it is continuous and asynchronous.
On the other hand, Comet has FOUR levels: the user interface, the user activity, connection/data transmission and server side processing of events. The user interface is where the information is displayed and then at the back of it is user activity where it displays information because of the events that are triggered by the user.
The client and the server side processing is almost the same with Ajax except that it is triggered by events. The connection in the data transmission stage is only done once and with that, the information transmission is transferred very easily.
There are two very important things you have to remember about Comet: first is that its event based and it is surprisingly used with some of the oldest web tricks in the world: use HTTP. By using an event based protocol, developers should be able to build an application and let it work.
Instead of waiting for the input from the user, it relies on the events on the website. No need for user to click on any part of the application. On the other hand, it uses the idea of HTTP of rendering everything on one time only. But with the use of events, it still uses the asynchronous function of Ajax which becomes the “Comet” client which functions in displaying the inputs in the UI.
Comet is still young in the sense of its definition and support. Only time will tell whether Comet will actually be the next big hit for Rich Internet Application development technique.
