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The Gloomy Side of Ajax

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In his recent presentation in “The Rich Web Experience” in San Jose, Ca, Keynote speaker Douglas Cockford presented the not so good news about the Ajax technology and the web itself. He titled his presentation “The State of AJAX”. It might be the same thing over and over again. We have heard this from various blogs and even some of the web developers. We are already familiar with the thing that might happen but Cockford, who works for Yahoo as a software architect, it’s already nearing the alarming state. Not only in Ajax but also in the whole of the internet itself as he emphasizes, “The sad thing was the Web was a step backward in terms of interactivity.” That means, the user can’t just find a personal relationship or meaning in the computer. Instead of the user creating or telling the computer to develop, it’s the other way around. Cockford implied that this interactivity can now be found in Java. However, there are newer problems that came up with this program. “Unfortunately, Java was a huge failure. It completely collapsed. It didn't meet any of its goals…Java's write-once, run-everywhere promise was not kept; it had an unworkable security model and a tedious UI model” said Cockford. But even with the problems it presented, Java still had its own good side: it was able to help servers to run faster. The next step or next generation that promises better interactivity is Ajax. This was one of the best things that will happen to the internet and Cockford acknowledged it. There are so many things that Ajax can do in a blink of an eye compared to a website that doesn’t run on Ajax. With-out Ajax, the website will lack interactivity plus the network connection will not be as good as it is with Ajax. Ajax has cut the time communicating with the server because of the Asynchronous technology that uses the speed of the computer to launch the tools instead or relying heavily with the server. But according to Cockford, “The big problem is that it is too damn hard to write these apps.” On the other hand, the popularity of Ajax of reducing the need for a stronger network connection is trying to infiltrate the mobile technology. “Mobile Web” is become the thing for the next few years. This is one of the challenges of the web and Ajax has to face for the next few years. The toolkits are just on the rise and people are still in trying out stage on what will work or will not. It’s this non-conformity of development tools in some parts of the web that he is most concerned about. He’s proposing unified systems to develop the tools to help customers however, this proposal could be near impossible since people prefer to use the open system “but people like open systems and are suspicious of proprietary systems.” It’s going to be a roller coaster ride for all internet and technology companies for the next few years. The challenge of security and uniformity is needed to prevent big internet problems.