Andre’s Blog

April 24th, 2006

I recently came across this article discussing AJAX Draw backs by Paul Krill with Mercury Interactive. I’m trying to figure why this article was published and what the intent is…

“AJAX is incredible where people are starting to adopt it and it immediately causes a lot of problems because it’s not very structured,”
 

I’m not really sure what this means? AJAX is not very strucured? It’s true there are many challenges in developing AJAX applications, and JavaScript is not a well understood language, it seems especially with enterprise developers. But this is changing rapidly with adoption rates and the number of books and training dedicated to this space.

“We’ve seen tons and tons of problems,” with AJAX, Radhakrishnan said. In testing for functionality and regression, Mercury has seen an increased number of regressions in AJAX, said Radhakrishnan.

Ok granted, who hasn’t encountered tons and tons of problems with new web programming technologies or any type of software development for that matter. I would love to see some of the specific problems mentioned and possibly even dissected, we do this almost everyday. We then document them and then come up with solutions that we can use as best practices. In regards to regressions…I’m even sure what this means. Increased number of regressions in AJAX…compared to what?

As a workaround, Radhakrishnan suggests using AJAX for the cutting edge part of UI development, to enable interactions between the client and server in which the server is able to respond to client requests later. “For the rest of it, you don’t really use AJAX,””Radhakrishnan said.

what does cutting edge part of the UI mean? And should the focus not be on usability first? AJAX should be used to empower end users and improve user experience. This is why companies and development teams are using AJAX. There is no business case around allowing the server to respond later. The benefit is that the client can make a request to the server and then modify the interface for the user without reloading the page. Whether that happens instantly or not doesn’t really matter. The goal is to make it all seem instant the end user. In fact you can load data from the server to the client in advance to have faster access to it and not force the user to wait.

“So far in general, when we’ve gone into AJAX shops, it’s been a ton of pain,” he said.

Well it would be nice to hear from Radhakrishnan what these pains are…or maybe even some general examples. Or perhaps how they’re approaching the AJAX development? Are they have technical issues? Are they hand coding everything? Maybe then they should look at 3rd party AJAX components or AJAX frameworks or open source libraries. If they’re having usability issues maybe they should hire some UI experts and interaction designers to help them out. Or at very least look at some of the AJAX patterns that are emerging and thought leaders such as Bill Scott are talking about.

The article then goes on to talk about how Mercury Interactive is helping it’s clients with agile development methods??

I’m struggling to understand the value of the this article. Infoworld and Paul Krill are well read and respected, but this just doesn’t make any sense to me. If you need help understanding AJAX, how to do it and where it will help people then just let me know. I’m glad to help, but don’t publish what appears to be fear mongering or nay-saying about AJAX. I’ll be the first to point out pitfalls and weaknesses, but also where it can provide clear ROI for any business and help end users.

Technorati Tags: ajax, article

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX, Business, Usability – HCI | 1 Comment »

April 24th, 2006

Craig Becker just sent out an announcement about ATF.

The AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) provides and extensible framework and exemplary tools for building IDEs for the many different AJAX runtime offerings (Dojo, Zimbra, Rico, etc) in the market. Tools built upon these frameworks will initially include: enhanced JavaScript editing features such as edit-time syntax checking; an embedded Mozilla web browser; an embedded DOM browser; and an embedded JavaScript debugger. An additional and unique aspect of the framework is the Personality Builder function, which assists in the construction of arbitrary AJAX runtime frameworks, thus allowing those runtimes to be used with ATF tools.

The ATF code is available for download.

This is very exciting for us as we’re building better support for J2EE platforms and Eclipse.   I found a link to an overview presentation of ATF Craig put together a while ago via Arthur Ryman.   Godfrey’s  going to be working with  this quite a bit as we role our Nitobi Grid V3.0.  Expect to see the full ATF Personality for our Nitobi AJAX components later this summer.

I think this is great move forward to help developers working with Eclipse and AJAX. 

Technorati Tags: ajax, eclipse, eba, components, atf

Posted in Technology, Software Development, AJAX | No Comments »

April 21st, 2006

I’m so excited that some dedicated people have got the ball rolling with Social Tech Brewing again!  Come join us May 4th at the Whip for:

Our May 4th event will look forward to the June meeting of the UN’s World Urban Forum (WUF) here in Vancouver. WUF will bring a remarkable range of government leaders, community development workers and urban activists to Vancouver to talk about the future of sustainable cities. And the lead-up to WUF has already featured one of the Net’s most ambitious online dialogue efforts to date, the Habitat Jam.

Many thanks to Alex Samuel for spearheading this and to Phillip Smith for keeping the dream alive in Tdot. I founded Social Tech Brewing with a few other WOC alumni, like Jason Mogus, a few years ago in Vancouver, but let it slip over the last 18 months:( So glad to see it come back. kick ass!

RSVP on Upcoming.org 

Technorati Tags: socialtechbrewing, sustainability, web, event, meeting, beer

Posted in Technology, Software Development, Web 2.0, Ethics and Sustainability | No Comments »

April 21st, 2006

Nitobi, thanks to Pam and Wendy, has just launched CycleForSpirit.com! We’re proud to support this great cause!

On April 24th, 2006, we are starting off on the biggest adventure of our lives. We will be crossing Canada on bikes, starting in Victoria, BC and ending up in St. John’s, NL in early August. 

Who are we? Three staff members from The Keg Steakhouse & Bar who want to make a difference. The idea for the Cycle for Spirit, which was hatched one night after work in October, 2005, is all about kids. Our goal is to raise a lot of money for great charities through The Keg Spirit Foundation. And with lots of “Keggers” behind us, we know that we will do just that!

Steve Fidler, Park Royal (Service Manager) “Dream it and do it!”	Jeremy Cummings, St. John’s (Bar Manager/Waiter) “With hard work and dedication, anyone can accomoplish anything!”	Adrian Pusiak, York Street (Bartender/Prep Cook) “Get involved…it’s just that simple!”

The guys also have a blog they’ll be updating along the way.

Technorati Tags: cycleforspirit. charity, fundraising, bike, canada

Posted in Web 2.0, Ethics and Sustainability | 4 Comments »

April 19th, 2006

Duane’s challenge, check it out.

So here is a challenge. Take this document here (link to APS protected
document) and try to render it with gmail (or any other method). I will pay
$500 USD to the first person who can show me the un-encrypted content of this document within one year of this.

Duane always has a good sense of humour;-)

Technorati Tags: adobe, pdf, hack, crack

Posted in Technology, Software Development | No Comments »

April 18th, 2006

Just about to start. Go here.

Update. We finished the Webinar. And I’ll be able to post the side deck and link to the presentation tomorrow.

Here’s a link to the page where all the demos and AJAX Patterns came from. I’ll post links to the individual flash demos shortly as well.

Here’s my presentation slide deck in PDF format.

Posted in AJAX, Business, Usability – HCI | No Comments »

April 14th, 2006

Just cruisin my rss feeds and stumbled on some really cool Flex Fish Eye Menus that Ely put together.   I’ve always like the concept of fish eye menus.  Very usable.  Allows a user to scroll through items very quickly and as the target is always big, but it allows to have smaller menu items for display.   Also encourages users to interact and play with the menu vs just look at it.  Have I mentioned I’m stoked to start integrating Flex and AJAX UIs?  Well I am.  Expect to see some action here in the next couple weeks.

Found this via Mike Chambers.

Technorati Tags: ajax, flex, components, fisheye, menu, ui

Posted in Software Development, Usability – HCI | No Comments »