Dave Johnson

April 20th, 2006

Ok I have been away for a few weeks so blogging about cool AJAX stuff has been kept to a minimum; however, things are now back to normal for the near future

In fact, the release of the Nitobi AJAX Grid V3 is imminent. Stay tuned, if you are wearing socks be warned that they will likely be knocked off!

Posted in Web, Web2.0, AJAX, Business | 2 Comments »

March 30th, 2006

We got it done only 2 days late and minutes before I had to hop on a plane to go over to London one last time (if anyone wants to meet up and chat AJAX / Web2 then drop me a line).

As for our new AJAX Grid … if you are a customer or not I would love to hear people’s feedback on some of the ideas that I mention here. The Nitobi Grid V3.0 Alpha (video here) is meant to provide our current customers with a better idea of where we are going with our new and improved AJAX product line. If you have somehow heard about the Alpha don’t think that you couldn’t live another day without seeing it then email us and we will see what we can do.

There are three primary areas where we are extending the Nitobi Grid functionality. First and foremost we are providing support for Mozilla based browsers - the Alpha version of Grid V3.0 has been tested (I use that term as loosely as possible for an Alpha) on Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer 6.0 (Windows only at the moment). We are planning on officially supporting more versions of Firefox and Mozilla with the final release and will be looking for customer feedback to determine if we want to support other browsers (in the near future) such as Safari and Opera. From our point of view, the reason for not supporting most other browsers is because a) we use both XML and XSLT extensively in our products and b) our customers and the market are not demanding other browsers to be supported.

Secondly, the Alpha version will showcase our new Live Scrolling paging mode - Live Scrolling allows for users to use the scroll bar as though the data is there but the data is actually retrieved and rendered (using AJAX of course) only when the user stops scrolling. In the final version we will support a few different types of paging such as Traditional, and Open Ended (Live Scrolling or Traditional on arbitrary number of records).

Finally, the Alpha also includes a very green version of a .NET 1.1 / 2.0 version of our component. There is nothing too fancy and no designer support at the moment but we should have a nice .NET backend for the final release.

Our minimum requirements for the final release of our AJAX Grid V3.0 is to have all the functionality of V2.8 as well as support for Mozilla/Netscape/Firefox, Live Scrolling and a .NET server backend. There might even be an Alpha version of the JSF backend by that time too!

Other notable features that will be coming in the Beta and final release of Grid V3 include:

Backwords compatibility
Nitobi Grid V3 Alpha is a first attempt at building V3 backwards compatible with V2.x. Is this important to you for the future? If so be sure to let us know and we will work even harder at it - otherwise we will work on other cool features instead.

Copy and Paste
One of the other cool features that we know a lot of people use (and hate to use) is copy and paste. We have not included it now but our new copy and paste functionality is super fast so no more waiting for your data to paste!

Localization
The new Grid will support multibyte character sets for foreign languages although this has not been tested in the Alpha.

Debugging
Like a lot of the new features, we are not quite ready to release the Debugging interface for Grid so when evaluating the Alpha we suggest using MS Fiddler (IE+FF) or FireBug (FF).

Architecture
That being said, there is going to be a lot of advancement that you, the customer, will not necessarily see on the front end. The architecture for Grid V3.0 is going to be the basis for the rest of our product line as we move forward this year.

Component Oriented
One of the driving forces behind our new architecture is to be able to build truly component oriented applications in the web browser and to enable developers to easily extend the functionality through either JavaScript? prototyping or through XSLT. More on this soon!

Declarative Programming
Likely the most interesting part is our move over to a more rich Declarative Model for our components. Our declarative markup is one area where we are very excited to get some customer feedback as it is surely going to not only make our components better but will also be driving internet development over the next few years with technologies such as XAML, XUL / XBL, XForms and Flex really starting to catch on.

DataSource
Another interesting feature that is behind the scenes of our AJAX Grid V3 are a new Nitobi DataSource component which encapsulates all the XML data manipulation such as saving data to the server and merging updates from the server. We want to release this shortly on its own as a simple client side data management solution (licensing TBA). Furthermore, the data management layer will have other important AJAX functionality such as client side data caching as well as predictive data fetching.

Grid V3 Alpha Specifics

Known Issues

• Internet Explorer memory leak (don’t worry this will definitely be resolved )
• Some XSLT files are not cached by Internet Explorer.
  - DocType DTD. What happens in Strict Mode?
• Keyboard navigation can get confused with frozen rows and columns
• Various problems with live scrolling (column resizing, insert / delete record etc)
• Lots more

Other New Feature Ideas

• Record Key generation - how should keys for records be generated?
• Declarative markup - what is easiest for people to read?

New Feature Requests???

Posted in Web2.0, AJAX, Business | 5 Comments »

March 21st, 2006

For those who have not read this already, there is an interesting article from Tim over on the Radar about NetBeans vs Eclipse popularity.

We are currently working on our Java strategy for our AJAX components and so this is a very big question for us. Having been discussing some of the possibilities of AJAX and JSF with the Java Studio Creator team at Sun. Of course JSC is built on NetBeans 4.1 and from the sounds of the comments in Tim’s post Sun may have made a good choice. From an AJAX component vendors perspective I think that JSC makes a lot of sense compared to Eclipse since, as Robert Thornton mentioned in the comments of Tim’s post

Eclipse only recently left the beta stage in its support for web development, almost as if it were an afterthought. NetBeans has supported web development for years as part of its core functionality. Its web support has had time to mature and grow.

In particular there are some really great features in JSC such as the DataProvider architecture and JSF support. I still need to find some time to actually play around with JSC some more.

Posted in Web, Business, Eclipse | 2 Comments »

March 3rd, 2006

Andre, Alexei and I had a chat with Cot� and Stephen from RedMonk yesterday. They both seem (and no doubt are) very knowledgeable about the AJAX space - certainly compared to other analysts with whom we have spoken (and shall remain nameless). Not only did they seem genuinely interested and understand the business problem that we are trying to solve but they (thankfully) didn’t even try to sell us their services! They seem like the kind of people we could work worth as we grow our business in the coming year.

What they understood was that the real value of AJAX is quite boring. It is in the mundane spaces like ERP - not the exciting, and ultimately fairly useless, arena of something like online maps. I have been talking about this idea of boring AJAX for some time and maybe people are starting to see that those enterprise systems like CRM are where the real benefits of AJAX will be found. Needless to say, that is precisely the market that we are targeting with our high performance components.

Posted in Web2.0, AJAX, Architecture, Business | 4 Comments »

February 22nd, 2006

Once again, we are hiring some more AJAX developers. Anyone out there with mad AJAX skills or the work ethic to rapidly get up to speed on some exciting AJAX product development?

If so please email us!

Here is the full job description.

With that corporate malarky out of the way I just want to mention something about who we _really_ are.

We are dedicated ajax developers who take pride in high performance and user centric products. If you want to be challenged in a startup like environment with lots of responsibility (and reward) then this is the place to be. Although we work hard, as the saying goes, we also play hard. If we are not pushing the limits of JavaScript and XSLT then we are taking in everything that Vancouver has to offer like the mountains right in our backyard, the ocean at our feet and a beer in our hands. We are trying to build a place where people can grow not only as individuals but as part of a larger team in the business and as members of the Vancouver tech, web and social communities. We operate with our core values laid plain for everyone to see and expect the same openess and honesty from every one of our team members.

If you have what it takes then really please do email us!

Posted in Web2.0, AJAX, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, Business | No Comments »

February 8th, 2006

Who knew that everyone would think that URLs are so important!

James Governor has a great overview of the very informative presentation by Josh Schachter from del.icio.us.

I would have to also agree that the Adobe Flex presentation was way out of left field - I guess they were essentially paying for the conference to get in a Flex sales presentation

Tom Coates from Yahoo! also had a great presentation covering similiar stuff to Josh.

Posted in Web2.0, Business, Flex | 1 Comment »

February 6th, 2006

Things are getting quite busy here at Nitobi where not only we are almost ready to launch into a new development cycle but I will finally be returning to Vancouver from London.

Also of interest is that Andre, Alexei and I are writing a book on Enterprise AJaX for Prentice Hall/Addison Wesley.

We are going to cover some topics that are of particular importance when building enterprise systems (CRM, Accounting etc) as opposed to things like Google Suggest but we will still try to keep some perspective at the same time.

Currently we are looking at the following sort of outline:

Chapter 1: Ajax and the Enterprise (RIA and how / why it is needed in today�s enterprise)
Chapter 2: Ajax Building Blocks (JavaScript, DOM, CSS - the usual suspects)
Chapter 3: Building With AJAX (Client side frameworks like Scriptaculous and Dojo as well as fundametnals for creating custom AJaX components)
Chatper 4: AJAX on the Server (Server frameworks for Java, .NET and either PHP or RoR)
Chapter 5: Design to Deployment (Looking at application design issues including UML etc, prototyping and performance analysis, unit and regression testing etc, and finally deployment issues like script size and caching etc)
Chapter 6: AJAX Architecture (Look at some of the nuts and bolts of the design decisions such as asynch messaging, caching, and security)
Chapter 7: Making Usable Web Applications (Yellow fade)
Chapter 8: Risk Management (Something to help you convince your manager you have thought it through)
Chapter 9: Business Case Studies (From our consulting and product experience with Microsoft, Fidelity and more)
Chapter 10: Life After AJAX (A look at the cool technologies that are going to influence the direction of AJAX in the coming months and years)

Stay tuned, as we move forward we will be soliciting feedback from all you out there with beta chapters and code samples. If you already know of something that other books are not offereing and you would like to see then by all means let us know.

We will have a site up shortly at EnterpriseAJaX.com

Posted in Web2.0, AJAX, Business | No Comments »

January 30th, 2006

JotSpot is a wiki and Excite is a search engine, right? Apples are apples and oranges are, well they are oranges.

Ever since Paul Kedrosky’s presentation at VEF in November (at which Andre also famously presented), I have been contemplating the four factors that cause the 30x difference in the amount of money required to start the two aforementioned services over 10 years apart.

From the post it says the top four factors are:
1) Hardware is 100x cheaper
2) Software is free
3) Access to global labour markets
4) SEM

However, I wonder how much more difficult it is to actually build a search engine vs a wiki? Even today could you do it on cheap hardware and free software? I am also sure that building a search engine from the ground up during the first nascent Internet boom given Joe Kraus some idea (or maybe he already knew) about what it takes to build a company.

Is the market flooded with start-ups today due to these factors? Yup, open source software and cheap hardware is helping them a bit but for a small three person startup (which is of course so fashionable these days) that focuses on only a few high quality features (another popular thing to do) then you don’t need that much in terms of software and hardware anyhow. Speaking of small three person teams, they generally work in the same room and not half-way around the world to take advantage of the low cost of living in Biharipur India. Sure SEM is important but in this day and age getting air time on influential blogs like TechCrunch is certainly the way to go - this is possibly the factor that is most influential in creating an atmosphere where $100k can really get a small project out of the basement and into the bookmark(let) list of everyone who uses digg.

In my mind the real challenge always has been and always will be finding the right balance between complexity and value. Way back when Excite was founded the value of something like JotSpot might not have made it worth raising $3 million (even today) whereas the value and market potential of a search engine was. Can someone go out today and build the next Google (or even Excite) on $100k all thanks to offshore programmers and cheap hardware?

These days everyone and their pet goldfish has a startup doing something about RSS or blogging or tagging. Sadly few are providing much value and the three founders (of course) will have no choice but to go back to working as “consultants” once the $100k dries up and there is no sign of profitability in the long tail.

Posted in Web, Business | No Comments »

January 30th, 2006

I just thought that I would let everyone know a little more about Nitobi (some also like to call us eBusiness Applications ) since we have not had time to get all this info onto our “corporate” web site.

We have recently established an advisory board of local tech gurus and I will finally get into the fray in Feb when I get back from London. The people who are on the board at this time are:

Duane Nickull � Senior Standards Strategist at Adobe Systems
Steven Fitzgerald � President of Haba�eros Consulting
Chris Gora � IP Lawyer at Farris

Kris Sutherland � Director and Executive Vice President of Chalk Media

So far they have been a very valuable addition and I am sure they will be well into the coming years.

Exciting times!

Posted in Web, Business | No Comments »

January 14th, 2006

First of all I hope that everyone had a great holiday season! I know that I had a nice quiet time here in london.

Anyhow, apparently Andre was kind enough to sign me up to talk about geeky AJAX stuff at MooseCamp in Vancouver on Feb 10-11. So if you want to hear some good AJAX info only a few hours after I arrive back in Vancity from a 9.5 hour flight then by all means

I will also be going to the Future of Web Apps conference in London on Feb 8 if anyone is in the neighbourhood. I am really looking forward to meeting Eric Costello from Flickr

And no one has responded to my question about declarative data binding …

Posted in Web, Business | No Comments »