AJAX reloaded

The end of the year is approaching, and I cannot resist looking back at some of the views I expressed here. For a long time, I was sure the AJAX bubble would burst. With hindsight, I have to admit that AJAX did no such thing. Instead, application developers figured out how to fit it neatly into the web's model.

I no longer follow today's browser capabilities closely enough to judge them in detail, but from a distance it seems most of the major problems have been solved. Libraries make AJAX fairly comfortable to work with both on the server and especially on the client. Two Java-oriented examples are DWR and GWT.

Tools and formats grew up around AJAX and became de facto web standards. One example is JSON for data transfer. Among web frameworks, I doubt we could find a single one that does not claim at least basic AJAX integration. The official JEE web technology, JSF (Java Server Faces), added AJAX support in version 2.0, or more precisely changed the specification to allow better integration.

AJAX has become a normal part of building web applications. It looks as though its place is secure for web applications as we know them today, meaning the kind that run inside a browser. In that setting, AJAX fits the web naturally, whereas some other RIA technologies feel like “artificial implants” (though they certainly have their uses).