Book Note: Ajax in Action

Ajax is so bleeding edge that I am reading a book on it from the future. I thought the rule in publishing was that you could use the next year for the copyright if it was printed in late November, but this book arrived November 2 with a copyright of 2006. After yesterday's Microsoft Live demonstration, it is clear that all forces are converging on client side programming with Javascript and DHTML. There have been many blog posts accusing Microsoft of being a follower rather than a leader in this area, but the irony is that Microsoft created the XMLHttpRequest functionality that is the heart of Ajax. Adam Bosworth has an interesting post on this history.

The idea of simulating a desktop app in a browser using DHTML and Javascript goes back further than the XMLHttpRequest. I designed just such a product called GifWorks in 1998. The goal was to create Photoshop in a web browser. It wasn't completely client-side though. The interface runs in the browser, but the image processing is done on a server.

I'm not sure what I will do first with Ajax, but the most likely candidate is some type of mashup with Google maps.