Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning? "Because they can only give you answers."

Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that readers can themselves infer where AJAX is headed.

What are the top questions to ask next about AJAX?

Eric Miraglia of Yahoo!

1.  (From March'08) How do I calculate the ROI of building my RIA on the iPhone SDK vs using AJAX?

2.  How do I assess the performance of my app and decide what to do next to make it faster? 

3.  When it comes to accessibility, how do I know what's required of me for my rich web apps?  Beyond what's required, what makes good business sense?

4. What are the ten most important steps I can take to make sure my rich internet app is secure?  What tools are available to help me diagnose whether it's secure?

5. For all the press that they get, are mashups really contributing to the experience of the web? 

Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON

I just have one question I'd like answered: How are we to fix the web? AJAX exploits all of the remaining capability of the 1999 browser standards, which were not state of the art even then. Where do we go from here? Will open standards fall to technologically superior proprietary systems?

Coach Wei, founder and CTO of Nexaweb

1.  What are people mostly using AJAX for? Enhancing existing website, building a new website, building an application, replacing an old client/server application, etc?

2.  How much JavaScript did your team write for your AJAX-enabled website/web app (excluding third party Javascript libraries): under a hundred lines of Javascript, a few hundred lines , a few thousand lines, tens of thousands of lines or even more?

3.  Are you using mashup or do you plan to do some mashup, for which kind of project?

4.  Which tools (IDE) do people using for AJAX development?

5.  Do you still develop web 1.0 style applications, and why?

See next page for predictions from: Google's Christian Schalk, JackBe's John Crupi, Josh Gertzen of the ThinWire AJAX Framework, Kevin Hakman of TIBCO GI, and Andre Charland of Nitobi.

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION: What would your questions be: please add them here.

AJAXWorld 2008 East Call for Papers Is Closing Shortly! Submissions deadline: December 31, 2007 Next March's Conference is has been receiving higher-caliber suggestions and submissions than ever.  Is it easy yet to make AJAX applications that easily go offline? Are developers better off using an AJAX framework, a toolkit or just coding their own AJAX/JavaScript? Will JavaScript 2.0 be a success, or a dud? How can AJAX apps be made secure? When will AJAX development finally be easy? Submissions on these and dozens of other topics have already begun streaming in to AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City on March 18-20, 2008. Click here to submit your speaking proposal today !

Chris Schalk, developer evangelist for Google

1.  How can I make AJAX applications that easily go offline? (i.e. can work easily and in a similar manner when not connected to the Internet.)

2.  Am I better off using an AJAX framework, a toolkit or just coding my own Ajax/JavaScript and what are the scenarios that are best for one or another?

3.  Will JavaScript 2.0 be a success, or a dud?

4.  How do make a secure AJAX application? (or what are the best practices to mitigate security problems in AJAX applications?)

5.  When will AJAX development finally be easy?


John Crupi, CTO of JackBe:

1.  How significant is Enterprise Mashups to you (your customers)?

2.  Is AJAX commoditized or will it be soon?

3.  Will AJAX be standardized in the form of widget APIs or declarative markup?

4.  Is AJAX being challenged by new innovations like Silverlight and JavaFX?

5.  What's the biggest browser limitation to AJAX?


Joshua Gertzen, lead developer of the ThinWire AJAX Framework

1.  What are some viable strategies for preforming unit/stress testing on an AJAX Application?

2.  At what point do developers need to be concerned about client-side code exposing sensitive "how-to" code?

3.  Writing complex UIs in JavaScript can lead to lots of client-side code, so how do you scale such a design to a very large application?

4.  Do we really need JavaScript 2.0? Won't it be somewhat irrelevant by the time it becomes commonplace and thus usable?

5.  Is AJAX about more than just web development? Should we be campaigning to replace all desktop apps with an AJAX equivalent?


Kevin Hakman, co-founder of TIBCO General Interface:

1.  Will AJAX standards emerge and succeed? Where’s the potential value and to who?

2.  What’s the difference between a mashup and a composite application?

3.  On what timeline will AJAX skills become commoditized like HTML skills became?

4.  What would you like to see in the next releases of IE, Safari, and Firefox.

5.  Will Webkit dominate mobile devices, (aka is Opera still relevant?)


Andre Charland, co-founder of Nitobi

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION: What would your questions be: please add them here.

AJAXWorld 2008 East Call for Papers Is Closing Shortly! Submissions deadline: December 14, 2007 Next March's Conference is has been receiving higher-caliber suggestions and submissions than ever.  Is it easy yet to make AJAX applications that easily go offline? Are developers better off using an AJAX framework, a toolkit or just coding their own AJAX/JavaScript? Will JavaScript 2.0 be a success, or a dud? How can AJAX apps be made secure? When will AJAX development finally be easy? Submissions on these and dozens of other topics have already begun streaming in to AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City on March 18-20, 2008. Click here to submit your speaking proposal today !

Participants' Biographies in Brief:

Eric Miraglia, PhD, of Yahoo! is one of the world's leading experts on advanced JavaScript, and is a member of the Yahoo Presentation Platform Engineering team.

Doug Crockford, creator of the JSON data interchange format, is a developer who currently works for Yahoo!. He is known for his work in video game design, including the porting of Maniac Mansion. He maintains a website called Crockford's Wrrrld Wide Web devoted to language, technology, programming, and games. He's also the author of JSLint, the JavaScript Verifier.

Chris Schalk is developer evangelist for Google.

John Crupi is CTO of JackBe Corporation. As CTO he is entrusted with understanding market forces and business drivers to drive JackBe's technical vision and strategy.

Coach Wei is founder and CTO of Nexaweb (www.nexaweb.com), developers of the leading software platform for building and deploying Web 2.0 and AJAX applications.

Joshua Gertzen is lead developer of the ThinWire AJAX Framework.

Kevin Hakman is co-founder of TIBCO General Interface Enterprise AJAX Toolkit, and Director of Evangelism for TIBCO Software.

Andre Charland, co-founder of Nitobi., is also co-author of Enterprise AJAX (Prentice Hall).