In article <1600265.RNkLE1e9ot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Google Web Toolkit (GWT) for Linux 1.0.20 Beta
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java software development framework that
>| makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for
>| developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language.
> `----
The history of AJAX is interesting. From Wikipedia:
Although the term 'Ajax' was coined in 2005, most histories of the
technologies that enable Ajax start a decade earlier with Microsoft's
initiatives in developing Remote Scripting. However techniques for the
asynchronous loading of content on an existing web page without requiring a
full reload date back as far as the IFRAME element type (introduced in
Internet Explorer 3 in 1996) and the LAYER element type (introduced in
Netscape 4 in 1997, abandoned during early development of Mozilla). Both
element types had a src attribute that could take any external URL, and by
loading a page containing javascript that manipulated the parent page,
Ajax-like effects could be attained.
Microsoft's Remote Scripting (or MSRS, introduced in 1998) acted as a more
elegant replacement for these techniques, with data being pulled in by a
Java applet which the client side could communicate with using JavaScript.
This technique worked on both Internet Explorer version 4 and Netscape
Navigator version 4 onwards. Microsoft took first advantage of these
techniques in Outlook Web Access supplied with the Microsoft Exchange
Server 2000 release.
The web development community, first collaborating via the
microsoft.public.scripting.remote newsgroup and later through blog
aggregation, subsequently developed a range of techniques for remote
scripting in order to enable consistent results across different browsers.
Early examples include JSRS library from 2000, the introduction of the
Image/Cookie technique in 2000, and the JavaScript on Demand technique in
2002. In 2002, a user-community modification to Microsoft Remote Scripting
was made to replace the Java applet with XMLHttpRequest.
Looks like non-standard browser extensions aren't always bad.
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--Tim Smith
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