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Could Ajax Wash Away 'Smart Clients'?

Could Ajax Wash Away 'Smart Clients'?

By Mary Jo Foley
There's more than one way to write a powerful client app. Just ask the Google and Flickr folks.

A key premise behind Microsoft's "smart client" pitch is that Web apps are not as good as fat/rich/locally based ones.

Microsoft defines smart clients as software that combines the best of Web apps with the best of locally hosted ones.

Microsoft's smart client elevator pitch: Web apps can't handle all the complex tasks that smart-client apps can. They can't gracefully switch between connected and disconnected states. And they can't take advantage of all the rich graphics and processing power that smart-client apps can.

Microsoft has been pushing the virtues of smart clients for at least two years. But this year, the company is intent on getting that message to stick.

But not everyone thinks you need Microsoft's .Net, Visual Studio and Windows environment to write powerful, savvy apps. There's an alternative camp that's gaining some mind share. They are backing a programming model known as "Ajax," which translates roughly to "asynchronous JavaScript and XML."

Adaptive Path, a consultancy that does Web design work for companies large and small, is the firm that coined the Ajax moniker.

As is true of Microsoft's smart client model, Ajax isn't a technology. Instead, Ajax is "really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways," Adaptive Path says. Among the technologies included are:

# standards-based presentation using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS);

# dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;

# data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;

# asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;

# and JavaScript binding everything together.

Adaptive Path points to Google Maps (the poster child for Ajax) and Google Suggest as examples of the kinds of applications that can and have been developed using Ajax principles and technologies. And Ajax isn't meant to replace Flash, as some industry watchers have speculated. Instead, Ajax can coexist with Flash, as the Flickr online-photo-sharing app from Ludicorp demonstrates.

"Ajax has platform independence," one of Adaptive's founders, Jeffrey Veen, told Microsoft Watch earlier this month. "It doesn't make sense to just develop for IE (Internet Explorer) any more. The Web is an open platform."

It seems like the Ajax camp is gaining some momentum as of late. Even some Microsoft folks are blogging about it.

But Microsoft has an awful lot of developer momentum. And it's planning to spend lots of evangelism dollars on extolling the virtues of its smart-client strategy in 2005 and beyond.

Is the Java vs. .Net battle giving way to an Ajax vs. smart client one? Will we see a dev world divided along Ajax/smart client lines? Or is there room for both programming platforms to coexist and (shudder) maybe even interoperate?

October 5, 2005 at 01:46 PM in Web 2.0 | Permalink | TrackBack (11) | Top of page | Blog Home