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The session covered from history of web to what is Next Generation web (Web 2.0) and what we should do towards it. Here is extract from his presentation:

HISTORY OF WEB

He started with his experience of Web way back when he started in 1975. From Lonely computers, which were self-absorbed applications to telephone lines (part lines to kids line) which lead to evolution of Internet and standards like HTTP and HTML.

MAINSTREAM WEB APPLICATIONS TODAY

This section of the presentation covered about how the current web applications are. Few main highlighting points are:

• Increasing support for cross browsers
• Key area of development happening around Mobile space
• Server side capabilities are growing
• Programming understanding in multi-threaded environment
• Storage capacity is effectively free, CPU nearly so
• Network infrastructure improving
• Development technologies maturity at a much slower pace and challenges are in coming up with a framework like Struts and IDEs for JS-DHTML developments
• More and more user personalization
• Standardization at different scales and complexities

NEXT GENERATION WEB DRIVERS

Craig stressed on using next generation web rather than Web 2.0 with emphasis on 4 key drivers:

Enhanced User Interfaces

The driving force is the limited usability of web applications compared to applications installed locally. Ajax and DHTML are the immediate solutions.

Lightweight Programming Models

• Strong preference towards simplicity; less code = less initial work, less update work
• Scripting languages again gaining popularity with many large application built with php, perl etc.
• Loose coupling and layer based design
• Increasing preference for quick, iterative approach (Agile model)
• Programming models  
• Ajax and DHTML (server side business logic)
• Ajax and DHTML (client side business logic ) i.e. making web applications
  available offline 
• Browser plugins (Flash/ Flex/ Java FX etc)

Web as a Platform

• Web applications to become more of a service
• Web platform providing Social network effect
• Reducing “local islands” of important data
• Users looking something bigger
• Identity
• Flexibility
• Ubiquity 

The read/write web 

• Web as a Bulletin Board

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

Craigs Top Ten Suggestion List

10 – Expose Data/Logic as services

9 – Incorporate External Content

8 – Seek QOS (Quality of Service) deals from Sources

7 – Give QOS Deals to users

6 – Adopt Agile Processes

5 – Test Driven Development

4 – Architect for Scalability

3 – Embrace Heterogeneity

2 – Reach out to Mobile Clients

1 – Enable User Provided Content

The session turned out to be good for users who do not have exposure to Web 2.0. The first 45 minutes where Craig covered History of web and existing applications was bit too extended and I was looking for more on Web 2.0. Let’s hope the other sessions lined up around Web 2.0 will be able to provide more insight.

What is the best way to achieve a balance between the two – making my site usable as well as search-able.

Here is one of the possible approach:

Step 1: To design your site without any Ajax. Javascript
Step 2: Then modify your website to include small Ajax, Java scripts components making sure that the content that gets hidden is available else where in the site which does not deploy Ajax

Scrybe is one such online/offline calender and organizer service that provides offline web application service.

Zimbra is another open source messaging and collaborative application. This powerful web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring into a rich browser-based interface. Recently Zimbra announced launch of Zimbra desktop with the aim to enable offline access to its online Ajax powered collaborative suite.

This looks to be the trend in the near future. More and more applications are targeting to provide virtual desktop for their web 2.0 applications with the same look and feel. The idea behind all this is to remove dependency of “online enabled”. The idea is that user should not be bothered about whether his net connection is working or not. He should more be concentrating on his job and rest the application takes care. Whenever it comes online, it should sync up with the offline content changes. I am writing this post through Google Docs and I can see that this keeps on syncing up my updates with the back-end. I see this kind of behaviour with most of the Google applications. So, is Google already way ahead of others in the same race?

Thinking aloud there might be two ways to achieve this: The Web application build this functionality within them self and provides a separate desktop install for application/ or takes care within its web application to provide continuous app browsing experience. Zimbra, for examples, provides a Zimbra desktop to install locally. If you think about it, this is not the way forward to achieve. The installation will again be pain for users. The second way is to make browsers support online/offline mode for web applications. This sounds interesting and this is what Firefox 3 is aiming to achieve. The browser itself is trying to build in the basic infrastructure to support offline/online web applications. But I can see many challenges towards achieving this. To list a few:

This leaves me with a question, are we not going to face the same problems that we listed when Ajax was born??

Alliance has come up with the term called “OpenAjax Conformance” which defines a set of conformance requirements on Ajax technologies, products and applications to promote Ajax interoperability.
An Ajax library will be with Open Ajax Conformance only when:

1) Supports OpenAjax Hub Specifications (OpenSource project)
2) Javascript objects with OpenAjax Registry
3) Support best practices defined within Open Ajax Conformance

These developments clearly indicates where the http domain moving on. This is also one of the talking points with Web 2.0

Here is one initiative called “Open Ajax Project” that aims to create a single framework that standardizes development and debugging on a common library of Ajax widgets that could run on multiple Ajax runtimes. Open Ajax is endorsed by IBM, BEA, Borland, the Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Google, Laszlo Systems, Mozilla, Novell, Openwave, Oracle, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend, and Zimbra.

Here are some of the initiatives that will be covered as part of this Project:

• Bringing order to chaos that is existing right now in Ajax market with everyone developing their own framework for Ajax applications.
• To have Open Ajax framework that supports various other frameworks like OpenRico, Zimbra etc.
• Standardize around a common set of widgets, interfaces and plugins to Eclipse.
• Standardize way of writing Ajax Applications.
• Common tooling.

Its a great initiative but only concern is about its success. But one thing is sure that if we get though this, Ajax is going to rule the world for coming years. So lets wait and watch how it all goes !!!!!

Updated 12-05-2006: OpenAjax announced the addition of another 13 memebers to collaborative group. The new members include Adobe, Backbase, Fair Isaac, ICEsoft, Innoopract, Intel, JackBe, Opera, SAP, Scalix, Software AG, Tibco and XML11.

First the benefits related to Ajax started emerging with Google Map, GMail providing live examples of its benefit. It really drew people with its attraction. As people started exploring more, saw the flip side of Ajax coin, its drawbacks. There were security issues that started rising with Ajax usage. Meanwhile, big players were playing more a wait and watch game to determine Ajax potential. Open source arena was ready to take up challenge and in a small time frame saw various open source Ajax libraries and frameworks floating over net. Even Microsoft was not far behind and came up with its Ajax framework called “Atlas“. Ajax resources, the libraries and frameworks, started growing, at rapid pace. People started feeling the need of having Ajax implementation for their site.  But everyone had one question in mind, are we really ready to adopt Ajax to improve usability? Though the resources were growing but people were afraid of adopting it due to its unorganized manner. This brought into picture the waiting big giants who started “Open Ajax” project to tackle these issues. And Yahoo too has open sourced its UI Library and framework.

So what’s next in Ajax Domain? Here are few areas where I think it will grow:

• More organized and sophisticated design patterns and open source libraries
• Ajax becoming integral part of IDEs
• Watch out Portal and CMS space and Ajax
• Ajax making more heads in Reporting Area
• Javascript standards across browers
• Steep raise in Usability

Happy Birthday, Ajax !!!!!!!!!

This is an Ajax based Opinion Poll which is provided by dPolls which can be a component by itself. So we can build our own components like this and can achieve low to medium improvements in user experience without much risk and low cost.

So just imagine if we able to implement Ajax for small things, how much difference it can bring in user experience and that too without much redesign of existing site and not much commercial cost.

• One of the major complaint against Ajax is that it break the expected behavior of the browsers back button. Users are generally used to returning to last static page by use of this button but it might not be the case with Ajax implementation.

• It is not possible for a user to bookmark the state of the application since the page url doesn’t change.
• Another issue can be that user fails to notice the updated parts on the web page since the users are use to old “refresh” concept for getting something new.
• Popping text into running page can affect page scroll and user might loose the context.
• There are no immediate clues after clicking. An example can be a user trying to register and clicks submit but he really do not know if its really submitting.
• Ajax introduces lot of code on client side that might be issue for users who has slow machines or slow internet connection. In terms of usability it is better to see a non Ajax site rather than not able to access the website at all.
• Cross browser is another usability issue. Its possible that a piece of code that runs pretty well in IE never really show up in other browsers.
• Its possible that too much updation on a page might lead general users to more confusion rather than making it more user friendly.

Looking at the above disadvantages and current Ajax market, are we ready to adopt Ajax to improve usability? Lets look at some of the questions that needs to be answered before we are really ready for Ajax implementation:

1. Are Ajax frameworks and toolkits present in current market provides completeness towards implementing an Ajax solution?
2. Are there any standard ways to overcome the usability issues mentioned above?
3. There are a few solutions to above mentioned problems but are they really feasible in all scenario’s? Are they evaluated to work well with all the browsers?
4. Are there any design patterns that can help in Ajax implementation?
5. Is there Do’s and Dont’s listing that tells us what needs to be done in order prevent excessive overuse?
6. …………………………………….

Looking at all these, I think the best bet for existing sites is to start small, may be a part of the page or a component. For example, in our current intranet site, we did the same by adopting Ajax for small part of page and for form validation. And gradually move towards bigger side which will even give users time to get use to new “rules”.

Google emerging and standing out from rest of the world growing many folds and exploring in different domains. We saw products like Google Talk, Google Desktop and side bar, Google earth etc. It has really picked up itself from now just being a search player but growing in portal space.

AJAX buzz word that took the world by storm, though its not something new in the market. Google has been pioneer in this as well with the products like Google mail and Google home customization. There have been lot of talk about security aspect and drawbacks but AJAX has come a long way.

Blogging is another area that really gained popularity across the world. There has been many more blogging sites then previous times. Its becoming more of a habit for people to blog and put forth the ideas.

This year there has been a tremendous growth in area of Usability. This has always been on chart for a pretty long time but this year saw a drastic change in the approach towards it.

Year also marked with lots of mergers with companies like Oracle , BEA , IBM etc buying the emerging smaller players which might emerge as a potential threat in future. These merger did lead to lot of overlapping with their existing products. So lets wait and see how these mergers really help companies. Example: IBM acquiring BowStreet though it has RAD which is on the lines of Bowstreet.

Open source products also proving their point with Liferay, OpenCms, Alfresco standing out in front. Also bigger players are moving towards open source trend like Websphere Application server with community edition etc.

Collaboration is another buzz word for the year where many products aimed to become a “whole” product. For example, Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g, has Instant Messaging, Content Services and Workspaces for collaboration. Also Web Clippings/URL scraper has gained popularity for faster and better intergration.

Portlet world has seen a lot of stretch on standards with JSR 168 being incorporated by most of the vendors moving out from proprietors stuff. Also JSR 286 has been submitted which will align portlets specification with J2EE 1.4 . JSR 170 Content Repository has laid standards for content repository access.

Indian markets are making tremendous progress with government itself promoting portals market. Nabh’s String Bean 3.0 is another example in that direction. Many financing institutions like IDBI have already launched portals.