developerWorks chats: Making the move to Ajax

Date: December 6, 2006

Time: 1:00 p.m. eastern standard time (EST)

This chat will focus on the practical issues of moving from traditional server-side Web development to Ajax development, including both architectural issues and how the technological shift affects software development teams. Whether your experiences with Ajax are good or bad, Bill is interested hearing what's worked, what hasn't, and what lessons you've learned along the way. Even if you're new to Ajax development, this chat will be a great place to begin your understanding of the issues involved with this popular methodology.

Read the complete Transcript from the chat.

To learn more about items discussed in the chat, check out these articles:

• "Ajax and REST, Part 1" (Bill Higgins, developerWorks, October 2006): Learn the advantages of the Ajax/REST architectural style for immersive Web applications.
• "Ajax and REST, Part 2" (Bill Higgins, developerWorks, November 2006): Improve your chances of successfully developing and deploying Ajax technology in your IT applications.
• "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications" (Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path, February 2005): Garrett, who coined the term "Ajax," describes its basic architectural and user experience properties.
• Weaving the Web (Tim Berners-Lee, HarperCollins, 2000): Berners-Lee tells the story of the design and evolution of the World Wide Web.
• "All Things Distributed: Werner Vogels' weblog on building scalable and robust distributed systems" (Werner Vogels, Amazon.com): Amazon's CTO probably knows much more about scalability than the author admittedly does, but Amazon's Web application happens to be one of the best known immersive server-side Web apps on the planet, so it makes a great example!
• Ajax for Java developers: Build dynamic Java applications (Philip McCarthy, developerWorks, September 2005): First steps with Ajax.
• The developerWorks Web development zone: Resources for Web 2.0, Ajax, wikis, PHP, mashups, and other Web projects.

You can download many of the products and technologies related to this chat here:

• The Dojo Toolkit: The Dojo Toolkit is an open source Ajax framework that provides higher-level programming abstractions and normalizes browser incompatibilities.
• AJAX Toolkit Framework: ATF provides and extensible framework and exemplary tools for building IDEs for the many different Ajax runtime offerings in the market.

Get in on the discussions in the Ajax community:

• Ajax discussion forum: For questions regarding Ajax development, this forum, moderated by Jack Herrington, can help you get started.
• Blog: Building Tools to Support Software Development Teams: Bill Higgins's blog touches on topics pertinent to developers venturing into Web 2.0.
• Blog: Emerging Technologies You Need to Know: Members of IBM's Emerging Technologies team, as well as from other IBM organizations provide insights into technologies that will impact how you can do your work.
• Prototype: This JavaScript framework eases the development of dynamic Web applications.
• Firebug: an integrated suite of tools for developing Ajax applications in Firefox.

Bill Higgins works for Rational Software where he builds software to support software development teams. Bill graduated from Penn State University in 2000 with a B.S. in computer science. Outside of work, Bill enjoys spending time with his wife and two children, reading, and playing basketball. Bill's been working on Ajax technology with Rational for the last 10 months focusing on frameworks to simplify the process of Ajax application development. Bill has extensive experience using the Dojo Toolkit and Ajax Toolkit Framework. He's also written two popular articles on the technological and organizational issues of Ajax and REST development.

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