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.
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.
About Jeremy Geelan Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, of the all-new Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, of the 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo and founder of Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other major SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.
RIA News Desk wrote: we
would share with you what
some of the world's
leading rich Internet
application pioneers are
thinking
Kurt Cagle wrote: There's
a growing impedance
mismatch between the
large scale providers of
content and the consumers
of that content as we
build multiple messaging
architectures. How
realistically do we
resolve this mismatch in
such a way that we are
able to preserve both
flexibility (SOAP),
simplicity (Atom) and
brevity (JSON), and can
we do so without sparking
a religious war?
Crolly Darvo wrote: Will
the browsers development,
unification and
standardization give us
more possibilities and
freedom to sophisticate
or simplify our
interfaces & APIs?
Brett Green wrote: Do you
believe a shift back
towards rich desktop
apps, which are
internet-enabled, will
lead away from the need
for AJAX-enabled web
applications?
Gabriel Kent wrote: If
you imagine the a URI is
a handle to a given
resource -- is the AJAX
community pushing to
retain the isomorphic
relationship between the
URI and a given state of
a web application as it
changes through AJAX
interaction?
Micha? S?aby wrote: Are
off-line applications for
web the right direction?
Is Google Gears relevant
when more and more
devices has 24/7 Internet
access?
Will web
applications of the
future be complex on
client and lightweight on
server side or rather the
opposite? This is
essential issue to me, as
Tigermouse framework I
develop favors the later
approach.
Marcio wrote: Other
questions like: [1]
ambiguity in AJAX
toolkits, can I match
them? how an aspect in
Toolkit A can influence
toolkit B? The namespaced
Web apps becomes now
important. It's the same
that happened in Browser
space, they were
different, then become a
bit shared, the AJAX
toolkits work also may
reach a convergence state
as we have offline/online
caching infra-structure
with namespaced events -
sandboxed apps in the
same page but running
each in a given scope.
I think the next stage
promises good things for
us and the current stage
is a mess with good value
under it. The exploration
of the mashup stack and
mashup infra for
interoperability is an
area to massage.
AJAX vs CF wrote: While
Ajax represents the
future, it looks like in
Georgia they still have
developers working in
ColdFusion from Adobe -
how come? Here's the
link: http://www.dot.stat
e.ga.us/
IMHO wrote: Development
managers need to ask
themselves at least these
two questions before
adopting AJAX on a
project. First, will you
make up for the time
invested in adopting a
new technology through
increased development
speed? And second, will
AJAX allow you to offer a
more useful application
to your users?
Ahmed ALEM wrote: The
answer is definitely:
Java + XML + XSLT + a new
ML, instead of:
JavaScript + XML + HTML.
But is there any project
which take into account
all these ideas? Are
there any band of
developers who are
interested in
re-inventing a better
wheel?
mAX kIESELR wrote: It was
inevitable that someone
would use web 2.0 social
aspects together with an
AJAX interaction layer to
create a next generation
weblog. As usual it took
a seventeen year old to
do it. Logahead is
everything I've been
looking for recently in
blogging software. It's
PHP, MySQL, AJAX, and has
several social features.
DEMO LINK: http://www.max
kiesler.com/index.php/des
igndemo/fullview/386/
Gizmox announced the
release of a fully
functional beta version
of its Visual WebGui
(VWG) with support for
Microsoft Silverlight.
For the first time, VWG
enables Silverlight for
enterprise applications
by providing a RAD like
Windows Forms development
experience with drag &
drop desig
Citrix has tapped its VP
of channels and emerging
product sales Al
Monserrat to replace its
departing sales chief
John Burris, who, as
previously reported, is
going to Sourcefire as
CEO. A couple of years
ago Monserrat was
responsible for Citrix'
North American sales.
Meanwhile, Citrix
Microsoft and its
cross-platform,
Flash-rivaling,
RIA-building Silverlight
plug-in are being sued in
San Francisco for patent
infringement by a
no-profile Massachusetts
outfit called Gotuit
Media Corporation. The
thin seven-page suit and
its venue comes
compliments of California
lawyer
Microsoft earned $4.3
billion on revenues of
$15.84 billion, up 18%,
in its fourth fiscal
quarter in June, making
it a $60 billion company
- compliments of emerging
markets and demand for
Windows Server 2008. It
had better-than-expected
Vista sales this time
through, up to $4.37
billio
Two of the biggest
launches in Rich Internet
Application history took
place in 2007/2008 when
Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in
February '08 and
Microsoft launched
Silverlight (September
'07). At the 6th
International AJAXWorld
RIA Conference & Expo in
October SYS-CON Events is
delighted to be
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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." 
Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! 
Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON
Coach Wei, founder and CTO of Nexaweb
Citrix has tapped its VP
of channels and emerging
product sales Al
Monserrat to replace its
departing sales chief
John Burris, who, as
previously reported, is
going to Sourcefire as
CEO. A couple of years
ago Monserrat was
responsible for Citrix'
North American sales.
Meanwhile, Citrix
Microsoft and its
cross-platform,
Flash-rivaling,
RIA-building Silverlight
plug-in are being sued in
San Francisco for patent
infringement by a
no-profile Massachusetts
outfit called Gotuit
Media Corporation. The
thin seven-page suit and
its venue comes
compliments of California
lawyer 
Microsoft earned $4.3
billion on revenues of
$15.84 billion, up 18%,
in its fourth fiscal
quarter in June, making
it a $60 billion company
- compliments of emerging
markets and demand for
Windows Server 2008. It
had better-than-expected
Vista sales this time
through, up to $4.37
billio 
Two of the biggest
launches in Rich Internet
Application history took
place in 2007/2008 when
Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in
February '08 and
Microsoft launched
Silverlight (September
'07). At the 6th
International AJAXWorld
RIA Conference & Expo in
October SYS-CON Events is
delighted to be
