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 is AJAX headed next?

Being held for the first time on March 18, 2008 at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, AJAXWorld Security Bootcamp is a compelling, intensive, one-day, hands-on training program that will teach Web developers, Web designers, and other Web professionals how to build secure AJAX applications and demonstrate what the best practices are to mitigate security problems in AJAX apps. It is led by one of the world's foremost AJAX security experts and popular teachers, Billy Hoffman.

In response to the proliferation of other frameworks used to create rich Internet applications such as Flex from Adobe (formerly from Macromedia) and AJAX-based frameworks, Microsoft Silverlight was recently introduced. All three of these applications, as well as the others on the market, enable a web developer to create an interface on a web page that is much more robust than traditional HTML-based pages once were.

Roughly two years ago, when I was writing an article on 'New Features for Device Developers in Visual Studio 2005' that was published in the August 2005 issues of this magazine, our program management team was already busy shaping the next release of the product, which is soon to be released as Visual Studio 2008. We spent a lot of time talking to our major customers and reviewing the feedback we got on blogs and questions on forums on newsgroups to identify what enhancements/features would be most useful to our device developers. One thing that surfaced was that device developers needed more help when it came to testing their applications efficiently. Whether that meant testing on multiple devices or under varying conditions or simply being able to write unit tests, they clearly needed help getting applications to market faster by reducing the testing time.

Microsoft this week announced that Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 have released to manufacturing (RTM) and are now available for MSDN subscribers to download, and will be available soon to Microsoft's customers through its various other channels. Visual Studio 2008 has new support for Web server communication techniques for AJAX/JSON, the company noted.

This sample application shows the data exchange between Adobe Flex and Microsoft Excel

In the past few months, the design pattern of combining Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) to develop highly interactive Web applications has been growing in popularity. High-profile Web applications such as Google Maps and A9 are currently leveraging the combination of these technologies to produce rich client-side user experiences. The individual technologies that compose AJAX are not recent developments; they have been around for some time and have been continuously updated and improved. However, it is the recent confluence of these technologies that is leading to interesting possibilities.

'We've seen the Web moving from a publishing paradigm to an e-business paradigm to an AJAX paradigm.' That is the considered verdict of IBM Software Group's CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies, David Boloker. And he's right: AJAX is here, it's growing, and it's (potentially) the biggest thing to hit the i-Technology world since Java.

'Though it's been around for a while, AJAX is now a hot topic in the application developer community because it brings cross-platform rich user interfaces to Web applications without having to use products like Microsoft .NET or Macromedia,' said Steve Benfield. Benfield explains what all the AJAX fuss is about, dispel some myths and advise how best to take advantage of the trend during his SYS-CON.TV Webinar.

'Though it's been around for a while, AJAX is now a hot topic in the application developer community because it brings cross-platform rich user interfaces to web applications without having to use products like Microsoft .NET or Macromedia,' said Steve Benfield as he announced that his September 27 session at the Austin Java User's Group will be called 'Injecting Life into Boring Web Applications with AJAX.' Benfield plans, he says, to explain what all the AJAX fuss is about, dispel some myths and advise how best to take advantage of the trend.

The new Tibco General Interface 3.0 consists of two components, Tibco General Interface Framework and Tibco General Interface Builder, which together enable developers to deliver applications that run completely in a standard Web browser, the company says. This installation-free framework eliminates the need for client-side software, end-user plug-ins, ActiveX controls or Java applets.