AJAX, Web services... And the developers' road ahead.

Three years a go, I started on trying to uderstand how the Yahoo's LAUNCHcast Radio works... What keept me awed, besides how wide and fully assorted is the collection of music it delivers, was how well visually designed and user friendly achieved is the UI of such a Web application... But most of all, my mind held on inquiring my awareness about that three tiny customizable controls, whose enables the user to rate the song, the artist and/or the album... Every time I rated any or several of those, I got just astonished how those tiny UI controls works: Fast to sent my weak, but personal, music appreciation to Yahoo, fast to update my UI... And without any glimpse of reloading the UI's HTML page... As if that application is working localy in my PC... Well, a little latency is there, but I ever was aware such sending of my ratings and updating the HTML page, have happened through a round trip over the Internet... From time to time I still hear my LAUNCHcast Radio personal station, just for enjoy how, after three years on rating music, it delivers to me almost only that whose I love and makes my soul go happy.

About that time (2001), I have almost mastered my understanding and developer skills to deal with DHTML/CSS/DOM, MS Scripting (VBScript and JavaScript), ASP and T-SQL and one year after (2002), I entered the world of XML spending some, hard to afford for me in that time, $ 70 US and three months, in my own room isolation of the world, with the only companion of my PC and the two books I have bought in a library at Guadalajara, Jalisco, México (where I lived then) from Wrox and Que... Also I tryed then several prototyping tests with MS Remoting Scripting... How easy I have found to depict how the Yahoo's LAUNCHcast Radio UI works...

Several days a go, I have been leaded somewhere, here at Channel 9 (I can't remember how or by who), onto learnig what AJAX is... Certainly I have found such an acronym, referenced several times in several posts, but at first glance, I have taken it as one of those technologies from outside the Microsoft's world, and I ever avoided to reply on the matter or to get intersted on it... But, when I encountered on front of me that acronym deployed as "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML" and I read...

ASP.NET Spiced: AJAX wrote:

What Is AJAX?

AJAX, short for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, isn't a technology but rather a grouping of technologies. AJAX uses a communication technology (typically SOAP and XML) to send and receive an asynchronous request/response to the server, and then leverages presentation technologies (JavaScript, DOM, HTML, and CSS) to process the response. Applications using AJAX are legitimate today, because most browsers support the necessary technology. For a more detailed definition of AJAX, visit the AJAX Wikipedia entry.

What does AJAX really mean? It lets you execute a server-side method through a JavaScript call, without requiring a browser refresh. Think of it as a mini request/response that happens behind the scenes from the user. If you still aren't clear what AJAX is, take a look at two popular examples from Google: Google Suggests and Google Maps. If you are new to AJAX, the responsiveness of those two applications should make your skin tingle slightly.

I understood I have been all those full three years preparing my self, though unconciously, to say: Welcome AXAX, kudos!... And to walk confidently a bit more ahead on my own developer road... Taken of the Microsoft's hand.

How have you prepared or are preparing your self to go on your road ahead?

Tonatiúh

EDIT: I suggest to those intersted in AJAX, to click on the link to the Wikipedia definiton of AJAX (shown in the quote from MSDN above).

Could you say "the road ahead" again?

Cairo wrote:

Could you say "the road ahead" again?

Of course... As many times as I want... Or you ask me for man...

The Road Ahead...

Any thing else Cairo?

Tonatiúh

NOTE: Glad to learn that you read many of my posts... Those where I have said "The Road Ahead" or, simply,  the road ahead.

EDIT: I want to add that such a redundancy on my posts, could be worthwhile for some of those people whom, loving "the here and now", are unaware about the road ahead in front of them... Even if such a road is a road different to that of Microsoft.

Thanks.

What's your native language? I would guess Portuguese. I'd probably be wrong, though.

Ah, you live in Villa de Alvarez, Colima; México

So, Spanish, then?

AJAX is just Javascript with a thing that can submit HTTP requests, right?  I haven't messed with it at all, maybe I can put my Win2k3 server to work sometime.
Actually, I haven't done much web stuff at all (gasp), outside of SOAP webservices, X/HTML, and a little bit of JSPs. 

Cairo wrote:

Thanks.

What's your native language? I would guess Portuguese. I'd probably be wrong, though.

Ah, you live in Villa de Alvarez, Colima; México

So, Spanish, then?

Yes Cairo... I have born in Torreón, Coahuila, México: The Pancho Villa's land, though my parents where both from Spain... Your guess was almost certain, as my family's name comes from the town of Bardullas, in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain... The only Celtic-Galeic enclave at the Northwest of the Iberic peninsula... Closest to Portugal... And the linguistical roots of the Galician language are nearest to the Portugese, than to the Spanish... So you are not so wrong... Are you a magician?

Tonatiúh

I'm not a magician. From the way you use language, it seemed to me more like Portuguese than Spanish. I was unaware of the Celtic influence in that region. Was it really Gaelic (Irish)? Some of the spelling conventions appear to be similar, so I'm willing to buy a connection between Portuguese and Gaelic.

Cairo wrote:

I'm not a magician. From the way you use language, it seemed to me more like Portuguese than Spanish. I was unaware of the Celtic influence in that region. Was it really Gaelic (Irish)? Some of the spelling conventions appear to be similar, so I'm willing to buy a connection between Portuguese and Gaelic.

I wonder if you are a kind of linguistic expert... Not many people is capable of distinguishing out from spelling conventions... Where are you from Cairo?... Do you speak, or at least read, Spanish?

Tonatiúh

After googling...

Portuguese is most closely related to Galician, which is spoken in Northwestern Spain, and then more distantly to Spanish. Galician is classified as a romance language. Its name appears to come from the Roman Gallaecia, which was a province named for the Gallaeci, the indigenous "Gallaecian Celts". They are, perhaps, the same group of people that settled Ireland (Roman Hibernia, British Ivernian), Scotland and Wales.

Irish is a Goidelic language. The Goidelic languages are one of two major divisions of modern-day Insular Celtic languages (the other being the Brythonic languages, such as that spoken by the Picts, who inhabited what is known as Scotland today). The oldest known Goidelic language is "Primitive Irish", whose written form is called Ogham. Goidelic languages may once have been common on the Atlantic coast of Europe and there is evidence that they were spoken in the region of Galicia in modern Spain.

The Romans (and later the English) and the Catholic Church suppressed much of the indigenous celtic culture and history. While the Romans themselves appear to have never attempted to incorporate Ireland into the Empire, their province of Britannia did interact with Ireland. The Romans had a way of grouping a number of un- or semi-related peoples under broader names for their own convenience (example: "Celtæ").

So there's the connection between Portuguese and Irish.

I don't speak, read, or write Spanish except in an extremely casual manner. I did study Spanish for a few years in school, along with Italian and German. I picked up some Japanese while living in Tokyo. I'm interested in Chinese writing. There's a system for figuring out the more complex characters based on which simpler characters they contain which I've read about some.

My primary non-computer interests lie in history, religion, economics and languages. The languages part spills over into computer science, of course, which is why I know how to program (to varying degrees) in assembler, C, C++, Objective C, python, ruby, VB, Vbscript, javascript, perl, xslt, applescript, java, groovy, and some others I can't remember right now. I've read up on haskell, eifell, caml, lisp and brainf*ck.

Cairo wrote:

After googling... [... .... ....]

I'm almost certain that such a long, well composed and, better yet, insightful essay about Celtics, Gaelics and Spanish, is from your own authoring, though you ought to have googled for quite a while before collected trustful sources... Let me tell you my friend: It is wonderful indeed get in touch with a Niner who understands what would be the sinergy which one, as developer, could be able to rise from, at least, the languages supported by the CLR in the .NET Framework..

But going farter than the later, it is an awesome surprise have encountered one man with the assortement of capabilities and interests you have... History... Uhh!... Linguistics... Uhh!... I plea to the heaven you would hold intersted in interacting/debating with me, because besides the joy I get from reading/replying your posts, I am sure you may help me a lot in the investigation for my SF novel project: "Cualí itchá a cosamalót" (<-- this is Náhuatl)... Specially because its core thread is related with from where have arrived the Celtic-Gaelic cultures amongst others... I think, after 10 years dealing with different kinds of sources and perspectives, that a path could be followed up to which could be thought as ATLANTIS... And from there, to Quetzalcóatl (Ce-Acatl-Topiltzin), the man arrived from the Atlantic, who have casted Teotihuacans, Toltecs and Mayans into the Náhuatl culture.

Perhaps, as we go talking... I would sale to you my concept.

Thank you Cairo for being who you are.

Tonatiúh

LaunchCast still doesn't fully support Firefox. Boo!

Scott Mace

Tonatiúh wrote:

How have you prepared or are preparing your self to go on your road ahead?

Yes, I'm working on it.