Back in summer of 2001, a client brought a problem to me. He had a desktop application
that listed various
items. When he clicks on an item, it would display lots of information about that
particular item (they're in the
energy trading business). It worked fairly well for a desktop application. He was
creating a similar web application,
but the performance was bad. It took a long time (really long time) to bring all the
data. Also, he didn?t want to make
explicit browser refresh when an item is selected.
We tossed around a few ideas and wrote a small sample app. We wrote a event handler
that quietly sent a
request to the server, brought back some XML, and updated relevant parts of the browser.
It not only
solved his performance problems, it also created a rich client impression of the application.
Back then, I didn?t know that one day such approach would have the name that sounds
like a cleaning
product. But, what?s happened since then is I've found that other people?much smarter
than I am?have had
similar problems, thought of similar solutions, and went on to build some really cool
frameworks to help develop
these kinds of applications!
I am delighted that I will be meeting some of those bright minds when I attend (and
speak at)
The AJAX Experience in
October. Check out the list
of speakers and topics.
I can?t wait for October to arrive.
