Apparently a new XUL app called “ajaxWrite” was just launched. I think this thing is going to be my poster child for what’s wrong with single-renderer markup languages from now on. It might be a fine app, I haven’t used it long enough to have a strong opinion, but its marketing is truly reprehensible. I’m sure someone assured Michael Robertson that they couldn’t launch a web-ish app without tacking the word “ajax” in the title and the folks with sense were shouted down. A pity.
This thing is appropriating the necessarily amorphous terminology of “Ajax” for an implementation that is directly at odds with why Ajax is an important technology. A XUL app being billed as “Ajax” is just as laughable as a Flex or XAML app suddenly growing the same moniker. That it’s Mozilla’s walled-garden language doesn’t really excuse the gaffe.
But, I hear you ask, aren’t Firefox/MoFo our only hope?
Perhaps, but only insofar as Firefox is a good HTML and SVG renderer. XUL is not a standard. No one else implements it, and it’s not likley that anyone else ever will. And that’s OK. What’s not OK is when these walled-garden-web technologies start getting passed off as somehow being more open, more cost-lowering than they really are. The unspoken promise of Ajax is that it makes cross-browser apps that are more responsive possible. Stunts like “ajaxWrite” not only break the contract locally, they start to cast aspersions on the efforts of scripters everywhere who are dedicated to an open application platform.
The web has succeeded in part because in trade for control over UIs, businesses gained the ability to deploy to everyone everywhere. In a world where the web is how business gets done, “cross platform” really means “cross browser”. Single-render apps are bad for the web and bad business. What (aside from a larger potential to succeed as an app) would have the functional “open vs. closed” difference been if this thing had been written in Flex? Or XAML? All of these platforms are highly capable. More capable than the Open Web is today, but they are not the Open Web. The term “Ajax” is a proxy and an ambassador for Open Web technologies today. The message that “javascript works now” means that the same kinds of universal access to information that the static web made possible is now available to application authors. But not if shameless marketing shills co-opt the term to mean something that’s harmful to the web. “ajaxWrite” is just such an abomination.
So I’m calling on Michael Robertson to do the right thing and rename this product. A quick check shows “xulwrite.com” as still being available. There’s still time to change course. Still time to avoid giving the Open Web the bird.
40 Comments
It froze my browser. Had to restart.
“A XUL app being billed as ‘Ajax’ is just as laughable as a Flex or XAML app suddenly growing the same moniker.”
Ajax stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. XUL applications can implement Ajax. As can HTML/XHTML and, possibly, XAML (not sure what the in-browser scripting is for that).
“The unspoken promise of Ajax is that it makes cross-browser apps that are more responsive possible.”
Ajax isn’t intrisically cross-browser. Select Ajax toolkits are.
“Stunts like ‘ajaxWrite’ not only break the contract locally, they start to cast aspersions on the efforts of scripters everywhere who are dedicated to an open application platform.”
Firefox isn’t open?
“The web has succeeded in part because in trade for control over UIs, businesses gained the ability to deploy to everyone everywhere.”
Which is why so many Web sites bill themselves as IE-only, and a reasonable fraction of them truly are.
“Single-render apps are bad for the web and bad business.”
That’s like saying Gnome/Qt applications are bad business. Or MFC applications are bad business. Or applications targeting mobile users via WAP are bad business. XUL is merely a UI rendering language. If anyone is “casting aspersions”, it’s you.
“More capable than the Open Web is today, but they are not the Open Web.”
Not applications are for the “Open Web”. ajaxWrite, by your presumed definition, is not part of the “Open Web”. That doesn’t make ajaxWrite evil, any more than OpenOffice.org is, since Oo.org isn’t exactly “Open Web” either.
“The term “Ajaxâ€? is a proxy and an ambassador for Open Web technologies today.”
This is your opinion. It is not universally shared. IMHO, Ajax is a “proxy” for being a UI development technique, nothing more.
Now, frankly, I’m surprised that Robertson wrote a XUL app, and I’m more surprised that he stuck “ajax” in as a prefix, since that term is meaningless to 99.44% of the computer user market. And if you think XUL is the seventh sign of the Apocalypse, that’s certainly your right. I happen to be writing a XUL app (and, no, it won’t have “ajax” in the name), because it fits my technical needs today. I’ll probably create a XAML implementation next year, once it’s more fully baked. And so as much as you dislike Robertson for appropriating the Ajax name, I dislike you for bashing things that don’t qualify for your narrow definition of the “Open Web”.
Mark,
I don’t think XUL is the “seventh sign of the apacolypse”. I also don’t think “ajaxWrite” is evil (as an app). Its branding, OTOH…
XUL is a good technology that isn’t (yet, if ever) suitable for the Open Web. That you’re choosing to write your apps multiple times for the benefits these closed platforms provide pretty much prooves my point. Perhaps I’m coining my own term here (and a generic, fungible one to boot), but this stuff matters. I hope that it’s never OK to appropriate parts of the web’s user base to a particular technology. It’s one of the reasons we work so hard to make sure Dojo is degradeable by default.
The definition of “Ajax” expands by the day, but I won’t watch it get abused for this purpose. Esp not this purpose. Perhaps I am tilting at windmills. Time will tell.
Regards
“XUL is a good technology that isn’t (yet, if ever) suitable for the Open Web.”
You assume that people are aiming for the “Open Web”. Many many applications aren’t written for the “Open Web”. They’re written for doctors’ offices, churches, civil engineering firms, community service organizations, and whatnot. Many of them won’t choose HTML+Ajax as their presentation layer, for various technical reasons. While by definition you’re a huge Dojo fan, I hope you are open to the notion that there are, and always will be, non-Dojo non-”Open Web” applications in the world.
“I hope that it’s never OK to appropriate parts of the web’s user base to a particular technology.”
Again with the Web focus. Do you really think that random passersby are just going to start writing documents in ajaxWrite? For whoever chooses to use it, ajaxWrite is just an application with some specific characteristics. That’s not significantly different than a user choosing some other application that happens only to run on PalmOS (which, last I checked, Dojo doesn’t support, either).
To paraphrase a popular quote, “it’s the user, stupid”. My users won’t care that my application doesn’t run on IE, any more than they don’t care than their desktop accounting package doesn’t run on IE, or that their spreadsheet doesn’t run on IE, or that their business card scanner software doesn’t run on IE. In fact, my application might not even require Firefox — it might install via XULRunner and, from the users’ perspectives, be just another application. So long as they’re happy, I’m happy. And if I choose to create a XAML front-end for user benefit (e.g., gets me on Windows Mobile, where neither XUL nor Dojo really go), that too is my prerogative. I’m not aiming for the “Open Web”. Many XUL applications won’t be aiming for the “Open Web”. The “Open Web” is a very small place, in terms of percentage of applications.
As I hinted at in my earlier comment, I’m surprised that Robertson went XUL. Not that XUL isn’t capable, but that XUL *does* limit the market for a drive-by application like ajaxWrite presumably aims to be. For things that are truly designed to be used by anyone anywhere, I am in agreement with you that “traditional” Ajax, as exemplified by Dojo, is the much better choice. For the portion of my application that will be public-facing, I won’t be using XUL (though I’m not sure how much Ajax I’ll be using either…haven’t gotten to that part yet).
I just want readers of your blog posting to understand that XUL has its place. Probably not really where Robertson’s putting it, that’s all. XUL itself is not harmful.
Mark,
Knowing Alex pretty well (I think), it seems to me that the crux of his argument here isn’t that XUL is harmful. Alex seems to be saying that by sticking the marketing term du jour in front of what is a very specific platform application, he is doing a major disservice not only to himself but to the community as a whole.
The acronym does indeed stand for Async JS and XML. The reality is that XML is very often not part of the practice–and the practice is touted and aimed at the idea that it is, in fact, cross-browser. Bringing up mobile devices that have yet to gain the same capabilities as thier full-fledged brethren don’t help your argument at all.
In fact, I’d say that “Ajax isn’t intrisically cross-browser. Select Ajax toolkits are.” is a patently false statement. Javascript as a whole has no problems supporting asynchronous programming techniques–and this is just within the core set of objects, no browser attached. You are referring here to the use of the XmlHttpRequest object, which in fact *is* cross-browser at this point (if 4 major browsers capturing 99% of the market support it, it’s cross-browser).
Either way, you’re missing Alex’s point. The point here is that by naming an application using the latest marketing buzzword for the sake of using the latest marketing buzzword is bad practice all around and is the beginning of that slippery slope of being the butt of jokes 2 years down the road (yeah, I have this toilet paper Web 2.0 app that wipes my butt online–its called AJAXTeePeeForMyBunghole).
Get it?
I think it’s funny that ajaxWrite requires Firefox 1.5 or higher, yet Michael’s old company, Linspire, is currently only offering Firefox 1.0.7 in the ‘Click-n-Run’ library.
anything that makes IE users frustrated, unable to use services, mad, cranky, etc is fine by me. where do i donate?
grumpY!: I think the spyware vendors have it covered
I don’t mind using a XUL based App.
I’m a Mozilla pro, I’ll do anything to promote it.
Alex, I’m all with you here. XUL may be way cool, but it isn’t Ajax.
AJAX may be a coined term with an acronym of Asynchronous Javascript and XML, but it’s descriptive of a new wave of web programming practices.
It’s not a spec, so you can’t get away with a literal reading of “There’s no HTML in AJAX, so neener!” It’s a community concensus term. And, XUL ain’t a part of it. Hell, read the list from the original article coining the term [1]:
* standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
* dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
* data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
* asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
* and JavaScript binding everything together.
That’s what AJAX means to us. If you want it to mean something else and get away with it, you’re going to have to convince everyone who read that article and ran with that definition.
[1]: http://adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php
Hmm, looks like my link to Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications didn’t make it in.
The capability to manipulate DOM is a big part of what is called AJAX; and abililty to retrieve data from the backend (XML, CSV or whatever). In my little mind, AJAX definitely includes, “use of JavaScript to manipulate DOM”. Therefore I agree that ajaxWrite is misnomer. It doesn’t make ajaxWrite a good or bad product. But it is an obvious attempt to ride the wave by being wrong. I care about it because it leads to a confusion.
Nevermind that, it’s bloody RUBBISH.
http://haarball.wordpress.com/2006/03/24/incompetent-business-receives-unmerited-attention/
“Single-render apps are bad for the web and bad business. What (aside from a larger potential to succeed as an app) would have the functional “open vs. closedâ€? difference been if this thing had been written in Flex? Or XAML?”
Adobe’s Flash Player is a single-renderer approach for SWF files, true. But it differs from XUL, MS and other approaches in being a multiple-environment renderer as well… a visitor would not need to run within a new application, but would instead use their current browser, on their current operating system, and very likely would not need to download anything new at all in order to work with this content.
(Matter of fact, sending content to the client as SWF is likely more audience-friendly than any use of XmlHttpRequest, although real stats on what percentage of consumers actually support “AJaX” work is lacking.)
I like that you’re looking at the “single-renderer vs multiple-renderer” problem, although I think this is more related to higher development/support/maintainence costs than to overall audience approachability. We’d need to look at total audience costs to assess the practicality of varying engagement levels of content, and in this sense working with clientside SWF may be the most friendly and universal technique of all.
jd/adobe
XUL can be implemented by anyone without any hindrance that i know of. If that isnt open then i sure would like to know your definition.
I’m sure you will all agree that “Ajax” is a buzzword for a 10 years old technology.
But leaving this and the questionable marketing aside, AjaxWord seems to be just an online version of the old Mozilla Composer–which is hardly “revolutionary”.
Asynchronous (check)
Javascript (check)
Xml (check)
Haven’t tried the app but I don’t see anything to get all pissy about. Unspoken promises don’t exist. If cross-browser is a requirement, the market will let them know in a hurry.
Daniel: others might be able to implement what is currently implemented in Seamonkey, but that’s no garuntee they’d be “implementing XUL” when what Moz implements changes. What little spec material there is for XUL is inadequate to provide an implementation that would run today’s XUL code portably.
Regardless, the point still stands: there’s only one renderer implementation for XUL, which means that this app is inextricably tied to a walled-garden technology.
Regards
The good folks at ajaxLaunch have prepared a response to your post: http://www.ajaxlaunch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58
I’m thrilled if ajaxWrite (by whatever name) erodes M$Office sales, drives more users into the Firefox camp, or hastens the demise of IE. I think it’s doing all three.
Say what you want about Robertson, this is a big win for Web 2.0.
Stop the silliness about “walled gardens.” Cross-browser compatibility is important at the level of HTML 1.0. But the Web is not stuck in 1996 any more. Let’s move forward.
No matter the technical specifics behind the name, ajaxWrite is a bad product name. Naming a product after a technology (or a technology set) is not a good idea. Most will probably think it’s something that will help you clean the grout in your shower.
Brian, thanks for pointing out their response.
At the risk of incorrectly representing their position, it seems their argument boils down to “you don’t control the term Ajax, how dare you say we aren’t?”, “we’ll add support for other browsers eventually”, and “but firefox is free”.
I’d suggest that until they *do* add support for other browsers, they’re still hurting us collectively. I realize that the theory under which they are causing harm is less compelling than if they had, say, implemented the whole thing in XAML and tried to call it “ajax”. But how much water are they carrying for those who will come after them and try such abhorent marketing stunts? What slipery slope would they enjoin us to go sledding with them on?
I don’t think my assessment is any less accurate today than it was last week. I’m happy to revisit it when they launch something that’s actually cross-browser.
Their defense currently consists of hand waving about future releases and “ooh, look at the shiny open source browser!” misdirection to draw people away from the essential conflict that their app embodies. I can’t expect them to care about the health of the web. They’re just trying to make a buck. Fair enough. That doesn’t mean I have to let them pretend their shit doesn’t stink.
xulwrite.com is still available.
Regards
I agree that AjaxWrite isn’t the best name sinec Ajax has generally come to represent apps that render the UI in (D)HTML. But I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it.
Just because it is written in XUL rather than HTML does not mean that it’s not AJAX. Maybe you don’t realise that people who code XUL apps were using AJAX before the term was even coined. XUL gives us a glimpse into the future of web apps – real GUI application features through a web browser with no installs. Now that’s rad!
~Chris H.
AdaptivePath “invented” the term Ajax, and since most people never heard of them, back-defined the term to include many ongoing google.com projects. “Ajax” as a term has NEVER been a “pure” drive to open up the web, include large parts of the browsing community, etc. DHTML has been an exciting field since it emerged in the late 1990s; AdaptivePath came along, decided that the “web 1.0″ buzz was long enough dead, and tried to generate some interest in the technology by applying a fun-sounding name to it.
That’s cool. You want to defend AdaptivePath’s definition — one that handily included the work of other companies to add legitimacy — to the point of resenting all those who “sully” it. That’s okay. I’m sure the prgrammers at google.com were just as amused to learn that they were preforming “AJAX” programming without even knowing it as we were amused to learn that ajaxWrite isn’t “really” Ajax.
XUL is a neglected technology; we’ll be able to use it to distribute applications that look and behave just like applications running natively on your operating system. Yes, that aim is different from a pure legacy HTML/CSS approach; yes, we’re excluding I.E. How do you know we won’t wind up CREATING a community centered around Firefox use, all enjoying our AJAXUL*-based applications?
Look, the application is heavily beta, and is missing a lot of features. I certainly can understand complaints there. I guess I sort of understand your much more abstract complaint. One almost has to wonder, however, if you think the whole “Web 2.0/Ajax” phenom. is really as grand as you project it to be. Is there a community of dedicated cross-browser developers out there, all sulking over ajaxWrite? Or is Ajax — right now — really just a few very different, interactive, asynchronous, applications and frameworks sprinkled over dozens of companies, the most interesting of which being google?
You basically say you don’t want to eat our marketing bullshit. I submit that’s because your mouth is already too full of AdaptivePath’s.
*XUL IS XML, a fact you seem to enjoy neglecting…XML is very mutable, as mentioned in the post; I guess 99% of your sound and fury would evaporate if Safari ever decided to support it
If XUL (run only on Moz) were AJAX then:
Flash is AJAX
– run on any browser with Flash, in order for XUL to be on other browser you would also require XUL engine.
– Asynchronous
– Can transfer XML, JSON, whatever.
– ActionScript. If you can relax the fact that main content is HTML, then it should be ok to relaxed Javascript to just scriptable.
Java Applet is AJAX (run on any browser).
– run on any browser with JVM, in order for XUL to be on other browser you would also require XUL engine.
– Asynchronous
– Can transfer XML, JSON, whatever.
– Java. You don’t modify XUL script at run time, so it is ok to just use compiled language. Or may be include new jar file just like you would include new js file for dynamic behavior.
ActiveX is AJAX (run on IE).
My superApp.exe is AJAX (run on Win32, rememeber XUL only runs on Moz).
Useless truth by distorting the original intention of the terms.
But XUL would be AJAX by that stupid sense.
XUL’s format is XML and that satisfy it’s requirement of being open as much as XML format of MS Words. What’s the point of implementing in XML if you don’t have full specs and other implementors.
To emphasize, AJAX refers to technique used to workaround the lacks of immediate interactivity of HTML.
It is used to avoid people from having to wait and load the whole page every time they click on a link, button on the page (asynchronize, XMLHTTPRequest).
They have to use Javascript because it is the only language supported by all major browser at the time.
That’s why it’s called technique.
If you use XUL which is already interactive.
What’s the darn point of calling it AJAX; you are not using any technique to work around anything!!!
If I write a thick client exe that contact the server by using GET, POST request to get XML data from server, does that makes my app AJAX ???
Stupid reasoning for trying to use buzzword to market the app.
XUL already interactive? Maybe, but so are HTML forms. We use a lot of Javascript to get the XUL to do what we want; just like “true” Ajax developers do with DOM.
And just for the record, we DO preform asynch’d communications through Javascript calls to the server. I don’t know where you’re getting this “thick client…GET POST” jive.
And yet this is exactly the problem with the rise of “Lite”, “Light” and “Reduced Calorie”. Food companies claimed that these terms were arbitrary, and that things like mono and triglycerides, and high fructose corn syrup were okay in their “healthy alternatives” because they have an uninformed public who have a positive association to these terms. “After all,” they say, “‘lite’ isn’t even a word.”
So now, we have a bunch of fat Americans eating their “Lite” ice cream and still wondering why they’re fat. Just because you can misuse a term doesn’t mean that you should.
To me ajax is about delivering rich, interactive applications completing over the net in an easy to launch way. It’s about the trend not specific coding techniques.
Let me give you an example. I started MP3.com. Users didn’t really care about “mp3″ they just wanted to hear digital music. When we first launched, all of lofi clips were in real audio, not MP3. Users didn’t care about the specific audio compression being used, they just wanted their music.
To me, ajax is the same. Users could care less how the new Yahoo mail interface (not technically ajax) or Google maps (technically ajax) is coded, they just want rich interactive applications. And if ajax is a trend that pushes the industry in that direction (which I think it is), then great.
Yes, ajaxWrite uses XUL and also doesn’t need client server interactions with this version since there’s no online collaboration features – yet.
ajaxWrite could run on other browsers, but we choose to launch with Firefox for now because it gives us cross-platform (mac,ms,linux) but limits QA needs at this time. Plus I like the folks at Mozilla and if I can help them in their epic struggle with MS so much the better. Competition is a good thing and the only reason MS is investing anything into browser development is because of Firefox.
– MR
Hi Michael,
Thanks for taking the time to respond in person.
I understand your point about users not caring about the underlying technology, but I think your example does more to prove my point than yours. You say that “users didn’t care about ‘mp3′, they just wanted to hear digital music”, and that’s the power of Ajax in a nutshell.
Users don’t have to know what browser is “more ajaxy”, they just point their browser at a particular site and they get an enriched experience over the previous generation of webapps. Your application breaks this contract.
Attempts to justify marketing a single-renderer experience under the banner of a more inclusive technology aren’t easier for me to swallow because you’re somehow playing off a cause everyone supports (Mozilla) against one that has a broader but less vocal constituency (the Open Web). It’s simply misdirection and does nothing to address the salient points of this debate.
A ship-date committment to a cross-browser version of “ajaxWrite”, on the other hand, would.
Regards
Maybe:
AJAX = Amazing JavaScript And XUL
AJAX = Almost JavaScript And XAML
These apps are not ‘AJAX’ apps and are wrongly presented as such. Alex is right
Using ‘ajax’ in your product name, company name, and or service name is just lame.
It is analogous to l33t speak. 4j4x\^/r1+3 y0!
hi alex, it’s bout time i say this as I’ve visited your site many times:
The font you use on your post is so damn small, makes my eyes hurt!
I guess you were vindicated:
http://www.michaelrobertson.com/ajaxtunes (later just http://www.ajaxtunes.com) is their latest product; it’s nothing more than a Flash-based MP3 streamer controlled by a little Javascript. Ajax my red rosy ass.
There’s better things to whine about than semantecs.
here’s something that we should whine about.
Expected widget behavior in AJAX. If a webpage widget looks like a tab widget, it ought to act like a tab widget. Clicking on a tab should not cause a new window to pop up as example on the following website:
http://www.ajaxxls.com/
12 Trackbacks
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