Submission + - Google's Bosworth: Why AJAX Failed, Then Succeeded
An anonymous reader writes: eWEEK has a story on a talk from former-Microsoft developer Adam Bosworth (now VP for Google) entitled "Physics, Speed and Psychology: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why." Bosworth depicts issues with processing, broadband, natural language, human behavior, and dishes on Microsoft. From the article:
"'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications.'...
Drawing on the lessons he learned from the initial failure of AJAX, Bosworth admonished developers to think about user activity. 'Ask what the frequency is,' he said. 'Unless an app is used over and over each day, make it simple, even if more clicks [or] pages are required.' Also, 'Ask how long it takes to execute a requested task,' he said. 'If it takes more than 2 seconds, consider not providing the task or splitting it up into small, user-controlled tasks.' Moreover, 'sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs [user interfaces],' Bosworth said. 'If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors.'"
"'Back in '96-'97, me and a group of people... helped build stuff that these days is called AJAX,' Bosworth said. 'We sat down and took a hard look at what was going to happen with the Internet and we concluded, in the face of unyielding opposition and animosity from virtually every senior person at Microsoft, that the thick client was on its way out and it was going to be replaced by browser-based apps. Saying this at Microsoft back in '96 was roughly equivalent to wandering around in a fire wearing matches,' he said. 'But we concluded we should go and build this thing. And we put all this stuff together so people could build thin-client applications.'...
Drawing on the lessons he learned from the initial failure of AJAX, Bosworth admonished developers to think about user activity. 'Ask what the frequency is,' he said. 'Unless an app is used over and over each day, make it simple, even if more clicks [or] pages are required.' Also, 'Ask how long it takes to execute a requested task,' he said. 'If it takes more than 2 seconds, consider not providing the task or splitting it up into small, user-controlled tasks.' Moreover, 'sites where people don't go a lot don't need AJAX-style UIs [user interfaces],' Bosworth said. 'If we started building AJAX for AJAX's sake we wouldn't be doing our customers any favors.'"
