Well, I’m back to the real world after a great three day trip to Boston. I’ve got a big list of things to look into now and a better feel for how we’re doing. Overall, I feel pretty good about how our team has approached the Ajax hype.
One of my favorite one-liners from the conference is summed up with this equation:
Could != Should
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Our team has picked out some obvious places where Ajax works and have had success with it so far. As we move forward, we simply have to keep our heads wrapped around our task and solve problems with the right tools, one of which being Ajax.
One clarification that the conference presenters made is that Ajax is not AJAX. The term Ajax (capitalized) has come to be known as a concept and not an acronym. Ajax techniques offer you more tools to solve problems and the term is much broader than Asynchronous Javascript And XML (AJAX). In fact, the X in AJAX is being used less and less. By defining this and making the distinction, I think we can better explain what we are doing.
Coincidentally, both Microsoft and Firefox released new versions of their browsers during the conference. It’s great to see some healthy competition in the browser marketplace.
And now I get to take what I’ve learned and put it into practice. How exciting is that!