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August 31, 2006
Ajax analysis
Ajax analysis: Brandon Ellis raises some conversation about a Forbes article on something a financial analyst said... here's the trigger quote: "Tran also warns that Ajax, a free and universal technology, could eventually supplant Flash as the standard platform for Web applications." The article was also picked up by Jason Fincanon, Ryan Stewart, maybe others. I don't think the comment is "asinine" in itself... he's an analyst, he's got to produce recommendations... he's got his own priorities to fill. I do think the comparison is sort of nonsensical though... "Ajax" is narrowly a means of text-refresh, and more broadly a marketing term for JavaScript, but in both cases the term focuses on the developer end of things, an "i'm doin' ajax" kind of story. The Adobe Flash Player is a deployed technology, a capability on consumer machines. Apples and oranges. I'd agree if the analyst said that browsers will slowly and inexorably evolve so that they're able to grow past their page-refresh model, because that's comparing clients to clients. But when I first read the Forbes article, I tried to shake my head clear when hearing him compare particular authoring techniques to worldwide computer capabilities... two different classes of things. (For "Will JavaScript ever exceed Flash capabilities?" then it's hard to see how that's possible, because you've got to first (a) get all the popular browser brands to implement a new feature similarly and then (b) persuade consumers to update to these browsers... Flash Player is a single implementation, deployed faster than any other web technology. Logic.) The financial analyst needs to produce his own output, but if it doesn't make sense technically, that doesn't mean the rest of us have to buy it.
Posted by JohnDowdell at August 31, 2006 02:23 PM
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I'm looking forward to Adobe's next quarterly finance report (mid sep?) in terms of early Flex 2 sales figures etc, mainly coz everyone says no one uses Flex etc when you bring up the topic at work.
Posted by: nz at August 31, 2006 03:17 PM
These geek-speak debates are pretty meaningless. The only valid measure of a technology's impact is how widely it's accepted by the consumer. In some cases, particularly video, the clear winner is Flash. In others, like those where there is a clear benefit to seamless data refreshes and client-side processing, AJAX has real advantages.
The constant chatter about who the winners and losers will be may be of interest to investors and developers, but the consumer takes absolutely no notice of all that noise. They seize on solutions that allow them to do something new or to do something faster and easier. Whether that's Flash or AJAX is immaterial.
Posted by: Kim C. at September 1, 2006 04:21 AM