The question in the title of this post might surprise you if you’re already familiar with AJAX. For many non-technical people, especially end-users, AJAX means a web-based application with a rich interface that looks and feels like a desktop app, and doesn’t make you wait for a browser redraw. But according to Kevin Hakman of Tibco, the term has four meanings to developers and users. In a video and slideshow presentation, he refers to the “four quantum states of AJAX” as follows:

  1. A, J, & X - Communications
  2. DHTML Widgets - Enabled with async-communications (maybe)
  3. Multi-Widget Libraries - Shared underlying services
  4. Rich Internet Applications Frameworks - Common GUI, data, communication framework, etc. These are sometimes called Fat Clients. If they are AJAX-based, I’ve been calling them ARIAs (AJAX Rich Internet Applications).

The above list is from a slide in Hakman’s AJAX presentation. By the way, this presentation is more than just a video of a seminar presentation. The slides that display on the web page are synchronized with what he is talking about at any given moment.

This presentation nicely ties together several concepts related to AJAX and DHTML.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,