Web Design Directory

  w   w   w   .   d   e   s   i   g   n   d   i   r   .   n   e   t
An industry leading web design, hosting and development directory. We bring together the best web designers and their customers. Find the lates website business news and updates.
Search DesingnDIR
Advertising | Submit Site »
   » Home Page / Industry News  
  Find Services Provider       Technology Stories        WebSite Services   
AJAX benefits, issues cited by Zimbra exec

2007-12-04 11:02:00

While AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) may have issues with security and performance, Zimbra still sees AJAX as the best way to deliver experiences on the Web and has based its open source Web 2.0 platform on 200,000 lines of JavaScript, a company executive said Monday.

At the Web Builder 2.0 conference in Las Vegas, Zimbra president and CTO Scott Dietzen, former CTO of BEA Systems, emphasized a variety of AJAX and Web 2.0 technologies for developers and users, including the extension of AJAX to offline usage.

Despite its problems, Dietzen said he favors AJAX over other technologies such as Flash when it comes to the Web.

"There's no other way to deliver a richly interactive experience on the Web," he said. "If you want the Web look and feel and the ability to mash up all sorts of other Web technologies, I think AJAX is the best fit."

Zimbra, which was acquired by Yahoo earlier this year for $350 million, offers collaboration and messaging software.

Dietzen did cite AJAX security issues such as cross-site scripting attacks, in which user data can get interpreted in the browser, creating a breach. Also noted as a security concern was use of source code in the browser.

"The goal for rich Internet applications at least ought to be to deliver the same level of security that we've delivered for Web applications because to deliver less undermines user confidence in various ways," he said. This is a goal that is close to being achieved, Dietzen said.

Blocking execution of user JavaScript inside of the application is important to combat server-side scripting attacks, according to Dietzen. Obfuscation and minimization technologies to remove white space can be used as security measures, he said. On the positive side, there is no caching of user data on the desktop with AJAX. Dietzen also advised that sensitive code not be put in the browser.

Browsers, meanwhile, also present challenges. They render the same HTML differently and were not designed for the load presented by AJAX; browsers have memory leaks and performance gaps, Dietzen said. But browsers are getting better, Dietzen said.

"Safari 3 is dramatically better," he said. Internet Explorer 7 offers a two to four times improvement in JavaScript execution for Zimbra over Internet Explorer 6, Dietzen said.

Toolkits also have been a problem but that, too, has been getting better. Toolkits now are available from organizations such as Eclipse, Adobe, and Microsoft. "I'm happy to say no more Zimbra developers are using text editors or vi to craft their JavaScript," said Dietzen.

Offline AJAX usage is a "hot topic," Dietzen said. Zimbra now can be used offline, he said.

"The answer for occasionally connected apps is to provide a cache on the client side that allows the application to interact locally with a data set, and synchronize over the network when the network is available," said Dietzen.

Offline AJAX systems can be developed by using a set of caching APIs in JavaScript that enable this. These are accessible via offerings such as Google Gears and Dojo offline toolkit.

Also, developers can program the client in something other than JavaScript, using technologies such Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). Developers build full programs on the client integrated with the browser, like what Microsoft is doing with its Silverlight platform.

But Zimbra used another approach. "What we did at Zimba is we actually took Zimbra server code, which was written in Java, and we created a microserver that runs on my local client," said Dietzen.

Dietzen mentioned the AJAX technique of AJAX Linking and Embedding (ALE), in which one document can be embedded inside another. This expands content-sharing.

Also cited was a technique called "lazy loading," which cuts down loading time for Web pages. With lazy loading, the page loads but other parts of the application, such as calendaring, are loaded only as needed.

Dietzen noted Zimbra's platform enables use of mashups; these feature quickly assembled task-based applications deriving data from other, larger systems. Mashups get Dietzen's vote as the killer app for Web 2.0.

Add-on makes special characters easy

Virgin spaceship to use open source?

IBM cosies up to Linux distros

W3C publishes early draft of HTML 5

Google to give students a lesson in advertising

Nokia to buy into open source platform

HP adds Linux thin client to lineup

Fires ravage local One Laptop project

$1million OSS innovation funds kicks off

Portable power pack



   
» Web Hosting Interviews
Web Hosting interviews, news and reviews. Compare the Best web hosting providers.
» Daw - Web Hosting Blog
Views and Comments about Hosting Industry. News, Trends, Products and Sevices.
» Your WebSite Here
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371


» Submit your site to Web Design Directory

About Us | Advertising | Privacy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

© DesignDIR.net 2003 - 2017, part of of Business Address Network. All Rights Reserved!