I guess I’ll have to accept “Ajax” as the official term of the new breed of webapps. In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Lee Gromes posted an article in the Marketplace/Portals section called “Google Pioneers Use Of Old Microsoft Tools In New Web Programs” and the first two word are “Meet Ajax”. So thank you very much Mr. Jesse James… Garrett, that is.

How about JNX, pronounced jinx for Javascript aNd Xml? Ok, not the greatest, but that’s what I came up with of the top of my head…

Anyway, in the WSJ article, Gromes says the losers are Sun and Microsoft. There is no need to compare Javascript and Java on the client - we all know applets are pretty much dead from a mass market standpoint - but Java on the server is still going strong and Ajax apps can push that market. Microsoft missed the boat on Ajax - why didn’t they push it more? Why did they push ASP.NET and server side rendering of GUI controls? I’m not a ASP.NET programmer, but when I first looked that some of that stuff, I was really confused about what Microsoft was doing.

Whatever it’s called, it’s good stuff! I don’t care about trying to support browsers that are ancient. With CSS, Ajax and Firefox or IE, you can do quite amazing things for the user. (I’m not sure about all the accessibility stuff though.) I’m interested in stuff like Dojo and other things to work with client side rendering - versus server side MVC stuff like Struts. I should mention that I don’t usually do “web sites”, but “web apps” - that can make a difference.

I’m working on making my iTunes now playing feature auto update! Not brain surgery, but still cool!

UPDATE: I wonder if a law suit could ensue? Colgate-Palmolive’s Ajax?