When I first read about “Ajax” I though: This is what we’ve been waiting for to start the next generation of web based applications. I saw the promise of ultra-rich web content delivery using a variety of XML sources being assembled by the browser using JavaScript and async-HTTP requests.
Alas we’re still not quite at that nirvana stage yet. While “most” of the technology is in place, some of the core features that would really make this technology fly are missing (or at least I’ve not located their API yet).
The XmlHttpRequest/Response objects work fine, but if we’re going to allow the browser to parse XML and display content, the XML parser on the client side (i.e. in the browser) has got to become much better. The DOM API stinks!! Sure - it’ll work, but at the expense of making you crazy. Sure, JavaScript 1.6 fills this need by making XML a first class object, but so far the release candidate implementation lacks XPath support. What’s a “future looking” developer to do?
At this point it seems best to generate very simple XML structures on the server. To “pre-assemble” the XML for best parsing by the browser instead of having XML that represents the best “data structure”. Creating server-side processes that deliver simple XML to the browser from original, complex XML seems to be the easiest path. Even better would be to just deliver the HTML and leave all the XML processing on the server.
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