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0 pointsskinnymuch6y ago0 comments

Should Microsoft get credit for inventing Ajax and having the first real world functioning example of it?

0 comments

They do deserve some credit for intentionally introducing that feature to the browser as a standard feature, but the notion of fetching data without reloading the page wasn't novel at all.

That's what Java applets and plugins were for.

I'm also pretty sure they weren't the first to fetch data from the server without reloading, because people were doing all sorts of novel things in the mid-90s with plugins.

The reason it didn't really take off back then wasn't because of vision. It was because there was so little you could do with JavaScript. The browsers were still implementing the basic features and a lot of page/component manipulation was very broken. Applets and plug-ins were so much more capable.

stan_rogers6y ago

Loading into a hidden or pixel-sized iframe (or ilayer in NS) was a thing before XMLHttpRequest as well. In what would now seem a scary technique, you would use JS to load more JS (plus data, of course) that would put the new data into the iframe's host page.

steego6y ago

I used Remote Scripting as well. It was a reliable enough hack that we built a lot of stuff on it. But I don’t think it was intended to be used that way when Netscape released JavaScript in ‘95.

mark-r6y ago

I remember when Java first came out. It seemed like a new and improved C++ and I was intrigued. When it became clear that it was being positioned as purely an applet language I lost all interest.

Then along came Javascript with its transparent attempt to ride the coattails of Java by adopting a similar name. No interest in that either.

steego6y ago

You're right that Java was being promoted as a front-end language at first (Sun found a customer for Java), but I'm pretty sure the intent was to generate excitement by finding a killer app and then expand the market from there.

Also, Java applets and JavaScript were added to Netscape 2.0 at the same time and were meant to complement each other, not compete. It may seem like Java came first because JavaScript was called LiveScript for the first three months. I also don't think the JavaScript name change was intended to ride the coattails of Java, rather it was clarify and harmonize its relationship to Java.

I still look back and I'm amazed at how much stuff happened between the summer of '95 and winter '96. Windows 95 release. Netscape went public. 2.0 released 1 month later introducing Java and JavaScript, etc. etc. etc.

mark-r6y ago

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that my reaction was any kind of truth about the situation. I'm just recalling the thoughts I can remember from that time, hoping that they have some relevance.

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tasogare6y ago

> The browsers were still implementing the basic features

And they are still doing it. CSS Grid is not even 3 years old.

mr_toad6y ago

> Applets and plug-ins were so much more capable.

Except that they couldn’t alter the DOM, or handle events on DOM elements, the two things that developers really needed (even if they didn’t know it).

steego6y ago

So the DOM was introduced in 1998, three years after applets and plugins. In 1995, you could write JavaScript code to dynamically render a page on load using document.write, but updating the rendered HTML was another story. Otherwise, JavaScript was limited to very very simple things.

When DHTML was introduced in '97-'98, the only major browser that had a reliable DOM was IE until Firefox came around in 2002. Netscape tried, but it was buggy to the point where there were no real workarounds to the huge gaps in missing functionality.

As far as 1995 was concerned, applets and plugins looked like the future. Honestly, the web was so new and so inferior to other things in 1995 (Macromedia, WYSIWYG tools, etc.), I think most of us saw HTML being replaced in a few years by a richer clients, applets or plugins.

weq6y ago

Thats why people wrote Applets. Even if u wanted manipulate the dom (u could), u didnt, because the Applet was so much faster and more feature rich.

thedance6y ago

What did you need plugins for? Netscape and MSIE both were able to add a script tag to the DOM dynamically, and that was all you needed to build the rest of it.

steego6y ago

You were able to use document.write somewhat dynamically, but the not reliably across all the browsers. Even if you did make an RPC call, there wasn't a lot you could do with it presentation wise because DHTML was two years away. (Even then, IE was the only one who had a decent implementation for a number of years after that.)

Plugins and applets filled a huge gap functionality wise.

thedance6y ago

You must have been before me. NN and MSIE 4 both had what we now call DOM Level 1, in 1997.

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j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

steego6y ago

They do deserve some credit for intentionally introducing that feature to the browser as a standard feature, but the notion of fetching data without reloading the page wasn't novel at all.

That's what Java applets and plugins were for.

I'm also pretty sure they weren't the first to fetch data from the server without reloading, because people were doing all sorts of novel things in the mid-90s with plugins.

stan_rogers6y ago

steego6y ago

I used Remote Scripting as well. It was a reliable enough hack that we built a lot of stuff on it. But I don’t think it was intended to be used that way when Netscape released JavaScript in ‘95.

mark-r6y ago

I remember when Java first came out. It seemed like a new and improved C++ and I was intrigued. When it became clear that it was being positioned as purely an applet language I lost all interest.

Then along came Javascript with its transparent attempt to ride the coattails of Java by adopting a similar name. No interest in that either.

steego6y ago

mark-r6y ago

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that my reaction was any kind of truth about the situation. I'm just recalling the thoughts I can remember from that time, hoping that they have some relevance.

1 more reply

tasogare6y ago

> The browsers were still implementing the basic features

And they are still doing it. CSS Grid is not even 3 years old.

mr_toad6y ago

> Applets and plug-ins were so much more capable.

Except that they couldn’t alter the DOM, or handle events on DOM elements, the two things that developers really needed (even if they didn’t know it).

steego6y ago

weq6y ago

Thats why people wrote Applets. Even if u wanted manipulate the dom (u could), u didnt, because the Applet was so much faster and more feature rich.

thedance6y ago

What did you need plugins for? Netscape and MSIE both were able to add a script tag to the DOM dynamically, and that was all you needed to build the rest of it.

steego6y ago

Plugins and applets filled a huge gap functionality wise.

thedance6y ago

You must have been before me. NN and MSIE 4 both had what we now call DOM Level 1, in 1997.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse