Features

"We've seen the Web moving from a publishing paradigm to an e-business paradigm to an AJAX paradigm." That is the considered verdict of IBM Software Group's CTO of Emerging Internet Technologies, David Boloker. And he's right: AJAX is here, it's growing, and it's (potentially) the biggest thing to hit the i-Technology world since Java.

For those who dislike talk of "paradigm shifts" and suchlike, on principle, let's examine why this particular shift is more than just marketeering, for once.

For a start, it's not new...only the name is. Which means that the AJAX approach - for it is more an approach than it is a technolog in itself - is in fact already tried and true.

Secondly, its naming last year - by Jesse James Garrett (pictured), of Adaptive Path - has caught on not because the i-Technology world needed another acronym - it surely doesn't - but because it is the right acronym at the right time for the right approach. A triple whammy, if you will.

Plus no-one owns it.

The key indicator, the reason that even BusinessWeek has begun to sit up and take notice of AJAX, comes in the form of the business websites which are beginning to use AJAX, such as The GAP and Apple. Because the driver of AJAX is not that it's fashionable, it's that it is profitable.

For Gap, you can choose the color of your pullover, its size and the rest, and the page automatically refreshes the price without reloading. That means increase of speed and for virtual shops, which in turn raises the potential amount of money online shoppers might spend in the same session.

Next Page: What People Are Saying About AJAX