Five Ajax's Disruptive Influences

Mainly inspired by Dion Hinchcliffe

As we were developing SKY-click back office’s interfaces in AJAX, it occurred to us that this technology would induce very important changes for users as well as for the computing industry.

This is a major – revolutionary – progress, sorry for the AJAX and web 2.0 sceptics.

I’d like to summarize five points of the effect of “disruptive technology” implied by the use of AJAX and other components such as Java or PHP 5.

End of downloaded upgrades, patches and bug fixes :
The software is downloaded for each new user: upgrades, bug fixes are immediately operational. No more heavy downloads or updates disturbing the OS.

Your customized software, wherever you go :
No more hazardous synchronisation, no more back-up : my data stays within the application and is reachable from all around the world. Data can also be shared for collaborative works.

A simple software – OS independent :
There are lots of simplified integration possibilities: RSS with statistics, bills to pay on a single page, like a magical office moving with you. The solution is OS independent: it is enough for it to be compliant with the browser. No more multiple adaptations between Linux, Mac or Windows, etc.

An OS in the OS :
The software reacts as a small operating system in a desktop looking exactly like a Mac or Windows XP desktop: data drag & drop, windows moving and resize, skin customization, high end and user-customizable ergonomics. Usability and ergonomics have been entirely rethought, making the use of navigation menus totally obsolete.

Beyond one to one :
AJAX will revolutionize the way I act: I do, I write, I sort, I delete, I buy, etc. The software recalls of my actions, like Amazon, but at home, in my browser. It is able to provide with information adapted to my profile, in real time, to display my priority tasks, my e-mails sorted by importance, my news, to suggest tunes, my pictures, to target relevant ads, etc. By learning everything about me, and of course by socializing some or all of my contents, to enrich in a bidirectional mode thousands of other AJAX clients.

This is a HUGE change, predicting the progressive extinct of the use of OS as they are now as well as the “forced reverse engineering” in every known application. Installers will be sent to trash, billions of code lines, tens of obsolete Frameworks, habits transformed in one sole goal: optimize the man-machine relationship.

To illustrate this post, let’s meet on this website, which will preview in a spectacular way a Mac OS X Tiger interface (beta), visible under Windows XP in a matter of seconds, showing the way of personalization in the browser.