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Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

alexhopmann.com

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Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#21

Post by insightful »

netcommentator wrote: post #4

XmlHttpRequest is an awesome innovation from the point of view of the software development community as a whole. But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster. XmlHttpRequest and ContentEditableDiv (known back then as DesignMode) ushered in Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 ended Microsoft's dominance of the software industry by making Windows irrelevant.

But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster.

As one of the very first outsiders to actually use MSXML in a project (with the Usenet archives to prove it), embracing it when the first betas came out...

...not really. The web was just starting to become active and interactive, and there was a huge pent up need for this, and actually dozens of disparate solutions. The most common was simply using a hidden frame (security controls were vastly simpler), or a Java applet for the comms. Microsoft provided a widely released solution just as the industry was bursting with need, so it go embraced, but if they didn't other options were quickly poised to fill the void.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#22

Post by insightful »

bboreham wrote: post #14
netcommentator wrote: post #4

XmlHttpRequest is an awesome innovation from the point of view of the software development community as a whole. But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster. XmlHttpRequest and ContentEditableDiv (known back then as DesignMode) ushered in Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 ended Microsoft's dominance of the software industry by making Windows irrelevant.

Recall that at the time Java was set to make Windows irrelevant. Microsoft had a massive success, via XML, in derailing this future. To explain a little, the Sun position was "use Java to write everything; then it all talks together nicely". But folks realised they could use XML to tie different pieces together and relegated Java to the server. Yes, there were other other ways to interop, eg CORBA, but they were ugly…

This is just not right at all (and one is a document data format, the other an IPC, so the comparison is flawed to begin with), not to mention that you're focusing far too much on the XML aspect which was utterly irrelevant in this case -- MSXMLHTTP actually had nothing to do with XML.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#23

Post by pavlov »

The first time I used dynamically loaded XML in the browser was in 2000, but it wasn't XMLHttpRequest -- it was in Flash.

Flash 5 came out that year, and the player was ubiquitous at something like 98% market penetration (it was preloaded by both Microsoft and Apple).

That was the first release that included real ECMAScript-compatible ActionScript, and it also had APIs for asynchronously fetching XML data. IIRC implementing it on a server was somehow tricky, but it was my first taste of a true rich client in the browser.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#24

Post by userbinator »

EdSharkey wrote: post #19
netcommentator wrote: post #4

XmlHttpRequest is an awesome innovation from the point of view of the software development community as a whole. But from a Microsoft shareholder's point of view it was a disaster. XmlHttpRequest and ContentEditableDiv (known back then as DesignMode) ushered in Web 2.0 and Web 2.0 ended Microsoft's dominance of the software industry by making Windows irrelevant.

I get a bit paranoid that some high schooler who will be the world's next Bill Gates is reading your post and think, "hmm, I've got to keep a lookout for any of my developers building XmlHttpRequest-like technology that paves the way for my future monopoly to get busted up prematurely!" Imagine if someone in Microsoft had a clue and was able to constrain the browser to being a simple scripted document viewer? I'm con…

Imagine if someone in Microsoft had a clue and was able to constrain the browser to being a simple scripted document viewer? I'm convinced suppressing client-side web application development would have lent the Windows OS a few more years of platform and developer mindshare dominance!

...and the web might have turned out to be a bit less user-hostile and inefficiently resource-consuming than it currently is today, which might not be so bad after all.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#25

Post by pluma »

xenadu02 wrote: post #3

I thought this was well-known? Microsoft invented it for OWA but didn't realize what they had. A few years later other people realized how transformative it was and evangelized it. Other browsers added compatible implementations. The rest is history. It is amusing to see the take in Avalon since we now know how that turned out. His complaints about HTML/JS/DOM are spot-on but it turns out the solution was to improve…

I'd actually find an Avalon post mortem more interesting. I remember it being the big new thing to replace all things and then it just vanished into obscurity.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#26

Post by mseebach »

xenadu02 wrote: post #3

I thought this was well-known? Microsoft invented it for OWA but didn't realize what they had. A few years later other people realized how transformative it was and evangelized it. Other browsers added compatible implementations. The rest is history. It is amusing to see the take in Avalon since we now know how that turned out. His complaints about HTML/JS/DOM are spot-on but it turns out the solution was to improve…

> I thought this was well-known?

One of the reasons the story is well known is that key people involved cared to write it down and share it. So here we are.

Re: Story of XMLHTTP (2007)

#27

Post by nilved »

xenadu02 wrote: post #3

I thought this was well-known? Microsoft invented it for OWA but didn't realize what they had. A few years later other people realized how transformative it was and evangelized it. Other browsers added compatible implementations. The rest is history. It is amusing to see the take in Avalon since we now know how that turned out. His complaints about HTML/JS/DOM are spot-on but it turns out the solution was to improve…

I don't know the situation, but I think that you have it backwards when you say "didn't realize what they had." If what they had was a progenitor to XMLHttpRequest, a feature which almost single-handedly broke the Web, they probably were trying to cram it back into Pandora's box before anyone noticed.
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