Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ajax craze started with XML. JSON came later.
Ajax started with Al Gore, without whom the internet would have never been invented :p
Wow everybody serious on ycombinator. Can't even make a joke about Al Gore anymore.
Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#22Who's idea was it, and who built it? While history generally gets rewritten towards a simplified, single-victor model (e.g. Edison and electricity, Ford and assembly lines), there is no simple answer to this because the need for a scripted way to load and consume content was very widespread. There were a number of solutions at the time. The most prevalent was simply having a hidden iframe (which actually worked quite…
Just because an invention appears to be inevitable, it doesn't mean the actual inventor doesn't deserve a ton of credit.
Credit is absolutely due for using the monopoly distribution of Microsoft (that is not a slur, but it is simple truth that such components from other vendors could not have the same impact) to essentially sneak a simple HTTP ActiveX component through in the MSXML library, making such dynamic web tasks simpler. Credit is also due to the people who developed and implemented COM and ActiveX and safe-for-scripting (all heavily maligned), making it possible in the first place.
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#23I'd like to know the first guy to send json over the wire starting the ajax craze.
JSON is great for sending javascript objects over the network. However, the way most people use it, they'd benefit from switching to CSV files instead. JSON has a lot of overhead (each instance of each object has to have a name), but it's better than xml.
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#24I'd like to know the first guy to send json over the wire starting the ajax craze.
Douglas Crockford, as that was the first thing JSON (as a data format) was used for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#History
Crockford has said that people were using JSON before he "discovered" it. That's why he says he discovered rather than invented it.
Unfortunately I don't remember who those people were, but anyone who used XmlHttpRequest, which was apparently there in the 90's, could have used it.
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#25XMLHttpRequest was the critical piece in enabling proper browser applications. If it had come from Firefox and the functionality it made possible was not available on IE the uptake would have been minimal.While is has been beyond fantastic for the world, the results have been terrible for Microsoft and key to the diminishing importance of Windows. I would thus count XMLHttpRequest as an own goal.
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ajax started with Al Gore, without whom the internet would have never been invented :p
Wow everybody serious on ycombinator. Can't even make a joke about Al Gore anymore.
It's not that everyone's serious, it's that this community's greatest fear is that HN will get overrun by frivolous comments and other weeds. As a result, one of the tradeoffs that's evolved is that people reflexively downvote jokes. (Non-funny jokes get hammered particularly hard.) It's best not to take it personally and work on one's noise/signal ratio.
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#27Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#28I love getting history like this. I'll add to the question if any Microsoftians are around: who decided to call it XMLHttpRequest?
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because an invention appears to be inevitable, it doesn't mean the actual inventor doesn't deserve a ton of credit.
Credit is absolutely due for using the monopoly distribution of Microsoft (that is not a slur, but it is simple truth that such components from other vendors could not have the same impact) to essentially sneak a simple HTTP ActiveX component through in the MSXML library, making such dynamic web tasks simpler. Credit is also due to the people who developed and implemented COM and ActiveX and safe-for-scripting (all h…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Who built XMLHttpRequest at Microsoft in 1999?
#30Who's idea was it, and who built it? While history generally gets rewritten towards a simplified, single-victor model (e.g. Edison and electricity, Ford and assembly lines), there is no simple answer to this because the need for a scripted way to load and consume content was very widespread. There were a number of solutions at the time. The most prevalent was simply having a hidden iframe (which actually worked quite…
Yeah, dont credit Apple for ipod, iphone or ipad, dont credit Mark Zukerberg for social networking, Bill Gates to bring philanthropy to main stream, a government to find the terrorist of Boston attacks, It was all inevitable!