Ajax Blog

OpenAjax Alliance Launches Its Second Wave

Posted in Ajax News by Dion Almaer on the February 6th, 2008

The 100+ members of OpenAjax Alliance recently approved the release of OpenAjax Hub 1.0, including the OpenAjax Hub 1.0 Specification, an open source reference implementation at SourceForge, and a complete test suite. OpenAjax Hub 1.0 is a small JavaScript library (<3K) that allows multiple Ajax toolkits to work together on the same browser frame. The central feature is a publish/subscribe event manager, which enables loose assembly and integration of Ajax components. OpenAjax Hub 1.0 allows multiple conformance options for Ajax libraries, some of which require only a couple of lines of new code. Some existing Ajax libraries, such as Dojo 1.0, bundle OpenAjax Hub 1.0 within their distribution.

The alliance’s second-generation initiatives will focus on secure mashups. OpenAjax Hub 1.1 will add support secure mashups, publish/subscribe across browser frames, and publish/subscribe between clients and servers (including Comet-based communications). A complementary second initiative, OpenAjax Metadata, will define industry standard Ajax library metadata that will be used by Ajax developer tools (i.e., IDEs) and mashup editors to create improved user experiences. OpenAjax Metadata will define:

  • Standard XML metadata for “widgets”, where widgets can be either the various UI controls found in Ajax toolkits or can be mini-applications such as Google Gadgets that can be used as components within a mashup. This metadata will allow Ajax IDEs to auto-populate widget palettes and property editors.
  • Standard XML metadata for JavaScript APIs, which will allow Ajax IDEs to deliver intelligent code-assist features to JavaScript developers.

The alliance also will provide open source transcoders that allow existing proprietary widget/gadget technologies, such as Google Gadgets, to work with Hub 1.1 and OpenAjax Metadata, plus an open source mini mashup framework that leverages OpenAjax Hub 1.1 and OpenAjax Metadata. Early versions of these open source initiatives can be found at the OpenAjax Alliance project at Sourceforge.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/230281034/openajax-alliance-launches-its-second-wave

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