lievre2mars

Hello everyone, In an attempt to correct some ideas (or somethings looking like mistakes) previously read on this topic, here are some facts about Ajax, ActiveX and Buzzen approach to webchat. After making small tests, you can easily find out that: - Current Buzzen v2 webchat does not work on IE 64bits due to a lack in ActiveX support, - Current Buzzen V2 webchat does not work on IE 32bits *if you disabled ActiveX support or cross scripting between javascript and ActiveXs*. And then you probably tell you "why is that, if they don't use ActiveX" ? Just because they appear to use Flash Player for client to server communication. In fact, Javascript, even thought XMLHttpRequest objects (the base object of Ajax) is not able to maintain a connection as it was designed to work with HTTP protocol requests, which are intended to be quick and small ones. In an attempt to solve this issue, they seem to have decided to work with a flash application working together with javascript so that it can send requests and keep connected to the IRC server. why not. The issue with flash is that it has no IE 64bits plugin, and is implemented under IE 32bits as an ActiveX. On other browsers and/or other platforms, Flash player is implemented in a browser-specific plugin way as there is not yet (but hopefully one day) a commonly used plugin format supported by all browsers (like opera, firefox, safari...). Sure you can say that it might not be a big issue because flash player is quite wide spread, but it would be worth ignoring this dependency of the Buzzen v2 webchat. Anyway, to say things in the right manner, ActiveX and AJAX approaches are completely different. ActiveX are written in native code and is a technology exploiting the Component Object Model (COM) integrated in windows to add functionnalities to applications designed to interact throught COM/ATL (Active Template Library); COM containers can be internet explorer, windows file explorer, windows shell or any other application. Internet explorer is just one special case of the ActiveX technology usage. Ajax is Javascript-based so that it is interpreted, has some browser dependencies (but well most browser support DOM, XMLHttpRequest and other quite standardized ways to work) but is (natively) not sufficient for maintaining a connection due to its limited actions. As such, buzzen seems to have used a flash application to fix the problem; this might be a limitation but i believe that's the best way they found. Javascript is also a wide spread technology but it does not define how browsers should handle memory allocation, garbage collections and some other issues that can make JS take resources, like any other application would do (but maybe more, it's difficult to say and very varying). Finally, i didn't have much time to look at buzzen v2 webchat area, but it looks like no javascript on the webchat (especially not on the page where the chat area is done) uses XMLHttpRequest objects. You may say "so what ?" and I may answer "so this is no Ajax without XMLHttpRequest s". If you read DHTML (Dynamic HTML) definition as stated on Wikipedia: This is exactly matching what seems to be done on buzzen v2 webchat site: HTML4, CSS, Javascript (which may include DOM manipulations). Ajax is the usage of all this plus XML and sending asynchronous HTTP requests from Javascript and processing the result to present it using (X)HTML and CSS (and it's not limited to that). It's not only about formatting text using javascript and displaying it using HTML and CSS by communicating with a flash application which is more in the DHTML scope. As for XForms, it is an intent to provide an XML-description language for forms that is presentation-INdependant. It is, as stated on wikipedia, much like attempting to define a MVC DP (Model View Controller design pattern, quite a complicated one as there are many approaches and derivations of it). Sure it could be used probably with AJAX but it is not a way to standardize AJAX as far as i can see it from reading currently or previewed released XForms specifications. Laughing at someone saying that ActiveX is not that insecure if users are smart and controls are *signed* (otherwise ie6 sp2 and ie7 do not let them execute) looks to me quite incorrect coming from someone who is speaking about AJAX, XForms and related technologies without seemingly reading reference documentations or technologies behaviour. To finish with, i am not blaming anyone here but just want people to be smart when writing and not to hide behind popular technology names. Thanks for those who read this message entirely, Have a nice day, Lievre2mars P.S. I think you're right Xplozion, the matter is "where users wanna be". But changeing users habits a lot is always like betting against users as so many changes as Buzzen is doing can be seen by users as migrating to something completely new, which is quite the same as changeing from a service to another. P.P.S. If you see mistakes or incorrect things in this message do not hesitate to tell it ^^