XXX 2.0

Hehehe, NO, THIS IS NOT ABOUT PORN! :-)

One of the big things used in Web 2.0 applications is AJAX (Assyncronous JavaScript and XML), that basicly uses XMLHttpRequest (XHR). Two weeks ago I was in Coimbra talking with a couple of friends that are working on Web development about one big issue I find in "the Web 2.0 world" (and I'm not talking about Yahoo! and Google's guys, I'm more talking about techcrunchies): people are more interested in making something that "just works, was quickly made, and feels sweet for me" than something really good - with acessibility, interoperability, that works with standards and in every browser. If nowadays we don't have (and still despise) that many kind of guys who tell "I don't care about your browser, this works on IE so it's fine", it's not because we had a mind shift, but just because IE sucks. That means that most Webbies now code Web 2.0 apps full of AJAX and Flash, but they don't really care if the webapp works on IE or Opera, if a BSD user can see it (remember that Flash's license forbids you to run Flash in anything but Linux, Windows, Solaris or Mac OS), accessibility, or... standards. Yes, people are quite happy to use Dojo and Prototype of stuff like that, and if they were used to be pissed off with stuff like "oh no, XHR won't let me do cross-site requests!" and write some (awful and secureless) proxies to avoid the problem, now they'll just use yet another framework that does the job for them. But THEN... no one is caring about standards anymore - again.

So, I was telling them, if someone wants to really mark a shift of paradigm on the Web, what we really need is to change the Web: and it's frustrating to see so many people working on Javascript functions with hundreds of lines to get "The Next Effect (TM)" but none of them being working with organizations like the W3C folks to help the development of the new XHTML version, the new Javascript version, the new XMLHttpRequest version, ... And those developments are groing slowly - waaay to slow.

Thus, and to return to this post title, it was decided that, before the release of XMLHttpRequest 2, the cross-site extensions to XMLHttpRequest are going to be released, and the acronym to "Cross-site Extensions to XMLHttpRequest" is XXX.

So my chalenge to those webbies out there is that at least you should read the third (and for now latest) purposal of XXX and comment.

Remember: if you're using HTML and Javascript and stuff like that for a living, if their flaws piss you off, if their niceties make you feel some work days worthy, then YOU'RE THE ONE who could turn your future better - cause all those specs are open for discussion.

PS -> BTW, for those who think that I'm being way to harsh on the usability issue with web 2.0 websites... Did you ever tried to post a comment on websites like TechCrunch using Opera Mini?