In the plan of creating a wordpress theme for my website, I decided to take this opportunity to learn the nuts and bulbs of the web2.0.  The essence of web2.0 is AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML.  This acronym sounds quite complicate, but the idea is very simple.  In short, web2.0 has two major aspects.  First, update a portion of a web page on the fly by fetching new data from the server using the XMLHttpRequest object built into the browser.  Second, using the graphic user interface javascript to create windows-like applications that runs inside the browser.

There are many AJAX libraries out there provide nice interfaces that handle most of the low level functions.  I won’t consider any commercial packages since they don’t justify the cost.  Microsoft, Yahoo and Google offer free proprietary packages, but I won’t consider them.  Microsoft Altas is so retarded and you can only use it inside visual studio.  Google web toolkit is a bit odd, first you have to write java code then compile it into javascript.  The Yahoo library is in pretty good shape, but it still can’t beat the dojo open source library.  Dojo seems to be the most all rounded AJAX library.  It has over 3MB of source code!  Scriptaculous comes in a distant second, lacking many useful features.  Dojo have all the bit and pieces required to assembly a web application that rival the functions of a windows-based application.  The only thing that still need a native windows application is number crunching jobs, such as drawing 3D graphics or processing huge data files.

Web2.0 is still in early development stage.  There are many competing AJAX libraries and everyone is reinventing the wheel.  It is very important to beg on the right horse early on, so later on I won’t stuck with a dying technology.  Dojo is the current leader in the game with support from IBM and other big players.  I am going to pick Dojo as the primary AJAX library for my new website.