gah jargon
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Jul 04, 2007 11:13 AM EDT |
What is 'the semantic Web'?? Who invents these goofy terms anyway? I thought 'Web 2.0' was dopey, but this is even worse. signed, curmudgeon who longs for the old days of plain English |
| jdixon Jul 04, 2007 11:23 AM EDT |
> ...curmudgeon who longs for the old days of plain English Showing you age TC? :) I don't think I've seen plain English used for these types of articles in my memory. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 04, 2007 3:17 PM EDT |
The semantic web is an old term. You should know it. It predates web 2.0. The semantic web means that information should be tagged as what it is, not how it looks. For regular internet pages that means using em instead of italic, using strong instead of bold, using CSS for layout. Have proper class names, implement microformats, etcetera. |
| jdixon Jul 04, 2007 4:01 PM EDT |
> The semantic web is an old term. That depends on your definition of old. :) I don't think it dates back past the turn of the century. > For regular internet pages that means using em instead of italic, using strong instead of bold, using CSS for layout. Have proper class names, implement microformats, etcetera. All that newfangled HTML 4.x stuff. :) |
| tuxchick Jul 04, 2007 4:15 PM EDT |
Thank you sander, for reinforcing my rant. :) |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 04, 2007 4:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:> The semantic web is an old term. In internet terms, it's ancient. Hell, even "web 3.0" is getting old! |
| jdixon Jul 04, 2007 4:30 PM EDT |
> In internet terms, it's ancient. Hell, even "web 3.0" is getting old! Sander, I've been using the Net since my latter Delphi days (1991 or so from memory), and that makes me a relative latecomer by some standards. I've been using the web since sometime in 1994 when I discovered the Mosaic browser, and realized that it was the one application which made using Windows worthwhile. I don't consider anything from this century old. |
| azerthoth Jul 04, 2007 5:59 PM EDT |
jdixon, since 1991 was last century ... you get my point *grin* |
| dcparris Jul 05, 2007 1:39 AM EDT |
Web 3.0? Sheesh! I need to get out more often! |
| dinotrac Jul 05, 2007 2:02 AM EDT |
>Web 3.0? Sheesh! I need to get out more often! Man, Rev, you ARE behind the times. I'm up to Web 4.6, Revision A. It's a brilliant move forward. We have removed all the annoying crap that makes the web so hard to live with and boiled it down to the essentials. Everything is done with this stuff called HTML. We use HTML version 3.2 right now, but Revision B will see us moving to HTML 2.0. The ground's the limit, man. |
| jacog Jul 05, 2007 2:32 AM EDT |
I too have objections to all this terminology that keeps propping up. A lot of it is just pointless... AJAX, for example... people talk about it as if it's a development platform, but in the end, it's just a new-ish term, describing a concept that's been around since the late 90s. They used to call it Javascript remoting...but nooooo, someone had to go stick a new name on it and claim it as his own invention. I should do the same... from now, all cars will come with wheels that use the new ROWBOAT (Rotation Of Wheels By Orbiting Along Tread) TM technology that I invented... it's the concept of the wheels making a full 360 degree rotation in order to move the vehicle forward an equal distance to the circumference of the wheel itself. No really, it's never been done before. I should register a patent. |
| dinotrac Jul 05, 2007 3:14 AM EDT |
jacog - That sounds really cool. Being fairly poor, my cars are more than ten years old, so I'm stuck with old-fashioned acronym-free wheels. Are you planning to make ROWBOAT upgrades available for older cars, or will I have to upgrade my entire hardware platform? |
| jacog Jul 05, 2007 3:30 AM EDT |
That sounds suspiciously like a support query. Are your product support fees paid up to date? I'm afraid I can't answer your question until you validate your license key with us. Of course, if you didn't buy your wheels from us, you are breaking the law and we'll have to sue you. |
| dinotrac Jul 05, 2007 3:39 AM EDT |
>Are your product support fees paid up to date? I'm afraid I can't answer your question until you validate your license key with us. Crap. Always trying to squeeze the little guy. |
| tqk Jul 06, 2007 10:12 AM EDT |
dino: Quoting:Being fairly poor, my cars are more than ten years old, so I'm stuck with old-fashioned acronym-free wheels.Hey, I'll take 'em off your hands for you. This Finnish guy came up with some neat Free acronym support stuff that I can apply to them. Lemme know where I can pick 'em up. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 06, 2007 12:56 PM EDT |
Quoting:AJAX, for example... people talk about it as if it's a development platform, but in the end, it's just a new-ish term, describing a concept that's been around since the late 90s. Agreed. As I wrote on another forum when I explained why I lambasted a newbie "programmer" yelling "help me with drop down menu's that use AJAX": Quoting:I am growing really, really tired with the AJAX hype. It's overused, often used incorrect and 75% of what labels itself as "AJAX" out there, isn't AJAX at all. Learn some decent XHTML, CSS2, some normal javascript and some XLST. Then come back talking about AJAX. |
| Abe Jul 06, 2007 3:19 PM EDT |
jacog & Sander_Marechal:Quoting:I am growing really, really tired with the AJAX hype. It's overused, often used incorrect and 75% of what labels itself as "AJAX" out there, isn't AJAX at all. Learn some decent XHTML, CSS2, some normal javascript and some XLST. Then come back talking about AJAX. I happen to believe that AJAX is a very powerful technique with multiple benefits. I am a fan of AJAX and have been using for about a year. Before I jump all over you, let us have a meaningful discussion starting with couple questions I have Why do you think it is over hyped? Is it because it is being talked about a lot? How much do you know about it? Have you used it to develop database web based applications? |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 06, 2007 3:43 PM EDT |
I'll answer in reverse order:Quoting:How much do you know about it? Have you used it to develop database web based applications? Plenty and yes. I'm not saying that AJAX isn't usefull because it does have it uses, especially in more complicated web applications. There's a distinction between a web application and a website. Quoting:Why do you think it is over hyped? Is it because it is being talked about a lot? Because it's being abused and misunderstood on a such a massive scale that I haven't seen since Flash reared it's head for the first time. AJAX should be limited to XML powered web applications. It has no business being on websites in general for the most part (there are always a few exceptions though). Don't forget that the percentage of people without JavaScript support is increasing, not decreasing. Not because of lack of browser support but because more and more people simply turn it off except for a few websites they frequent. Also, most of the AJAX powered websites don't even use AJAX. They use an XMLHTTPRequest to fetch some HTML from the server that's directly spliced into the page. The X in AJAX is for XML. As in XML/XSLT transformation and XML DOM. Client-side XML processing. Moving load from the server to the client. That's what AJAX is about. It's not about getting those 5 And I am really, really tired of newbies that barely grasp HTML and javascrip and have no knowledge of serverside scripting or XML asking on my webdev forum* about how to implement theit next Ice Hockey MMORPG with AJAX on a Geocities page. Apologies for the rant. EDIT: I forgot to mention that AJAX also usually breaks usability/accessibility and messes up the browser UI, because it no longer works the way a user expects it to work (much like frames do). Forward/back buttons don't work as expected for example. Bookmarking works badly. Etcetera. Most of the things that make frames bad also make AJAX for websites bad. And I really hate websites that mess with the way I expect my browser to behave. Links that open in a new window still piss me off. Links that are really javascript links instead of regular links (and make middle-click "open in new tab" fail) even more so. Maybe I'm just getting old though... :-) * I'm also a moderator on Gamedev.net's web development forum. |
| dinotrac Jul 06, 2007 6:22 PM EDT |
Sander - Bless you. A partner of mine keeps talking about using AJAX for his web site/modest application. I keep asking him why. AJAX is lovely when you need to do some AJAXness. Most of the time, I hear people wanting to do things that can be done more simply and efficiently by other means. |
| Abe Jul 06, 2007 6:31 PM EDT |
Fair enoughQuoting:There's a distinction between a web application and a website.I agree. On the other hand, AJAX could be very beneficial to both although more so for Web applications than web sites. Here some of the benefits: Much less data transfer over the network. In bench mark test (I can't find the link now), it was determined that AJAX based web sites reduces network traffic by up to 70% compared to traditional sites. Granted this is not the norm, but in most cases this is pretty close. Ex. (I had better, which I can't locate now) http://www.webperformanceinc.com/library/reports/AjaxBandwid... http://www.flex888.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/riaperform... How is that done? Well, with AJAX, you only need to transfer only relevant data instead of a total refresh. AJAX makes web browsing much better user experience. more responsive, no loss of data that is already entered, Dynamic data added or changed from database without having to change or create new windows. Browser only refreshes individual regions instead popping a new window or tab. Who needs backward or forward any more. Beside, with tabs, you rarely need to use back any more. AJAX allows you to create libraries of Javascripts and seamlessly facilitates exchange of data between PHP, etc... with Javascripts. When it comes to database application, nothing beats AJAX & PHP. Dynamic drop down fed with data from database is not as easy to do without AJAX especially when you have inter-depended select option drop downs. When retrieving from and storing data in databases, AJAX & PHP (others) are just the perfect tools. And you don't have to use a single code of XML although it would be much easier and more structured with XML. Have you used Google Maps and such? Google is basically the one who made AJAX popular. They are using in Google Maps, Google Desktop, GMail, and Google Office apps, which are still under heavy development. MS used it first in the form of ActiveX but didn't want it to be widely spread because they did want to create a competition to their desktop. But now it is popular and the benefits are obvious, they are racing to catch up and developing its own framework (I think it is called ATLAS). Even MS sees its potential and reluctantly getting on it too. Look at their new site http://live.com. Without AJAX, most of such sites couldn't have been possible to do the things they do. Their SharPoint is not based on AJAX yet, but they are making major switch to make it more user friendly and pleasant using AJAX. Quoting:I forgot to mention that AJAX also usually breaks usability/accessibility and messes up the browser UIOnly if the application is not designed with AJAX interface in mind from the bottom up and top down. There are many user benefits and if I show you the application I have written, unfortunately I can, I am sure you will agree that AJAX is not just hype. I think we will see much more when FireFox 3.0 comes out with the off-line enabled features. |
| tuxchick Jul 06, 2007 8:23 PM EDT |
I associate AJAX and Web 2.0 with horrible lardy sites that offload their (unnecessarily complicated) processing and dynamic page-building to the client, which makes browsing the site as much fun as slogging through cold frozen mud. Something as simple as scrolling the page becomes this heroic act. All of this here dynamic guff and shoving the work onto the client is most unnecessary, and hardly ever done right. Exhibit A: Digg.com. Ew ew digg SUX. |
| jezuch Jul 07, 2007 4:09 AM EDT |
Quoting:which makes browsing the site as much fun as slogging through cold frozen mud. ...especially on my 6 year old Athlon XP, which is my home computer and which is fast enough for everything (and I'm a programmer) except AJAX-enabled sites. |
| montezuma Jul 07, 2007 5:58 AM EDT |
IANAL but AFAIK IMHO IIAC ROFLMAO |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 07, 2007 7:10 AM EDT |
Quoting:Dynamic drop down fed with data from database is not as easy to do without AJAX especially when you have inter-depended select option drop downs. This is about the only thing that makes sense to use on a normal website. And only if the amount of options is large. If it's small, just have PHP spit out a JavaScript array and do it without the client->server->client roundtrip. Quoting:When retrieving from and storing data in databases, AJAX & PHP (others) are just the perfect tools. And you don't have to use a single code of XML And here's my big beef with the AJAX hype. Without XML it isn't AJAX! Without XML it's just a HTTP Request. Plain old 1990's JavaScript. Nothing more. It's AJA or AJAH but not AJAX. And it's old. |
| Abe Jul 07, 2007 7:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:A partner of mine keeps talking about using AJAX for his web site/modest application.I guess we mostly agree on the benefits of using AJAX in certain cases. the questions becomes, "when to or not to AJAX" I guess one must put a list of features & capabilities together before designing a web site to determine the answer. On key criteria is if the site involves or depends on information stored in a database. If yes, AJAX is highly recommended and would be a very good effective approach. Most dynamic sites of today meet this criteria. Another situation is if you have thin clients or very slow old computers on the network. In this case, you would want to do most of the work on the server since it is very fast and more resourceful. Another case is when you have a widely used application and you don't want to bother installing it on many desktops for better support, maintainability and management. Keep in mind that currently, not all application can or are suitable to run using a browser yet. I guess the benefits of AJAX seen by professionals are the reason where we see many amateurs create the hype in forums which eventually propagates to web sites. It is also true that many commercial sites likes to create this hype to increase their hits. My point is, this shouldn't distract us from the real benefits that AJAX brings to the Internet technology, which we haven't scratch the surface of yet. The way I see it, which some people still don't see it as a feasible possibility is, in a corporate environment and to MS displeasure, the thick client concept is going away. This concept is nothing new. It started with the X-Terminal during the Unix hay days but failed because of device cost, network slow speed without optimization, and software technology wasn't ready. Along the way came the disk-less cheap network PC, which also failed due to various obvious reasons. Now we are in a period where technology is so advanced in the three areas. PCs are more powerful but very low cost, networking much faster and lower cost hardware, protocols and software applications are more sophisticated, reliable, and open (thanks to FOSS). I think this technology is going to succeed in spite of MS and others might want us to believe otherwise. |
| Abe Jul 07, 2007 8:21 AM EDT |
Quoting:If it's small, just have PHP spit out a JavaScript array and do it without the client->server->client roundtrip.Even if the list is small, there are cases (many) where you have to have dynamic changes in the lists. Such as, a drop down list that dictates the options in a 2nd or 3rd list. Another case is when the list itself resides in a column of a table in a database and needs to be updated periodically. Quoting:Without XML it isn't AJAX! Without XML it's just a HTTP Request.Well, the whole concept of AJAX doesn't rely on XML only, but has a lot to do with the HTTP Request (httpXmlreq), which didn't exists before. You can send any text string back and handle it any way you want at the client side. You can send HTML to define what the browser should display in specific regions or a Javascript code to set element(s) attributes or even to run functions. The application I have will accept both and handles the text appropriately depending whether it is structured text like XML andHTML, or non-structured text just to display a document in a region. MS used this concept starting with ActiveX and Google made use of it when it became available in Javascript. XML didn't exist initially at the time. Where XML plays a good role is in structuring interoperability and making use of the wealth of tools and routines available. If you notice, the A for Asynchronous comes 1st, then JA for Javascript (I like to think A for Apache), then comes X last for XML. It is the httpXmlreq request that defines AJAX mostly and it doesn't have to be asynchronous either, it can be synchronous but have to be careful in such situations since it could lock the browser up if communication is somehow was disconnected. There are tools and libraries that are actively being built like Dojo & Rico and many others that are making AJAX web based development much simpler, easier and enjoyable(I do). |
| dinotrac Jul 07, 2007 1:58 PM EDT |
>On key criteria is if the site involves or depends on information stored in a database. Databases are a snap to do in a multitude of choices, from perl to rails. What's not a snap to do is dynamic changes without a trip to the server. I've had to do dynamic drop-downs, and they can be down effectively with javascript arrays, but...If you have any kind of serious forms, or if the total number of choices is large (for example, a drop-down list of potential signing locations for a real-estate closing, with the list varying from state to state, or zip-code to zip-code), AJAX can be a godsend. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 08, 2007 2:42 AM EDT |
Quoting:Well, the whole concept of AJAX doesn't rely on XML only, but has a lot to do with the HTTP Request (httpXmlreq), which didn't exists before. Yes it did, which is the point I tried making above. XmlHttpRequest is old. It was created by Microsoft for IE5 for the Outlook Web Access in Exchange 2000. AJAX (the term/hype) wasn't born until 2005. Quoting:I've had to do dynamic drop-downs, and they can be down effectively with javascript arrays, but...If you have any kind of serious forms, or if the total number of choices is large, AJAX can be a godsend. That's exactly what I said above. "If the amount of options is large". |
| dinotrac Jul 08, 2007 3:40 AM EDT |
>That's exactly what I said above. "If the amount of options is large". Ummm...I don't believe that I was disagreeing with you. More like a second. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 08, 2007 4:16 AM EDT |
Sorry if I misread. I didn't mean that I was disagreeing with you. Just so we're on the same page :-) |
| dinotrac Jul 08, 2007 6:32 AM EDT |
Sander - Ah. ;0) So... To summarize, we are both saying: 1. Good Lord, people! Just because you have a hammer, don't go turning screws into nails. 2. But, man, when you have a nail, that hammer sure does look nice. Sound about right?: |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 08, 2007 7:20 AM EDT |
Yup. Aside from a few edge cases where we are trying to figure out if it's a screw or a nail, that about does it :-) |
| dinotrac Jul 08, 2007 7:29 AM EDT |
>Yup. Aside from a few edge cases where we are trying to figure out if it's a screw or a nail, that about does it :-) Yeah, but then you can apply Slacker's Razor: "Ah, screw it." |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 08, 2007 8:11 AM EDT |
Hahahaha :-) |
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