Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) continues to raise user expectations for interactivity and performance, and developers are increasingly treating Ajax as a must-have component of their Web applications. As more code is moved  client side and the network model changes, the community is responding by building more tools to address the unique performance challenges of Ajax. Examine toolsets that find and correct performance problems within your Ajax-
enriched applications.

Performance is one of the primary motivations for enhancing applications with Ajax. Ajax can improve response time by communicating with the server without full-page requests. By reducing response time, Ajax can provide a significantly better user experience. However, analyzing and improving the performance of Ajax applications requires a different toolset than traditional Web applications. This article examines these tools and shows how to use them to find performance problems and make corrections.

An Ajax application’s performance is based on several aspects [...] Continue Reading…

Overview of XHTML 2.0

XHTML 2.0 is based solely on XML, forgoing the SGML heritage and syntax peculiarities present in current web markup. XHTML 2.0 is supposed to be a “general-purpose language,� with a minimal default feature set that is easy to extend using CSS and other technologies (XForms, XML Events, etc). It’s a modular approach that allows the XHTML2 group to focus on generic document markup, while others develop mechanisms for presentation, interactivity, document construction, etc.

Priority one for the XHTML2 working group is to further separate document content and structure from document presentation. Other goals include increased usability and accessibility, improved internationalization, more device independence, less scripting, and better integration with the Semantic Web. The group has been less concerned with backward compatibility than their predecessors (and the HTML working group), which has led them to drop some of the syntactic baggage present in earlier incarnations of HTML. The [...] Continue Reading…

After a few years of trying to fill Bill Gates’ shoes as Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie is starting to hit his stride. In a remarkable strategy memo to employees (embedded below), Ozzie essentially shifts Microsoft’s mission from one of creating software for the PC and stand-alone servers to creating an interconnecting mesh between devices and people. He is not abandoning Windows or Office, but he is saying that the value of Microsoft’s software will increasingly depend less on what it can do on its own than what it can do with others. It is not about software anymore so much as it is about Web-based services. Ray, welcome to the club.

Excerpt:

Central to this strategy is our embrace of both a world of the web and a world of devices. Over the past ten years, the PC era has given way to an era in which the web [...] Continue Reading…

Cross-site scripting (XSS for short) is one of the most common application-level attacks that hackers use to sneak into Web applications. XSS is an attack on the privacy of clients of a particular Web site, which can lead to a total breach of security when customer details are stolen or manipulated. Most attacks involve two parties: either the attacker and the Web site or the attacker and the client victim. Unlike those, the XSS attack involves three parties: the attacker, the client, and the Web site.

The goal of the XSS attack is to steal the client cookies or any other sensitive information that can identify the client with the Web site. With the token of the legitimate user in hand, the attacker can proceed to act as the user in interaction with the site, thus to impersonate the user. For example, in one audit conducted for a large company, [...] Continue Reading…

Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is one step closer to industry-wide stability. 3GPP LTE technology (LTE is the name given to a project within the Third Generation Partnership Project) offers wireless broadband speeds with downloads around 100 Mbps and upload of 50 Mbps. Seven telecommunication companies have reached an agreement on a framework for licensing intellectual-property rights that relate to LTE. This agreement will make the transition to LTE easier because the fear of lawsuits will be reduced.

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson have agreed to an industry standard being called FRAND, which stands for Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory licensing terms. Notebook computers that use LTE will pay a combined maximum royalty in the single digits. Handsets will pay a single-digit royalty that is based on a percentage of the sales price of the device.

Ericsson Senior Vice President and CTO Hakan Eriksson said this agreement will [...] Continue Reading…