Comments on: Creating an Ajax Scribble application with Microsoft Atlas

By: Bertrand

Bertrand — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:03:03 +0000

The reason why Atlas extends Firefox and Safari to implement the IE APIs and not the other way around is that Firefox and in a lesser extent Safari allow the extension of HTML element prototypes whereas IE does not. Standards have nothing to do with this decision. There is a need to have a consistent API cross-browser to avoid having the rest of the libraries checking for the existence of an API and branching the code all the time. We just chose the only possible way to achieve that.

By: Bertrand Le Roy

Bertrand Le Roy — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 05:57:51 +0000

The reason why Atlas extends Firefox and Safari to implement the IE APIs and not the other way around is that Firefox and in a lesser extent Safari allow the extension of HTML element prototypes whereas IE does not. Standards have nothing to do with this decision. There is a need to have a consistent API cross-browser to avoid having the rest of the libraries constantly checking for the existence of an API and branching the code. We just chose the only possible way to achieve that.

By: Alex Barnett blog

Alex Barnett blog — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 00:06:47 +0000

Ajax Scribble application with ASP.NET Atlas

The Code Project has a good tutorial showing how to create an Ajax Scribble application with ASP.NET…

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 04:37:41 +0000

Does anyone know about a javascript (only) library that will allow you a scribble-style widget? And to go a step further, be able to submit what is in the widget as a jpeg or gif to the server?

By: Mike A. Owens

Mike A. Owens — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 23:17:53 +0000

But its cool to hate microsoft soâ€¦yeah

Mike, â€œyou peopleâ€? are the mindless drones that are on Microsoft-bashing auto-pilot.

OK, guys, I'm going to bow out of this thread as gracefully as possible. I didn't fully consider my probable audience when making a tongue-in-cheek remark attached to an article like this. I've touched a nerve with people who automatically presume some sort of crusading when criticising a single aspect of single product. This isn't Slashdot; don't be so blind to assume that every critique of a Microsoft product is fueled by some sort of juvenile Apple/Google/37signals/whatever chic. It's embarrasing that such a trivial remark could actually provoke personal attacks from people. It's 2006, making "cross-browser compatability a priority and easy to implment" is just the cover charge, and there's not exactly a shortage of competitors, even within ASP.NET 2.0. As I stated earlier, there's nothing impractical in their solution, but a new Ajax framework which sees the world as shoe-horned through a 6 year old browser is not exactly forward-looking, regardless of where it comes from.

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 18:15:27 +0000

Mike, “you people” are the mindless drones that are on Microsoft-bashing auto-pilot.

The strategy Microsoft presents here, however, is stepping on existing standards, by actively encouraging developers to forego the actual W3C DOM event API and write new code to their browser-specific event model.

So it works with Firefox (and other browsers I presume) and you still have a problem with it because it doesn’t prescribe to some official “standard” by the holier than though W3C?

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:57:53 +0000

Hmmm….Microsoft makes a product that makes cross-browser compatability and a priority and easy to implement and people complain. If google, apple or 37 signals releaed the same people would be overjoyed. But its cool to hate microsoft so…yeah

By: Mike A. Owens

Mike A. Owens — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:24:53 +0000

Mike Owens, are you people even capable of rational thought?

Contrary to rumour, I’m a single person. We’ll try to spread that uninspired insult among us, though.

Where did XMLHTTPRequest come from again?

Rick, the context flew right by you. Advancing the state of technology is a Good Thing. If vendors never stepped outside of existing standards, we’d be stuck with the web circa 1994. Examples of progress made this way include Javascript, s, XMLHttpRequest, and more recently the

I’m (marginally) surprised that you fail to see the differences in the situations.

(Just to note, it happens to be really practical to use the wrapping strategy employed here, considering the state of the market. I just thought it was amusing to see Microsofts stance on common standards exhibited so bluntly again.)

By: Rick

Rick — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 12:32:54 +0000

Mike Owens, are you people even capable of rational thought? Where did XMLHTTPRequest come from again?

By: Dave Johnson

Dave Johnson — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:38:56 +0000

Of course if they had just stuck to standards we might not have XHR today – the old standards double edged sword.

By: Mike A. Owens

Mike A. Owens — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 07:37:21 +0000

“The Internet Explorer specific functions like attachEvent and event.offsetX and event.offsetY are made available to Firefox.”

That’s a really interesting alternative to actually implementing and writing to web standards.

But I’m not bitter.