All Things Microsoft > Microsoft as a Company

Rumor - Microsoft actually innovated something

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worker201:
Actually, it's not a rumor, it's true.  Microsoft IE engineers came up with the basic technology for AJAX programming 10 years before the term AJAX programming was invented.  It started in 1996.  Of course, it was no iPhone.  First it was a Java applet, then it was an ActiveX object.  Good ideas don't stay proprietary for too long, and the Mozilla and Safari teams had their own implementations by 1999.  The term AJAX was first used in 2005, and W3C started standardizing in 2006.  The original IE IFrame element is now called XMLHttpRequest, and it is available in fine browsers everywhere.

It's interesting that Microsoft engineers came up with this idea, but never did much with it.  They had no idea where the internet was going, or what kind of technologies would prevail, but they did it anyway.  I'm not sure if that qualifies as unmarketed idiocy or accidental visionary, or both.  Either way, it's a true story of a common technology innovated by Microsoft, which is a rare occurrence indeed.

Aloone_Jonez:
Shit, it's actually true!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

One thing that amazes me as that Microsoft didn't even think about security, perhaps they were just too nieve to think that the Internet could be use to transmit malware.

worker201:
In a way, it was naivete, and everyone got caught up in it.  The internet is a tragedy of the commons, because somebody went too far.  The thought was that nobody would want to introduce malware, because infection means losing hosts, and losing hosts is the inverse of Metcalfe's Law.  Unfortunately, handing out cheap PCs is like handing out handguns to 8-year-olds - no matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get shot.

Lead Head:
Well the article has been deleted for somereason. EDIT: Forum software clipped the last Parentheses out from the URL.


I find it interesting just how long the technology has been out, but it wasn't until the past few years where it started to get extensive usage.

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