So you’ve tried your hand scrapping together an interface with AJAX. You downloaded the libraries, studied the documentation, and spent time tweaking code you don’t fully understand so you can add the latest buzzword to your resume. In the end, all you have to show for it is handfuls of hair and a dent in the wall the size of your forehead.
Enter Jay and Steve McDonald, two innovative thinkers who decided to find a way around the madness by using Macromedia Flash to simplify the and secure the process for creating the smoother, more desktop-like web experiences that AJAX promises. Misinformation and resistance to change have made FJAX slow to catch on, but as we all know, sometimes it takes time for good ideas to rise to the top. Steve and Jay graciously took some time out of their schedule to answer some questions and set the record straight on “FJAX”.
Name, age, hair color, foot size, and when you sleep at night you dream about…?
Jay McDonald, 36, brown, 9, electric sheep
Steve McDonald, 33, bald, 10, a little dream of me
Describe FJAX in 5 words.
Jay: Flash. XML. Approachable. Dynamic. Content.
Steve: fun, easy, compiled, creative, secure.
They say “necessity is the mother of invention”. Is that true with FJAX? Was that your experience in coming up with this technique as an AJAX alternative?
Steve: Well, fjax was born in the bowels of a dilemma. As a web developer that is a classically trained programmer I see the value in building solutions that are both fast as well as well designed. And while I like what can be done with Ajax, there are some techniques (like XML parsing on the client side, for example) that seemed a little messy… a little jury-rigged, if you will. Since macro-dobe provided a more native xml parsing tool with its own implementation of xmlHTTPRequest, I was able to solve my greatest concerns in a compiled, strongly-typed implementation of AJAX… something we like to call… FJAX.
So… yes.
Have you used FJAX extensively in your own design work? Have you seen other people use the technology effectively?
Steve: So far FJAX is slow to catch on. People in the industry were quick to be interested in it, but then some misinformation went around regarding how it specifically works. A few people made some assumptions about how we were doing what we were doing for passing data between a Flash SWF and the JavaScript on the page, and they assumed wrong. Then they informed the world that there is no problem having to write multiple browser implementations in JavaScript XML parsing, and they were wrong there. Ultimately, Fjax challenges a number of standard assumptions, and because of that, it has been a stumbling block in some people’s understanding. Sometimes, it’s just risky to be too radically different.
Right now I know of one music review website that uses FJAX to power their reviews. I believe we received an email from another group on the east coast that wanted to use it in another store project. And we received information from an educator that desired to train his students in FJAX. Most importantly, there is a buzz right now about the hackability of uncompiled (by nature) AJAX applications. FJAX, due to its compiled nature, is far less hackable and we think that is yet another reason to consider using it.
What’s been the biggest challenge in bringing FJAX to the public consciousness? How has the development community responded?
Jay: The biggest challenge has been getting people to understand what FJAX is, and get past their preconceived notions. The concept is pretty simple, but the instant you say ‘Flash’ to web builders, they think they know exactly what you mean… little animated movies. Once they let it settle in that the Flash is not used for presentation at all, the advantages start to dawn on them. In fact, the FJAX site was done in FJAX as a proof of concept, but try to go there and point to the Flash. You can’t. FJAX uses Flash completely behind the scenes.
As far as the community goes, there’s been a lot of positive feedback from those who understand what it’s doing, and how using it compares with standard Ajax techniques.
Steve: On the development front we recently received an email from the people who make the Opera browser. Early on we knew that Opera didn’t implement all of the interfaces that hooks Flash to the browser environment. But Opera wants to see if we can make their browser FJAX-compatible, so we are just starting to talk about that.
Are you seeking any sort of trademark for the term “FJAX” and have you contacted Adobe about FJAX?
Jay: People have asked us what our business model is… they want to ‘follow the money’. Really, there is no business model. We’re just a couple of guys who wanted to share an idea with the dev community. So, we’re not really empire building here… just putting in our 2 cents.
As for Adobe, the extent of our interaction so far has been pretty minimal. We approached them early on, but they have a lot of things going on at the moment (such as digesting Macromedia). We do think, though, that FJAX potentially provides them with another way of leveraging Flash for the development side of things (and not just design).
Steve: Adobe is going to be a big player in the web 2 dot OH! world as far as we see it. Recall we talked about the uncompiled nature of AJAX solutions. Using the Adobe Flash technology, you get all of the punch of AJAX with half the headache - as a developer - in terms of hacking and securing and managing your code. Right now, leading the pack at Adobe is a technology called FLEX that similarly uses Flash technology to author Rich Internet Applications. We, as far as I know, are the one other way that, like Jay says, takes a non-presentation-layer approach to Flash development.
With advancements in streaming video, css integration, and xml parsing Flash has suddenly become a staple in the world of Web 2.0. However, this takes some of the “open source” credo out of Web 2.0 development and creates a dependency on a commercial tool. Do you have any thoughts on Flash’s second life?
Jay: Personally, when it comes to Open Source philosophy, I am more in the Linus Torvalds camp than the Richard Stallman camp. That is, I agree with taking a more pragmatic view, allowing space for open and closed solutions on the playing field, as opposed to considering it a sin to use anything that isn’t GPL’d.
As for Flash maturing into a more robust developer’s tool, I think it’s great. Flash is an excellent, lightweight platform for delivering interactive experiences, so using it as part of building web apps or components makes perfect sense. I think its biggest hurdle is exactly the one we faced… people who do development seeing it as just a design tool with pretensions at being a dev tool.
Steve: I think what Jay has articulated is true. Flash has a place and while some people over-Flash a site, the same is true for over-AJAXing a site. The key is using the right, most intuitive tools at the appropriate time. We are demonstrating the open-source nature of sharing insight and inspiration within the use of a commercial tool. Hey, people don’t have to use Dreamweaver or Visual Studio or some Notepad on steroids to build AJAX apps… but they are. In the end it isn’t as much about the tool as what the tool facilitates and that could well remain open.
What are Flash’s weaknesses and what kinds of improvements would you make if you were head of product development at Adobe?
Jay: One of the things I see as a barrier to further adoption in heavy duty projects is that its source file format (.FLA) is not fully accessible, that is, there’s always an interface layer between me and my source code. I can’t easily get at the raw stuff of my work, like I could with a C# or VB.Net project. On a couple of occasions, I have had FLA files corrupt, and I had to back up and rebuild. This doesn’t happen when your source is essentially just a text file.
Steve: That is right. We are seeing more of this technique coming out of Adobe in terms of the Flex tools. People are authoring applications in what is essentially a text-based file that later gets compiled to run in the Flash player. Very cool. I would love to see a number of other real-time actionscript processing features made available. With the amount of market saturation in the player, there is no better time than now to take more client-side market share, a give parts of that technology away to the population (like the stand-alone Flex tools that are free).
You’ve been featured in Wired.com for your technique and you have a website dedicated to FJAX. Has your discovery of FJAX, and the subsequent attention, affected your current design/consulting business?
Jay: Other than the fact that I’m writing my responses from my new private helicopter on the way to the estate, no… not really. Seriously, though, notoriety doesn’t necessarily translate into remuneration. There have been connections that have been made via FJAX, but we’re not going for our IPO anytime soon. However, if Google wants to wave a million or two at us, we’d be up for negotiations 
Steve: I have definitely received some kudos from some interesting sources, including a set of LA-based game designers that are about to launch some seriously cool stuff in the realm of the web. I think I would agree with Jay that while there is not this immediately apparent positive correlation between FJAX and design/consulting gigs, some days I feel like we are privy to a few inside tracks that others might not yet know about. It is a “club” (if-you-will) that I don’t mind being a part of.
In your opinion, what’s the most exciting thing about the Web today?
Jay: For me, it’s not the technology, but how it’s being used and changing the landscape of human interaction. Open source as a philosophy has trickled down to all sorts of Average Joe creative types who are releasing their work under a Creative Commons license. The web incubated that whole phenomenon.
Also, blogs may be passé these days, but I see them as a return to some of the hopeful, grassroots involvement in the greater dialogue. Maybe it all comes down to this: technological solutions have matured enough that they are now streamlined tools of empowerment for the masses. It’s a radical thought that with very little technical knowledge, you can install and run a copy of something like WordPress in 5 minutes and be a part of the big party. That’s cool.
Steve: The most exciting this about the web for me has got to be the bandwidth issues right now and topics like Net Neutrality. I would hate to imagine a future where the grassroots population of the web is relegated like television to a PBS-style implementation with the majority of the web taken over by the corporate planet. Or worse yet, grassroots web becomes nearly lost like HAM (amateur) Radio while almost everything else gets broken into bands of service.
The web, as a medium, cannibalizes and consumes itself at a frightening pace but in very friendly manner. It is a very exciting and very humbling to think that we are on the verge of marking a change in how the world respects web usage. I really hope that the law makers realize that the majority holder of the content out there does not come from an incorporated source.