The notion of focusing Ajax development back on the server is to get rid of guesswork when trying to figure out what kinds of HTML, DOM, or JavaScript data is back on the client. It transports the developer back to the kind of simplicity that he or she had when developing first-generation web apps, when all you had were static HTML pages, there was no JavaScript, and everything was deployed from the server. Call that the wired version of the old green screen.

But of course life was simple when all you had to contend with was HTML and DOM and the Nescape browser. But that was before JavaScript, JSPs, APS.NET, Java EE 5, plus Spring and all the other rebel frameworks, not to mention the anything-goes world of Ajax development and of course, browser proliferation. Given the lack of standardization and loose structure of JavaScript, and the fact that there are all kinds of crazy JavaScript libraries and lots of different browsers out there, and it’s almost a miracle that you can deploy anything approaching a consistent experience on the Web 2.0 client.

That's where Jaxer’s approach of putting all deployment back on the server starts to tame things comes in, and why this could look to the developer a trip back to simpler days. The key is working with common Ajax libraries that run relatively intact across different browsers, like those from the Dojo toolkit and Scriptaculous; Aptana’s tools work with roughly 20 of these core libraries. The other side of it is that Jaxer lets you do more things in JavaScript that you might have otherwise done in Java, like having a framework for accessing local or remote web resources, support for database access, and ability to access to pages written in Ruby, PHP, or other popular web dynamic scripting languages.

“We work natively with the HTML page,” said marketing director Kevin Hakman, noting that Jaxer supports artifacts like CSS, XMLHttpRequests, JSON, and DOM scripting

All this is consistent with Aptana’s 3GL approach to its IDE, which is available standalone or as an Eclipse plug-in. From the dawning of client/server, you’ve had battles between 3GL and 4GL programmers. The 4GL crowd liked to boast that using higher-level artifacts made development simpler, while the 3GL crowd claimed it made languages less powerful. Aptana Studio supports powerful development features like integrated code assist (like Microsoft’s IntelliSense), API discovery, and advanced discovery that it claims 4GL-like Ajax tools lack.

The company itself has an interesting lineage, having been founded by Paul Colton, who was known for developing the Servlet API and JRun (which was subsequently sold to Macromedia, which of course is now part of Adobe). Kevin Hakman himself founded General Interface, which was later acquired by Tibco. On the advisory board are Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla Corp., who invented JavaScript; John Resig, currently JavaScript evangelist with Mozilla Corp.; and Alex Russell, director of R&D at SitePen, which is specializes in Dojo development.

Jaxer 1.0 is expected to hit general release next month.

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