AJAX and the Mobile Web
A workshop will allow leading vendors to address the mobile Web and the need for more applications. — With smart phones becoming more prevalent among users and delivering greater capability than ever before, where are the applications to take advantage of all this power?
Context & Ripple Effects
The workshop lands mid-arc in the web-apps debate: back in June 2007, Jesse James Garrett framed Adobe AIR as another boost for running web technologies outside the browser. Now the question shifts from desktop runtimes to handsets — smartphones are confirmed as increasingly prevalent and powerful, yet the application supply has not kept pace with that hardware.
That gap is why leading vendors are convening rather than shipping alone: AJAX's promise of one codebase across devices collides with fragmented mobile browsers, so the workshop is an attempt to align technique before each vendor solves it differently.
First-order effects
- Vendors attending get a shared forum to standardize AJAX practice for constrained mobile browsers, where inconsistent JavaScript and DOM support currently forces per-device work.
- Developers weighing native mobile builds gain a credible cross-device alternative if the vendor group converges on common AJAX patterns for small screens and slow networks.
Second-order effects
- Handset makers and browser vendors face pressure to make AJAX performance and standards support a differentiator, since the workshop signals developers will route toward whichever environment treats the mobile Web as first-class.
- Carrier-controlled content channels lose leverage to the extent device-agnostic web applications let publishers reach users without per-carrier deals.
Third-order effects
- If the capability-versus-application gap persists, the structural resolution points toward the Web itself as the mobile application platform — making browser interoperability, not any single vendor's runtime, the long-run battleground.
- A durable split emerges between native stacks optimized per device and web stacks optimized for reach, with tooling vendors (Adobe-style runtimes among them) competing to bridge the two.
The trend: Mobile hardware is outrunning its application ecosystem, and vendors are responding by pushing web standards like AJAX as the cross-device platform instead of waiting for per-device native development to catch up.