null is not an object

It has been a while since any serious blogging has taken place but I think that I should get some in over the upcoming holidays. Also, we have been very busy getting the final touches on Enterprise Ajax and getting started on new development plans.

As some will know from listening to the Nitobi podcast, we are currently building some new components such as a Tab, Tree and a Date Picker. For the start they will be fairly standard Ajax components but we have some cool new ideas for old patterns that should make some waves in the Ajax user-interface space.

At any rate, one of the first parts of our yet to be named Ajax user interface suite is going to be the Framework. The Framework is going to be where all the nuts and bolts are located that allow developers to build their own Ajax solutions using both our basic cross browser libraries as well as our component architecture.

For the most part, the Framework will have some important features such as:

• XMLHttpRequest (Throttling, polling, timeout, events etc)
• DOM Events
• JavaScript Events (MVC)
• DataSet / DataTable (ActiveRecord)
• Object Serialization (XML and JSON)
• Declaration Parsing
• Back Button History
• OOP Inheritance, Interfaces and Garbage Collection
• Effects
• Drag + Drop
• Cross Browser HTML and DOM
• Cross Browser CSS
• Cross Browser XML

While many are similar to those things found in other frameworks out there (like the DOM events), we are keen to hear both what people think is lacking in other frameworks and what is a must have.

I am most excited about the serialization and declartive component stuff myself. It should really help developers build their own declarative components really easily.

One final note is that the Framework will be included in the suite but other than that we are not too sure what to do. Any ideas or comments on if, when, and how we might open source the Framework code would be more than welcome!
Oh crap, one more thing. What is important to people for a cross browser XHR object? What’s missing? I think that comet, throttling, timeouts and better events are a good start but what do you think? As the pipe gets bigger and more action is happening on the client we are thinking a lot about how the data is flowing from the server and how it gets handled by the client.

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