About five years ago I worked on a web app project where one
of the primary requirements was that it should look, work and feel like a
Windows-based fat client. Now, ignoring
the question of why it was not in fact done as a Windows-based fat client in
the first place, that can be a rather tough requirement in the world of web
development, certainly it was five years ago when not very many examples of
such a thing existed.
As a result of a number of proof-of-concepts, I stumbled
upon some techniques for doing things that were at the time rather atypical
approaches to web development. The end
result was an application that, to this day, many people cannot even tell is
web-based, aside from the fact that you access it with a browser!
Little did I know that only a few years later the basic
concepts behind what I had done would re-emerge in the world as something
called Ajax. Ajax
is a term coined by the folks at Adaptive Path and is shorthand for Asynchronous
Javascript + XML.
This just goes to show, patenting every idea you ever have
is indeed a good way to riches! If only
I would have thought what I did was anything special! But I digress…
