Embedded Ajax
Web 2.0 Optimzed for Mobile Devices
NetFront Browser v3.5 takes Web 2.0 beyond the PC
Takuya Harakawa, Product Manager, Browser Technology
Dr. Tomihisa Kamada, Co-founder and CTO
ACCESS Co., Ltd.
White paper
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1. Introduction
Shortly after Tim O’Reilly (the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media) published his paper What is Web 2.0 [1] in
2005, the term Web 2.0 came to define the next-generation of the Web and the Web also became widely
recognized as a next-generation service framework based on the view of the Web as a platform. Today, Web
end-users can experience many new and innovative Web services, powered by Web 2.0 applications, which
feature rich user-interfaces and advanced functionality accessed via the Web browser on their desktop PCs.
It can be said that the most compelling Web 2.0 technology is Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) [2].
Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path first introduced the term Ajax in February 2005. Ajax is an
open-standard Web development technique that uses a combination of XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript to
enable the creation of highly efficient interactive Web applications. Ajax leverages the XMLHttpRequest
object to support the asynchronous exchange of data between a web server and a client. The asynchronous
exchange of data shifts a significant amount of application functionality from the Web server to the client,
which means that Web pages do not have to be completely reloaded for each end-user interaction. Ajax
enables Web 2.0 applications like Google™ Gmail™, Google Suggest, Google Maps, Amazon’s A9.com search
engine and Yahoo!’s Flickr.com to deliver a rich end-user experience with seamless functionality.
Running in parallel with the emergence of Ajax is the move in the mobile market away from WAP (Wireless
Application Protocol) services and the idiosyncrasies of WML (Wireless Markup Language) and WAP gateways,
which do not adhere to global Internet standards. WAP 2.0 [3], the next generation of WAP, is also rapidly
becoming a out-of-date solutio