IE Mobile Supports AJAX

[Jerry Raia]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/fzandona/archive/2006/05/03/589134.aspx' target='_blank'>http://blogs.msdn.com/fzandona/archive/2006/05/03/589134.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I have been asked about AJAX development support for Internet Explorer Mobile (running on Windows Mobile-based devices). The short answer is: YES, IE Mobile on Windows Mobile 2003 and later supports AJAX! The long answer was given last year by Kevin Grey, SDET on the IE Mobile Team..."</i><br /><br />What is AJAX you might ask (I had to ask)? It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML of course. The basic idea is instead of refreshing the entire web page when you are entering some information, for example, only the part that changed updates. On a mobile web page this is great with page loading being painfully slow at times.

[ctmagnus]

The term AJAX always makes me think "coffee shop". :silly:

[Kris Kumar]

Then how come GMail and Google Reader and other AJAX site not work on the pIE? :?

[Ed Hansberry]

"I have been asked about AJAX development support for Internet Explorer Mobile (running on Windows Mobile-based devices). The short answer is: YES, IE Mobile on Windows Mobile 2003 and later supports AJAX! The long answer was given last year by Kevin Grey, SDET on the IE Mobile Team..."

What is AJAX you might ask (I had to ask)? It stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML of course. The basic idea is instead of refreshing the entire web page when you are entering some information, for example, only the part that changed updates. On a mobile web page this is great with page loading being painfully slow at times.
What good is AJAX support though if it can't load your GMail page without having to resort to plain old HTML? I am surprised it supports it at all, but I guess I'm not surprised that it is a limited implementation. :?

[Mike Temporale]

The term AJAX always makes me think "coffee shop". :silly:

Coffee? Nah, that's Java. Ajax always makes me think of that toilet cleaner. :pukeface:

Back on topic... I find all of the added IE Mobile features to be a great addition. However, I would have expected more effort put into the underlying problems. Like why is there no cap on IE temp files, and why doesn't Windows Mobile automatically delete them when space is running low. That, to me, would be a better improvement than the latest round of feature additions. :(

[ctmagnus]

I would have expected more effort put into the underlying problems. Like why is there no cap on IE temp files, and why doesn't Windows Mobile automatically delete them when space is running low.

I haven't done too much research into this on the Smartphone end (darn Canadian data plans) but I've got my IE cache set to max out at 8MB on my Pocket PC, via MemMaid. And when I get my next device (at this point, likely a JAMin), I'll apply the same settings there.

[dbarnhart]

A couple of weeks ago I tried implimenting some Ajax on WM2003SE and it was quite a disappointment. No show/hide layers. Just about the only DHTML thing I could get to work was innerText and innerHTML and only for div and span tags.

Also, when I tried to use innerHTML to write the contents of a div and include a button with an onClick event handler outside the div, it would not work.

I'd say that MS has a long way to go before AJAX is a reality on WM.

[Kevin Daly]

I think it's important to keep sight of what is available on mobile IE and what is not, and how that impacts AJAX.
The one big huge essential feature (XMLHttp) is present, which frankly surprised me. So it is possible to do the out of band requests to the server that AJAX depends on.

However, the *other* feature that is normally required is a decent DHTML implementation, and that really isn't there yet.
If you expected typical AJAXy applications to work out of the box, or anything built with the various toolkits that are now available, you'd almost certainly be disappointed.

Still, it's better than nothing.

[Mike Temporale]

A couple of weeks ago I tried implimenting some Ajax on WM2003SE and it was quite a disappointment. No show/hide layers. Just about the only DHTML thing I could get to work was innerText and innerHTML and only for div and span tags.

Also, when I tried to use innerHTML to write the contents of a div and include a button with an onClick event handler outside the div, it would not work.

I'd say that MS has a long way to go before AJAX is a reality on WM.

You'll need a WinMo5 device with AKU2 for AJAX to work on Windows Mobile. So I'm not surprised to hear that you had little success on a 2003SE device. ;)

[Mike Temporale]

What good is AJAX support though if it can't load your GMail page without having to resort to plain old HTML? I am surprised it supports it at all, but I guess I'm not surprised that it is a limited implementation. :?

I'm guessing at this but.... I think http://www.Start.com or http://www.Live.com would work without issues. ;)

[dbarnhart]

Yes, I'm guessing that PIE for WM5 has better DHTML support, however I'm developing a mobile web app and I don't want to restrict the customer base to just those running WM5

[edupin]

????
Ajax on my WM5 smartphone Qtek 8310 does not work at all.
Try run typical famous Ajax websites like www.netvibes.com or www.writely.com or www.tadalist.com and you'll get nothing but a big nice blank page...

[Mike Temporale]

????
Ajax on my WM5 smartphone Qtek 8310 does not work at all.
Try run typical famous Ajax websites like www.netvibes.com or www.writely.com or www.tadalist.com and you'll get nothing but a big nice blank page...

Have you done the ROM upgrade? does it have AKU2 on it? AJAX was added in AKU2. I think that was in the news story, right?

Also, try Microsoft's AJAX sites. Chances are it support a certian collection of AJAX and I would guess it matches Microsoft's sites. Try http://www.Start.com

[edupin]

I did not know there was a rom upgrade for the 8310. I'm not sure it is yet available here in Europe (France)

[Rocco Augusto]

what they forget to mention is that pIE only renders very basic forms of AJAX. unfortunatly pIE can not handle a lot of the more complicated frameworks, or elements of frameworks, like dojo and prototype, moo.fx, script.aculo.us, etc.

when pocketIE gets to the point where i can run some prototypeLite/moo.fx stuff then ill be happy :)