Arun Gupta's Blog

AJAX vs Ajax - Ajax ofcourse!

Here is a list of several reasons (some mine and others from my colleague Rick's list):

1. Jesse James Garrett coined the term as Ajax, not AJAX.
   1. A quote from the source "The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML". It is intended to be a shorthand, not an acronym. And notice it is "+", not an "and" indicating a collection of technologies.
   2. Another quote from the source "I needed something shorter than “Asynchronous JavaScript+CSS+DOM+XMLHttpRequest” to use when discussing this approach with clients.". Ajax is not just Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, it's CSS and DOM as well. Moreover JSON is becoming a more popular format for data interchange. Should "AJAX" then instead be coined as "AJAJ" ? Or if an application happen to use Text instead, will they call it as "AJAT" ?
   3. In an interview on The story behind Ajax, Jesse said "I thought of Ajax as a convenient [term]. It was never intended as an acronym.".

I think the above three bullets should be sufficient to convince anybody to use "Ajax" instead of "AJAX". But if not, here are some more reasons to switch to the correct usage of term:

2. Wikipedia entry clarifies that Ajax is not expected to be an acronym.
3. A Google Fight between AJAX and Ajax shows exactly same numbers and still tries to predict a winner. Is that a bug ?
4. Another reference to Ajax vs AJAX.
5. Bye Bye "AJAX", The Age of "Ajax" is Nigh - If AJAX is indeed an acronym (which it's not) then a comment on the article points out some others as:
   AJACX: Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS and XMLHttpRequest
   ADJACS: Asynchronous DOM, JavaScript and CSS
   ADHJACS: Asynchronous DOM, HTML, JavaScript and CSS
   AJACHS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
   AJACS: Asynchronous JavaScript, HTML and CSS
6. Dion's (Ajaxian co-founder) first prediction for 2007 is "Ajax beats AJAX in all but bad newspapers."
7. Here is a Google survey of some publishers of Ajax books. They all seem to be using "Ajax", not "AJAX".
   • Addison Wesley Professional  
   • O'Reilly Media, Inc.
   • Manning Publications Co.
   • Apress, Inc.
   • Wrox (John Wiley & Sons, Inc)
8. Some of the common vendors use Ajax
   1. IBM
   2. HP
   3. Oracle
   4. BEA
   5. Adobe

Now there should be no reason to use "AJAX". However if you still feel like using this term, please leave a comment on this blog and let's talk. There are some incorrect usages in sun.com and I'll follow up to get them fixed.

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Comments

• O'Reilly's official style has been "Ajax" for some time, for the reasons you cite. Thanks for pointing this out.

  Posted by: invalidname on April 20, 2007 at 08:37 AM

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