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AJAX Gets ALE
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04/14/2006, By Sean Michael Kerner
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In the "fat" client desktop world, the concept of embedding one application's content in another is nothing new.
Doing the same thing online via AJAX, however, has not yet been commonplace, but thanks to a new proposed specification being heralded by Zimbra called ALE (AJAX Linking and Embedding), that may be about to change.
Satish Dharmaraj, co-founder and CEO of open source collaboration suite Zimbra explained to internetnews.com that ALE is the AJAX equivalent of Microsoft's OLE (define).
OLE enables users to embed a component of one application inside of another, for example a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet inside of a Microsoft Word document.
Ross Dargahi, co-founder and vice president of engineering at Zimbra, explained that modern Web browsers have a design mode capability, which is what AJAX editors use in order to bold or highlight text in an online application, for example.
"What Zimbra has done is figured out a way that, while in edit mode, you can embed other AJAX components into that window and those components can stay live," Dargahi said.
"For example, if you have an AJAX spreadsheet component, you can embed it in this editable window using the spreadsheet component while still being able to edit the text and the content around exactly as you would with Microsoft Office or Open Office."
The ALE spec specifies a design pattern that an ALE component can execute. The ALE framework will recognize the pattern and enable it to interact with a component.
ALE is currently just a draft specification, though Zimbra is using it in a currently non-public build of its collaboration suite. A forthcoming public build is expected sometime soon, however.
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