In a move that will almost certainly resolve once and for all the continuing uncertainty in the world's press as to whether the phenomenon at the center of last week's high-energy event at the Santa Clara Convention Center should be spelt 'AJAX' or 'Ajax,' SYS-CON Media is taking the initiative of referring henceforth to the approach as 'Ajax' - upper and lower case. AJAXWorld Magazine's Publisher Jeremy Geelan explains why.

Bill Scott of Yahoo! complained after last weeks event in Santa Clara that, as he put it, the "misconception" persists -- even among many of the presenters -- that Ajax is an acronym. "Where did that originate?" Scott asks, adding: "It is a highly inaccurate and inappropriate acronym, Ajax is not an acronym, and I wish people would stop using it that way."

There are two aspects to this, it seems to me. The first is that it is going to be difficult to discourage people from viewing AJAX as an acronym so long as it remains in capital letters. Accordingly, we will at SYS-CON Media start using the lower-case version 'Ajax' as a way of recognizing that, for example, the 'X' isn't at all a must-have. XML can sometimes consume more bandwidth than really needed for most applications, and JSON for example is very useful for anyone running a high performance, heavy load server, because it keeps bandwidth costs down: so it would be necessary to coin "AJAJ" if we were to continue to go down the acronym route.

Far better, it seems, to acknowledge that the phase of "AJAX" is nigh, and that from now on 'Ajax' should prevail.

The second aspect, which the shift to lower case also deals with, is the fact that as an acronym AJAX neglects to include CSS - especially disconcerting if you happen to be CSS inventor Håkon Wium Lie, for example, who at AJAXWorld 2006 made his point by coining some tongue-in-cheek alternative acronyms that DO include his invention. I'm sure he won't mind my reproducing his e-mail here:

------ Original Message -----
From: "Håkon Wium Lie"
To: jeremy@geelan.com
Subject: AJACS with C
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 2006 16:32:07 +0200

Jeremy,

Nice meeting you at AjaxWorld. I mean, nice meeting you at AjacsWorld. Here are my alternate acroyms -- with a "C" in them:

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

Maybe this worthy of an article in AjaxWorld Magazine?

Cheers,

-h&kon Håkon Wium Lie
CTO Opera
howcome@opera.com
http://people.opera.com/howcome

--- End of Original Message ---


So, I am in agreement with Yahoo!'s Bill Scott. Doug Crockford (also of Yahoo!) already made his case months ago, giving me a heads-up that "we aren't using the all-caps anymore. Ajax didn't really make sense as an acronym, so we are using it as a symbol now" - it's only now though, with AJAXWorld Conference behind me, that I can fully see the wisdom, given the special duty of care I have as ongoing Conference Chair, of shifting to "AjaxWorld Conference & Expo" from now on.

Who was it said: 'An Englishman makes up his mind best when it is almost too late"?