Welcome to the OpenAjax Alliance

The OpenAjax Alliance is an organization of leading vendors, open source projects, and companies using Ajax that are dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based Web technologies. The prime objective is to accelerate customer success with Ajax by promoting a customer's ability to mix and match solutions from Ajax technology providers and by helping to drive the future of the Ajax ecosystem.

News

OpenAjax Alliance terminates formal operations

With consensus approval from the members, the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee has decided to terminate formal operations at OpenAjax Alliance.

Why terminate formal operations now

In 2012, we had only have only active committee, the Accessibility committee. That committee was chartered as a Working Group from November 2010 to June 2011. During this chartered period, they completed Accessibility Rules Format 1.0 Specification and this specification was formally approved as an OpenAjax Alliance Specification by the members and Steering Committee in May 2011 (within the chartering period). The committee has continued to meet weekly and work on next versions of specifications and open source without formally renewing the Working Group.

The following other committees have been mostly dormant for a couple of years (with occasional expressions of interest from members about resuming activities, but no concrete attempts to restart work):

• Interoperability committee (which among other things produced the OpenAjax Hub 2.0 Specification and corresponding open source - OpenAjax Hub 2.0 is now the pub-sub component of OpenSocial Gadgets)
• IDE committee (which among other things produced the OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 Specification and corresponding open source, which includes spec for OpenAjax Widgets)
• OpenAjax Browser Wishlist
• Marketing Working Group (which produced most of OpenAjax Alliance's various whitepapers)
• Mobile Task Force (which among other things produced Introduction to Mobile Ajax for Developers, early industry work on Mobile Device APIs, and co-sponsored W3C/OpenAjax Workshop on Mobile Ajax)
• Security Task Force (which among other things produced a whitepaper on Ajax and Mashup Security)
• Gadgets Task Force which was ultimately merged into the IDE Working Group
• Communications Hub Task Force which was ultimately merged into the Interoperability Working Group

When we held our OpenAjax kick-off meeting in May 2006, the consensus among the founding participants was the OpenAjax should last only 2-3 years. We are now at the six year point and given limited activity, the Steering Committee has concluded it is time to close down formal operations.

What "terminating formal operations" means

The expression "terminate formal operations" means that all of the formal processes at OpenAjax Alliance will no longer be active. In particular:

• We would no longer vote for and maintain an official Steering Committee
• There would be no official chartering of new Working Groups
• There would be no formal mechanism for officially approving new Specifications or updates to existing Specifications

What happens after termination

For the foreseeable future:

• IBM will continue to pay the hosting fees for the OpenAjax.org web site and will continue to perform sysadmin on the site
• The OpenAjax Alliance open source project at SourceForge will continue to be available for open source work, and will be maintained and administered by the existing open source committers
• We will keep the wiki and mail lists open to anyone who has previously signed the OAA members agreement, mostly so that the Accessibility committee can continue operations
• The Accessibility committee can continue to use the OpenAjax Alliance web site for as long as they want. Ultimately, they will have to decide whether they want to go to a different organization to achieve formal status, or continue to work using OpenAjax Alliance web site services in an informal and unchartered state.

All historical work (and IPR agreements therein) are still binding

The OpenAjax Alliance Members Agreement states that, upon termination, all prior work done by OpenAjax and all IPR agreements around that work continue to be binding. 5.4 Survival. In the event of termination or withdrawal, the following shall survive and remain in effect: section 1 (Definitions), section 3.4 (IPR Policy), section 3.5 (Disclaimer of Liabilities), section 4.5 (Distribution and Modification of Specifications), and section 6 (General). All intellectual property grants and covenants made by or to a Member survive termination or withdrawal of that Member's Members Agreement.

Historical:

Accessibility Rules Format 1.0 now an approved Specification of OpenAjax Alliance

The Accessibility Rules Format 1.0 Specification has been approved by the OpenAjax Alliance Steering Committee as an official Specification of OpenAjax Alliance. The Specification describes the requirements for the structure of OpenAjax Accessibility (OAA) Web validation rules and rule sets used by accessibility test tools. 05/21/11 (read full story)

OpenAjax Hub 2.0.7 - fixes for recent MS patch to IE6/IE7

OpenAjax Hub 2.0.7 is an update release of OAHub to address a recent Microsoft Windows and IE patch that caused the NIX transport technique to no longer work. With 2.0.7, the Hub now falls back to fragment identifier transport (IFPC). 05/21/11 (read full story)

Maqetta announced - uses OpenAjax Widgets

On April 11, IBM and Dojo Foundation announced Maqetta, an HTML5 authoring tool for building desktop and mobile user interfaces. The announcement includes a new Maqetta.org Web site that hosts the Maqetta application, and the contribution by IBM of the underlying source code as a new open source project at Dojo Foundation. An eWeek article summarized the announcement. Maqetta uses OpenAjax Widgets. 05/21/11 (read full story)

OpenSocial 1.1 release with OpenAjax Hub inside

After more than a year’s worth of collaboration between OpenSocial Foundation and various members of OpenAjax Alliance, yesterday OpenSocial Foundation announced the release of the OpenSocial 1.1 specification. One of the major new features in version 1.1 of OpenSocial Gadgets is the inclusion of OpenAjax Hub as the mechanism for inter-gadget communication. 11/20/10 (read full story)

Accessibility Working Group approved

The OpenAjax Alliance members and Steering Committee have formally approved the creation of a new Accessibility Working Group. The new Working Group will publish materials centered on ARIA compliance checking and best practices within web applications that provide rich user experiences in the browser using Ajax techniques. The Working Group’s charter provides details on the deliverables. 11/20/10 (read full story)

Steering Committee election: Aptana, Dojo, Eclipse, IBM

In late October, OpenAjax Alliance held its annual Steering Committee election. The winners were the four incumbents: Aptana, Dojo Foundation, Eclipse Foundation and IBM. They will all serve until October 2012. 11/20/10

OpenAjax Paves Way for Developers to Improve Internet Access for the Aging, Disabled

OpenAjax Alliance published a press release outlining the progress within our Accessibility committee at helping the disabled and aging take full advantage of Web 2.0. August 4, 2010 (press coverage)

OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 Completed and Approved

The OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 Specification has been finalized by the IDE Working Group and formally approved by the members of OpenAjax Alliance and the Steering Committee. OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 therefore now represents an approved Ajax industry standard. OpenAjax Metadata (OAM) defines a set of industry-standard metadata for Ajax widgets and Ajax APIs that promote interoperability across Ajax toolkits and Ajax products. In general, Ajax toolkits will produce OAM files (directly or indirectly using post-processing utilities) and Ajax IDEs will consume OAM files. May 8, 2010 (read full story: [announcement] [background])

OpenAjax Hub 2.0 Press Announcement and White Papers

The OpenAjax Alliance announced today, with a press release, the approval and availability of OpenAjax Hub 2.0 as an industry standard for more secure Web 2.0 mashup applications. Advances in security in Hub 2.0 can help protect enterprise mashups from malicious intent, giving IT staff greater confidence in adding these features to their Web sites. The alliance released two new white papers on Hub 2.0 in advance of the press release: Introducing OpenAjax Hub 2.0 and Secure Mashups and OpenAjax Hub 2.0 and Mashup Assembly Applications. 08/31/09 (read full story)

SVG Coming of Age - SVGWeb and SVG Open October 2-4

The OpenAjax browser wishlist initiative from last year listed 2D vector graphics (SVG and Canvas) as the top priority feature needed in future browsers. Due to a new open source project, SVGWeb, a complete implementation of SVG 1.1 is now available across all major browsers. SVGWeb will be one of the key technologies to be featured at the SVG Open conference, hosted by Google at its Mountain View campus on October 2-4. (OpenAjax Alliance is a conference sponsor.) 08/21/09 (read full story)

OpenAjax Hub 2.0 Completed and Approved

OpenAjax Hub 2.0 has been finalized by the Interoperability Working Group and formally approved by the members of OpenAjax Alliance and the Steering Committee. OpenAjax Hub 2.0 therefore is now an approved Ajax industry standard. The big new feature in Hub 2.0 (versus Hub 1.0) is its Managed Hub feature which isolates third party widgets (potentially malicious) into secure sandboxes and mediates messaging among the widgets with a security manager. Hub 2.0 consists of a formal Specification and a commercial-ready open source implementation. A more complete announcement is coming soon. (July 27, 2009)

OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 Enters Final Review Phase

The OpenAjax Metadata 1.0 Specification is now in its final stages. The specification is complete and the IDE Working Group has begun its final review phase, where the WG systematically reviews the full text of the specification to make sure the content is correct and well-written. The final review phase is likely to last another 1-2 months. If no major problems are found, then the metadata spec will be submitted for approval as an OpenAjax standard (just as what happened recently with Hub 2.0). OpenAjax Metadata defines Ajax industry standards for an XML format that describes the JavaScript APIs and widgets found within Ajax toolkits. The primary objective with OpenAjax Metadata is to drive interoperability between Ajax developer tools and Ajax libraries so that any Ajax tool can work with any Ajax/JavaScript library and any Ajax widget. (July 27, 2009)

Hub 1.1 renamed to Hub 2.0

The Interoperability Working Group has officially changed the name of "OpenAjax Hub 1.1" to "OpenAjax Hub 2.0". (Here is the updated Hub 2.0 spec.) OpenAjax Hub 2.0 extends the publish/subscribe engine from Hub 1.0 to provide a client-side framework for secure mashups. Hub 2.0 introduces the notion of a "Managed Hub", where the host application can isolate (sandbox) each individual mashup component. 03/28/09 (read full story)

Revamped APIs for Hub 2.0

The Interoperability Working Group has completed a major redesign of the Managed Hub feature within OpenAjax Hub 2.0. The redesign effort, which started at alliance's face-to-face meeting in October 2008, reflects implementation experience gained during the 2008 InteropFest. The biggest change to the detailed Managed Hub APIs is from a plugin-oriented approach to a class hierarchy approach. The new approach is both simpler and more easily extensible than the previous approach. 03/28/09 (read full story)

Revised OpenAjax Widget spec

The Gadgets Task Force, working in partnership with the IDE Working Group, is near completion of a major redesign of the mashup-oriented widget features found in the OpenAjax Metadata Specification. The widget redesign effort, which was approved at alliance's face-to-face meeting in October 2008, reflects implementation experience gained during the 2008 InteropFest and careful review against other widget technologies in the industry, both proprietary widget formats and the approaches used by OpenSocial Gadgets. 03/28/09 (read full story)

Security Task Force Progress on Mashup Authentication and Authorization

At the beginning of 2009, the Security Task Force at OpenAjax Alliance launched a new initiative around Mashup Authentication and Authorization, with an emphasis on single sign-on workflows. The goal of this initiative is to perform a deep study of real-life use cases of technologies in use today, such as login/password dialogs, OpenID, SAML, and OAuth, and then develop a set of incremental technical standards (if necessary), best practices, and educational sample applications. 03/28/09 (read full story)

Accessibility Task Force launched

In Februrary 2009, OpenAjax Alliance launched a new task force, the Accessibility Task Force, whose mission is to promote better Ajax tooling for the creation of accessible Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). The task force will develop a set of accessibility validation rules, best practices for reporting accessibility compliance, and a set of IDE best practices. 03/28/09 (read full story)

OpenAjax salutes (and provides feedback to) OMTP/BONDI

OpenAjax Alliance is very pleased to see the progress by one of its industry partner organizations, the OMTP, with its BONDI initiative. Recently (Feb-Mar 2009), OpenAjax Alliance has assembled Ajax industry leaders to review the BONDI 1.0 Release Candidate specifications and collect feedback on the OpenAjax Alliance member wiki. 03/28/09 (read full story)

Results from Face-to-Face Meeting on October 23, 2008

The members of the OpenAjax Alliance held a one-day face-to-face meeting where we reviewed our many accomplishments in the past several months, saw demonstrations from many of the participants in the 2008 InteropFest, and made key decisions about alliance activities going forward. We decided on fast-track finalization schedules for OpenAjax Hub 1.1 and OpenAjax Metadata 1.0, agreed to split off the "mashable widgets" features from OpenAjax Metadata into a separate supplemental specification, decided to work towards greater alignment between our "mashable widgets" features and Google Gadgets, decided to refresh our browser wishlist sometime in 2009, agreed to transition the OpenAjax Registry into a self-service industry tool, and decided to launch an initiative to look into mashup login issues such as single sign-on and delegated authorization. (read full story)

Results from the 2008 InteropFest for IDEs and Mashups

OpenAjax Alliance is pleased to announce the completion this year's interoperability event, the 2008 InteropFest for IDEs and Mashups. The 2008 InteropFest focused on two main areas: Ajax IDEs and secure mashups. Participants included Adobe, Aptana, the Dojo Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, Google, IBM, ILOG, Lightstreamer, Nexaweb, ProgrammableWeb, SAP and TIBCO. Here is some of the press coverage: press release, Application Development Trends, eWeek, Infoworld, Trading Partners. The event was launched in August and was centered on OpenAjax Metadata for JavaScript APIs and Widgets and on OpenAjax Hub 1.1. OpenAjax Hub 1.1 provides a secure mashup runtime framework. The event focused on: (a) Ajax libraries to provide OpenAjax Metadata that describes their JavaScript APIs and their widgets; (b) IDEs to implement support for OpenAjax Metadata within their products to provide enhanced code assist and visual interfaces for using widgets; (c) Web Widgets to provide OpenAjax Metadata so that the widgets will work in standards-based mashup scenarios; and (d) Mashup editors to support OpenAjax Metadata and/or OpenAjax Hub 1.1 to support widget standards and to provide a secure mashup runtime. As part of the 2008 InteropFest, the members completed the development of an open source Sample Mashup Application that is a partial open source reference implementation for OpenAjax Metadata and OpenAjax Hub 1.1. (read full story)

Results from OpenAjax Alliance's Browser Feature Wish List Initiative

In a community initiative spanning the past few months, leading Ajax developers have come together to identify 55 separate features they would like in future browsers, and then vote on which features are most critical. The feature that receives the highest votes is standards-based vector graphics. Other features in the top 10 include improved security, better support for positioning and styling, better DOM performance, rich text editing, native support for server push, and video. (read full story)

Mobile Device APIs Fast-Track Exploratory Phase Completed

The Mobile Task Force at OpenAjax Alliance has completed its fast-track exploratory phase into Mobile Device APIs. (read full story)

New white papers on Mobile Ajax and recent browser advances

OpenAjax Alliance has published two new white papers, Introduction to Mobile Ajax for Developers and Good News for Ajax - The Browser Wars Are Back. (read full story)

(More news...)

Stay informed, get involved

Here are options for staying informed and/or participating in OpenAjax Alliance:

• You can subscribe to the OpenAjax Alliance public email list (public@openajax.org)
• You can subscribe to the OpenAjax Alliance (RSS) feed
• You can become a member, which allows you to subscribe to the committee mailing lists and help promote the success of the alliance's various initiatives