Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Updated DHTML Universe Map

I've uploaded updated renderings (pdf or png) of the document I use to keep track of the non-trivial, public DHTML toolkit efforts that have occurred over the years.

Interestingly, the difference between this version and previous ones is that many companies are starting to either release or talk about tools that they had quietly built in-house years ago. Also, Google and Yahoo have been on something of a hiring binge. Yahoo seems to be dedicating more (visible) resources to their responsive UI cause than Google. The secrecy difference between the two cultures might explain the delta, but I'm convinced that's not the whole story.

Also interesting is that many of the commercial DHTML toolkit vendors have been able to effectively keep mum about who is working on their products. The TIBCO's, Backbase's, and Bindows of the world must be paying their people astoundingly well for them to keep out of eyesight of the increasingly frenzied recruiters who are banging down the doors of every competent JavaScript hacker I know.

I will admit to not having kept this document as up-to-date as it should be. The proliferation of toolkits over the last year has been pretty astounding, and investigating each one to find out if it's just another crappy 10-line XMLHTTP wrapper hasn't been on the top of my list of things to do. So in true open-source style, your help is requested! If you have corrections or new information, please either mail them to me or submit a patch to the graphviz source file. The format is straightforward and easy to figure out.