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AJAX McCLIM Backend - Topic Conversations
Fare: It seems to me that if graphics are involved, a flash or flex backend might be more indicated than an Ajax backend, and might have fewer portability headaches, too. Since the release 1.0 date is probably far enough in the future, I'd definitely recommend a Flex 3 backend (opensource, will be supported on all major browsers) over a plain AJAX backend (where graphics are probably difficult, and you have to deal with browser discrepancies) or an older Flash (will be harder to support, have fewer features, be closed source, etc.).
Christophe: ...or someone else, such as any number of people who have developed cross-browser AJAX toolkits. The features required of such a cross-browser toolkit are fairly minimal -- reading events, drawing text and graphics; there will be difficulties involved, but that's one reason why it hasn't been done already.
For what it's worth, I think minimizing the number of things that no-one currently uses is likely to make it more straightforward for a student to get into the project.
That said, if a promising student with experience with Flex wanted to take up this project or something like it, then I'd have absolutely no objection -- but I think that actively discouraging a straightforward (whatever that means) Ajax backend would be inappropriate.
