In a session entitled, "What Does Eclipse Need to Do to Become the IDE for AJAX?", panelists from companies such as IBM and Nexaweb said AJAX could use an IDE and that AJAX could benefit from Eclipse technologies.
"I remember when Java first came out and all I used was a text editor," said panelist Robert Goodman, senior programmer at IBM. He said he did not like the first Java IDEs. But now, he could not go back to writing Java without one. "I think that's eventually what you'll get on JavaScript," Goodman said.
Eclipse's own AJAX-related projects include the AJAX Toolkit Framework, for editing, compiling and debugging AJAX applications, and Rich AJAX Platform, serving as a runtime for AJAX applications.
Panelists also cited issues in AJAX development. Detailing his own experience with AJAX complexity, panelist Coach Wei, CTO at Nexaweb, told of writing an AJAX application and running into trouble. Eventually, he found a problem related to a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) file.
JavaScript now is being used to write large libraries, which was not anticipated, according to Goodman. "We haven't proven yet that you can really do this in JavaScript," Goodman said.