"I would caution everyone who's interested in AJAX to not depend on one framework and actually write your apps in a way that [they] don't depend on one framework," Shank said. RadRails was built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform.

Companies represented on the panel, such as Aptana, Instantiations, and Nexaweb, offer tools for AJAX developers.

Also on Wednesday, EclipseCon featured a session where attendees could air gripes about Eclipse. Attendees expressed desires for improvements such as a native installer, which would tailor installations of Eclipse to suit the target platform. Nested projects support, enabling projects to be maintained within other projects, also got a thumbs-up.

Improvements to Eclipse dialog capabilities and the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework also were suggested. Scripting enhancements were requested as well, as was stronger support for the Subversion version control system.

Others in the audience noted that work is being done in areas such as scripting. The Eclipse Monkey project is a dynamic scripting tool for automating routine programming tasks.