What is the relationship between Mobile Ajax and Mobile Widgets?
In its entirety, Ajax comprises of XMLHttpRequest + DOM Scripting + XHTML/CSS. Functionally, two things are happening here: Data is being fetched asynchronously and the information thus fetched is being rendered on the client through JavaScript. Most widget engines are using the asynchronous part uniformly but are making their own changes to the rendering (display) part. While this leads to fragmentation of widget technology, the fact still remains that Ajax i.e. Asynchronous I/O and visual rendering are the core technologies underpinning widgets. When it comes to the mobile environment, we are seeing the same phenomenon i.e. we see Mobile Widgets powered by Mobile Ajax and also some fragmentation. Also, it should be noted that we are seeing the first attempts at standardization of widgets from the W3C.
