MAYA

Abstract: The Web is maturing as a rich application development platform, and efforts are being made to provide richer and more dynamic interactions using JavaScript. JavaScript-based Web applications such as Google Maps have gained extra attention because they can be easily included in HTML for reuse. Unfortunately, various technical hurdles have made it difficult for JavaScript reuse to extend beyond its current state. Furthermore, JavaScript reuse is still out of reach for a large portion of the Web user base unversed in the use of programming languages. In this paper, we dive deeper into our previous work on the JavaScript Dataflow Architecture (JDA). JDA is intended for Web client applications written using HTML and JavaScript. We discuss the ways in which the architecture addresses many of the hurdles that modern Web client applications face in the realm of large-scale reuse and remixing. JDA aims to provide an ecosystem comprised of black box components operating within a JavaScript-based asynchronous message-passing environment. The environment allows you to use simple HTML to assemble Web applications from JavaScript black boxes scattered around the World Wide Web. No programming skill is required in their assembly, and no plug-ins or applets are required for their execution. Furthermore, the architecture extends the black box metaphor beyond the boundaries of JavaScript and allows multiple JavaScript components contained within an HTML file to be reused as a whole.

Presented at OOPSLA 2006 in Portland, OR, Oct.22-26, 2006.