techno.blog("Dion")

I was really excited to launch the AJAX Libraries API (I know, I know, I hate typing “AJAX” too…. haven’t you seen the rotating header on Ajaxian? ;) at Google I/O this week.

The only problem with the timing was that at the same time that it was getting picked up by the trade rags, Wired, reddit, Slashdot, Ars Technica, etc…. I was busy getting prepared and working Google I/O! This made it hard to stay up on what was being said and really being there to comment etc.

All in all I was shocked at the level of response. I knew that developers would get it, but seeing tech journalists see value in something that isn’t flashy or even provide something “new” surprised me.

There have also been some really good comments, and tips such as this one showing a nice way to use the API side of the house (google.load vs. script src) and load your other libraries after.

I also like the Wordpress plugin that seamlessly mixes local development and “production”.

Steve Souders also had some good thoughts and stats.

The key though is what happens next. To get something out of the door for a version 1 release, you sometimes cut features and just get it out. We have some great libraries out there now, but I want to aggressively get more out. We are not trying to be king makers here. Ideally I would love a system where anyone can add their scripts, but this isn’t as easy as you would think. For one, how do you stop people from putting bad stuff on there (if you could upload anything, you could put god knows what there). One of the core goals is to have stable releases on the system only. We have to make sure that we have the rights to do this, which means that the libraries are open source in a way that we feel safe.

That being said, we want to do a better job at getting feedback on the libraries that you want to see up there, so I am hoping to do something about that soon.

Lastly, there is room to do so much more. Steve Souders can help us with the performance side of things and has great ideas on how a loader could really add a lot of value here (e.g. choose how to add a script to the page depending on the use case). Then we can work with the browser vendors and see if there is a way to aggressively cache these libraries even more. Gears itself could also have a cache module that could do this. We need to think hard about how a hashing algorithm could work here, and make sure that it couldn’t be hijacked. Brendan has me scared there.

So, overall I am excited to see how we can build on this first release, and help the community further. Please let me know what you would like to see.

Check out more coverage in the news and across blogs.