Late last week I discussed the launch of Jaxer by Aptana. Jaxer's idea is simple. Take the same JavaScript knowledge you use in building rich internet applications and apply them to the server side as well. I've taken some time to play more with Jaxer and I'd like to show some of what I've learned so far.

First off - while there is an impressive API set, I was surprised to find no formal developers guide yet. I'm assuming such a guide will soon be created, but documentation is something I kind of harp on when looking at projects. I hope the team adds one soon. I can say that some of my questions where answered in the technical FAQ. I'm ashamed to say I didn't notice the 'Technical' portion of the FAQ at first, and just noticed the more generic faq.

One of the things the technical faq links to is an article on how to integrate Jaxer with Apache. By default you can install and run Jaxer on it's own Apache web server. But obviously if you have a web server already, you want to integrate with that instead. This is much like how ColdFusion works. You can install it and use a built-in web server, but typically you integrate it with Apache or IIS. (By the way, the Jaxer folks mention that IIS support is coming soon.) In case you are curious, here is the direct link to the documentation for integrating with Apache: http://www.aptana.com/node/42.

Installation is extremely easy, especially on the Mac. I had it up and running within about a minute, and began to play with the samples included with the server. (If you have Aptana included with your Eclipse IDE, you actually have everything you need already. You can run the embedded Jaxer server and play with the demos right now.)

Later in the week I'll blog about the exciting part - the code. I'm also hoping on having a good ColdFusion/Jaxer mashup.