Some people see AJAX as cool and new (but that’s not entirely true…)
I would like this page to be the home of a discussion about pragmatic Web 2.0 interface design. What works? What doesn’t? What wastes time? For example, I have sworn off AJAX paging, but I am still in awe of the practical uses of the sortable list. Please, jump in and share what you’re learned! – JeremyVoorhis
I am also skeptical of Ajax for usability/accessibility reasons. It seems to be attracting ‘the wrong sort’ of web developer, more interested in shiny technology than the user experience. But also, like you, I can see real potential. ReOrderingLists is something that doesn’t really work well in standard web apps.
I’d also like to see discussion of NoJavascriptFallback techniques, particularly ones that happen automatically because they are built into Rails. – dave-s
I am currently using ReOrderingLists an ordered list for reordering tracklists in the administration section of cokemachineglow.com. I think it is a godsend, especially if I can add InPlaceEditing ;)
I start to become very skeptical of the technology when the client-side code’s requirements become intrusive to my server-side code. For example, in the initial AJAX video, new actions are created to accomodate the interface. I know you could factor it into one action that reacts to request.xhr? but that begins to undermine the simplicity of the code. – JeremyVoorhis
Note: Microsoft developers have been doing AJAX since about 1998, so it may be worth poking around MSDN to find articles on remote scripting and DHTML (i.e., pre-buzz AJAX).
Maybe some of my blog entries are relevant: Okke on rails . I’ve written about non obtrusive javascript and usability considerations about web 2.0 (Boy, I HATE that buzzword).
Alex Bunardzic
Web 2.0 (I personally prefer the “social software” moniker) interface lags severely when compared to the advancements in the social software application development.
I agree with Jeremy that serious work in this arena is long overdue. I have a hunch that the new platform (i.e. cognitive web) offers tremendous potential, however, without distilling some user interface principles, no substantial progress will be possible.
Instead of approaching this problem by looking into what’s technically plausible, maybe it would be better to define the minimum requirements conceptually, and then worry about the implementation later on.
Drop me a line if interested in furthering this research. (Alex Bunardzic)
I like AJAX when you need it. Made some webgame (in PHP) and put some AJAX in it to make it faster and better usable. I don’t make any fallbacks for people who switch off Javascript. If you turn JS off your stupid and you do not deserve good websites :-) If you want it more secure than IE; use Firefox (or Safari…).
Bram (will sign up soon, sorry for my bad English)