What has Ajax done for us anyway?
James Edwards (brothercake)
“Web 2.0” is all bullshit...
- Hype to rejuvenate ad sales
- Trendy futurism to look cool
- Scripting hacks that are old-hat anyway
Many developers have siezed on the “new technology” of Ajax in order
to wallow in self-indulgence, and re-hash all the same
DHTML crap
that was so painfully prevelant during the first boom era.
“Web 2.0” is not all bullshit!
- Tagging / folksonomy
- Social networking
- User-generated content
The best ideas in Web 2.0 are conceptual, not technological,
and we don't need Ajax or any other specific techniques to make
it work.
What's good about Ajax?
- Real-time saving of information to preserve user data
- Allows for new kinds of web application that couldn't be done before
- Enables desktop applications to communicate with the web
What's wrong with Ajax?
- Lack of accessibility to assistive technologies
- Riding roughshod through user expectations
- Encourages misuse of the web as an application platform
Good / necessary uses of Ajax
- Google maps
- Twitter (maybe)
- Meebo
Use Ajax for things that really need and benefit from it —
where it's the only way to make something work.
Bad / pointless uses of Ajax
- Flickr
- Twitter (maybe)
- Everything else
Don't use Ajax for things that don't need it — where conventional
form functionality is fine.
Don't believe the hype!
New innovations often inspire us to do things that we
don't really need the new technology for, it's simply that the change
in approach and easy-capability inspires new ideas.
I'm not saying don't use Ajax...
(though I may do in future)
I am saying, consider every instance of its use very carefully,
beginning with the premise of not using it at all.
So what has Ajax done for us?
- Added another proprietary tool to the scripter's arsenal
- Made Microsoft think they were right all along
- Kick-started a new dot-com bubble
- Given Jesse James Garrett a gravy train for life
- Kept Apress in business
- Increased traffic to Dutch football websites
- Given Jeremy Keith something else to bitch about
No really, what has Ajax done for us?
- Created a load of new possibilities
- And a load of new problems
- Opened the web to a new kind of user
- And closed it off to some existing users
Probably the biggest thing Ajax has done for us is to
make JavaScript cool again. But is that really such a good thing?
Let's look at the kind of people who write JavaScript...
