Ajax pains
Ajax - originally shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML has now come to mean flashy DHTML effects and sometimes refresh-less page updates. This is not a new technology, but the new name and focus on RIA’s (Rich Internet Applications) has many companies saying ‘me too’ to cramming Ajax features into their page.
A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of seeing the guys from Ajaxian.com speak. When consulting with companies that are having AJAX problems, they said they usually wind up ripping out 80% of their stuff - making their web sites more usable. How could it be that less of a good thing could actually be better?
Unfortunately, even CEO’s who are supposed to be smart are frequently dazzled by glitzy effects. More features != (doesn’t equal to you non-techies) better.
Many web sites are being built with features that are inaccessible to those who use assistive technology, and don’t degrade gracefully when external javascript fails to load or is turned off.
Risk is sometimes introduced when companies use pre-built toolkits like Dojo or Prototype. It’s very easy to pull this stuff in and use it, but if your developers don’t understand how it works - it’s a nightmare to debug.
Toolkits can also increase your server load and page load times. I built a very simple little page using Dojo that did an Ajax request and populated a container with the returned HTML. On page load - dojo loaded 15 external files.
Browsers generally can only open 2 sockets to a server at a time, so even over broadband there can be performance implications. it’s also important to bear in mind the cost of adding 15 additional round-trips to your server. This can be mitigated with proper packaging, but most people use this stuff “out of the box”.
It’s important to keep in mind that Ajax technology may eventually deprecate the use of page-hits for tracking. If you refresh data on the page without reloading, that’s not a new hit. If page-hit statistics are important to you, think about some different metrics.
There are many nice implementations of of Ajax technology that enhance user experience. I personally use and love Flickr. Flickr enhances user experience with Ajax stuff, but base functionality works without it. I can still view and upload photos without the Ajax.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:54 am
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