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Ajax Sucks Most of the Time

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the foaming-cleansers dept.

Vo0k writes "It seems that everyone is excited with what AJAX promises, and only few look at what it breaks as well. The article at Usability Views offers a critical view at the new Microsoft technology, pointing out some problems it creates, like breaking bookmarking, making the 'back' button useless, problems with printing, accessiblity and more. The single-sided view from the article provides a good counter-balance for all the craze."

16 of 510 comments (clear)

  1. as in all new directions... by yagu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Up front Disclaimer: I realize the article is "just saying no to Ajax" with constraints. My post here is to the objection I think the article states Ajax problems too harshly.

    Reading the article it seems to me:

    • most of the listed grievances are not unique to AJAX, have been addressed in the past, and are probably soluble for AJAX too. (e.g., how many remember the broken first browser paradigms where there simply was no easy way to get the information from a web page to some printer? It's not perfect today, but it's doable. This problem is ultimately soluble for AJAX too)
    • AJAX is the (to many) latest and greatest. Many will hold on and gain purchase. Some will bail. I think AJAX or some derivative thereof is here to stay. Like technology before AJAX, there will always be naysayers, and there will always be glitches. For this to justify a "Just Say No to AJAX" philosophy is naive and maybe even misguided.

    From the article:

    Ajax is currently so hard to learn that many page authors write buggy code.

    Huh? So? Is this unique to only Ajax?

    Also from the article:

    Many websites that offer users a choice between regular and ajax versions have found that most users prefer ajax-free designs.

    When an article wants to rant or complain about a technology, an un-cited and broad statement like this is a huge red flag. It doesn't state what the percentages are, it doesn't state the reasons for preferences. In the middle of an article espousing "no Ajax", this is a non-sequitor. Please expand.

    I'm having great fun experimenting with AJAX and am getting interesting new approaches for old solutions improving customer and user experiences. I'm not about to walk away from this until a more thorough trial. So far I'm liking what I'm seeing. Yeah, there are glitches to solve, isn't that kind of what we're here for?

    1. Re:as in all new directions... by Ian+Wolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ajax is currently so hard to learn that many page authors write buggy code.

      I swear, I've heard the same argument about PHP, Perl, C, and even the concept of object oriented programming. In every case the person uttering those words was an idiot or simply too entrenched in their chosen language to accept a new way of doing something. It all reminds me of a line from Scott Adams' Dilbert Principle. As best as I can recall it went something like this.

      "Every technology has its detractors. I'm sure that somebody once stated that the pointy stick would never replace the fingernail as the fighting man's weapon of choice."

      As for my disclaimer, the only thing I know about Ajax is that its not effective as Mr. Clean.

      --
      "The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
    2. Re:as in all new directions... by mpcooke3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That said some of the points are valid, but the article was basically showing how those same things were valid at one point for using frames as well.

      For "valid at one point" consider using "always valid".

    3. Re:as in all new directions... by diverman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am glad that you made this statement. The whole time I'm reading the article, I kept thinking that it was basing the vast majority of its argument on false assumptions that AJAX is predominantly being used on content pages. The best use of AJAX, that I see, is with improving user interactivity with a web application. Web applications are becoming more and more of a need, and I think this is where AJAX is gaining the most ground.

      The author talks about how "the page" is the basic idea that was behind the Web. Well, I hate to break it to him, but after 12+ years, things have evolved. The notion of the page has long since been an area of limitation with web applications and usability. This is why we've seen the uprising of many technologies in an effort to have more dynamic content interfaces. Users don't like having to wait for a full page load to make a small request within an application. There is complaint about the time it takes. Granted, this is largely a perception thing, but it is the reality of users.

      The type of information being presented on the web has gone beyond thesis papers and simple static articles. The information that users are becoming used to is more complex, as the average user's understanding of relational information grows.

      Now, the author does make some good points... but mostly these are when using AJAX in "pages". In this respect, I agree that overzealous, and possibly inexperienced web developers have gone overboard. But a good web developer considers the effects their choices have on a user, and they make the choice to go with one advantage over the loss of another. I am conscious that search engines can't necessarily index my content... so what! If I don't want it to be indexable, so be it... they can index the more "content" oriented parts of my sites, and users can then find the "features" and applications that use better technologies. The complaint about printing... please! A best practice is to take length articles and break them up into multiple pages. Ummm.. this has the same problems with printing. He kind of neglects to point that out.

      As was stated previously, many of the arguments are presumptuous that the web is all about "pages". I also question the interpretation of his statistics. 1. Old browsers are likely unpatched browsers. With the vulnerabilities and security issues today, compatibility with AJAX is the least of their problems. Upgrade! 2. Mobile browsers have problems with MOST page content. Websites are designed for a minimum of 800x600 these days, if not 1024 wide. Websites still need to provide special pages to serve up content to mobile devices anyway.

      So, I know this is a spoof article by the author about a previous article about Frames back in the 90's... but I think he sticks too much to the premise that existed back then, that the web was all about simple content and "pages", without recognizing that the information complexity has evolved, and that "applications" are becoming more and more necessary for usability of the information. Yes, improvements are needed. Yes, back button support should be support (but not required). Also as was said in an earlier post, many of the problems are not an issue with just AJAX, and many are an issue with the lack of understanding of the effects of the choices made when using ANY new technology.

      -Alex

    4. Re:as in all new directions... by Iriel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the major point of the article is that AJAX is currently being used (like a lot of upstart web technologies) in many places were it just confuses things more than needed. Give it time, and people will stop using it just for the sake of jumping on the new craze bandwagon and we'll find out where it shines and where it should never go.

      Personally, I think it's great for UI tricks and acynchronous form actions (checking for currently used user names, submitting to a shoutbox, and so on). If people think AJAX itself is bad, they should see the comments on Digg to AJAX articles. There are more comments like "If I see one more damn article on this..." than there are dupe notification comments here on Slashdot!

      I think this new use of JavaScript has great potential, but the real message of the article can be gleaned in the first few paragraphs: Don't go overkill.

      --
      Perfecting Discordia
      www.stevenvansickle.com
  2. Misleading by FortKnox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article is about using AJAX on a webpage, but the biggest use of AJAX is on a web application.

    Sure, putting ajax on the companies webpage may not be the best idea, but how often are you using bookmarks on gmail (a web application)? And if you want to print from gmail, it shouldn't be a print of the screen, but a specially built printable html page.

    I think the article writer was focusing mostly on webpages where AJAX is clearly geared towards the web application developer.

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
    1. Re:Misleading by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The article is about using AJAX on a webpage, but the biggest use of AJAX is on a web application.

      Sure, putting ajax on the companies webpage may not be the best idea, but how often are you using bookmarks on gmail (a web application)? And if you want to print from gmail, it shouldn't be a print of the screen, but a specially built printable html page.

      I think that pointing these things out NOW is a great idea being that AJAX is now one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry. With marketing and management raving about AJAX and demanding AJAX applications be put everywhere including locations they shouldn't be, I think it's about time someone put an article out there that describes the negative effect that AJAX applications could have on the web.

      Hopefully more media outlets will start picking this up and not just touting the successes of AJAX. Remember, buzzwords = $$$ in the eyes of those that are clueless.

  3. Implementation by kevin_conaway · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Its not the technology, its the implementation that causes those errors. You can misuse ANY technology to f things up. Why should this be any different?

  4. ajax by rayzap · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ROTFLMAO AJAX is no different than any other programming set of tools. If used correctly it rocks, otherwise it sucks. We use it a lot in our web application and it has provided us the ability to deliver greatly enhanced interactivity and reporting. It's kinda like the blind date that gets overly hyped. The reality will never match the hype even if she was pretty.

  5. Not always that bad. by MartinG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The web is used (rightly or wrongly) to deliver two distinct things.

    1) Content.

    2) Applications.

    For (1) ajax _does_ suck most of the time for all the reasons stated, but for (2) is makes sense because it makes the app behave more like a desktop app. "back" and "bookmarks" stop making sense anyway. You wouldn't expect to have those features in your desktop apps, so why in an app delivered over the web.

    The great shame is that these two opposing requirements have not forked into the data-web and the application-web. Things went wrong IMO the day someone thought of putting forms in html.

    --
    -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
  6. Flash by nmg196 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nearly all of the problems cited in the article are present to a FAR WORSE extent with fewer workarounds if you write your website so it makes heavy use of Macromedia Flash. That includes problems with bookmarking, back button not working, no printing etc. Yet Flash is used on millions of major websites. As other posters mention, the problem is not with the technology but misuse of the technology.

    Some flash developers get what I call "flash happy" and write the entire website in flash. This is lunacy. For a start, (and this is possibly a problem with AJAX heavy sites too) your site cannot be indexed by any search engines if it's navigation is entirely flash based. No search engine in the world is going to evaluate your flash files or run your AJAX scripts in order to attempt to crawl the site. If AJAX is used sparingly where necessary, then I'm pretty sure it won't cause any major problems. It's not like Flash seems to have suffered...

    1. Re:Flash by brassmoknets · · Score: 4, Insightful
      No search engine in the world is going to evaluate your flash files
      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= filetype%3Aswf+contrary+evidence
      Except perhaps...er... what was the name of that search engine...you know...er...
  7. Re:It's a spoof by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For what it's worth, the original was completely correct, and frames (mostly) died a quick death. Almost nobody uses them in new development anymore.

  8. Re:It's a spoof by DingerX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    aye, and frames do suck most of the time, for the reasons specified. I am continually annoyed by those things. So I assume we're supposed to sit back and chuckle that "them naysayers are just like the luddites who said frames were bad". Frames still stuck, most of the time, even with a decade of workarounds to fix the broken functionality.

  9. When is a spoof not a spoof? by DragonHawk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "If you read the bottom of the article, you'll notice that it's a spoof and a simple rewrite about why frame suck most of the time."

    It's interesting to note that while the article is apparently a spoof, many of the objections still apply. (Sure, this is way over-generallzing, but work with me here for a minute.) Also, note how frames went through a period where everybody used them, then use gradually taper off. I think people realized that much of the time, frames just got in the way and the "old ways" worked just as well, if not better.

    It does seem like the computer world loves to make the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. We keep doing it. (ObRef to The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks.) What's that about not learning history?

    --

    dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
    I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
  10. All of this can be solved by alphorn · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The problems mentioned can all be avoided.

    • The back button can be made to work. We went to great lengths to make sure the back button takes you to the previous view in http://map.search.ch/ . Try clicking it for a zoom, then hit the back button.
    • The fact that URLs don't auto-update doesn't mean that permalinks are impossible. We create a permalink every time you do a search or enter the "email this page" screen. See http://map.search.ch/zurich
    • Even auto-updating URLs when navigating inside an AJAX app are possible, we have plans to implement that in the future.
    • And of course, our map works just fine without javascript. http://map.search.ch/?s=1

    And yes, we've had all of this from day one - months before google maps. Admitted, many AJAX apps still dont bother to do any of this - I'd say let's adress that instead of abandoning AJAX.