Slashdot Mirror
Cutting Through the Ajax Hype
An anonymous reader writes "If you're thinking about building an Ajax application of your own, this article would be a good place to start. It's an introductory-level guide about when and how to implement Ajax. It provides a balanced discussion about where exactly using Ajax makes sense, and where it does not."
...how much time passed in between stories about said AJAX hype hitting Slashdot and stories about "Cutting through the AJAX hype" hitting Slashdot?
Basilisk Digital
Oh man, I had written a chat room in back 1996 using what I called server push Java Script and nobody paid much attention, although it was on many adult video chat sites. Example at http://www.videotechnology.com/chatroom.html
We did many of the same things using that technique that people are doing now in Ajax, interactive games, and database etc using it.
Suddenly some marketing guy calls it "Ajax", which is almost doing the same thing is all the rage.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Now that Google has released GWT as open source. All the fanbois will rush to ajaxify their sites regardless of requirements, creating even greater mostrocities while all the time laughing at sites which are not sufficiently 'ajaxy'.
Then XAML and XUL will see greater adoption for rich client development and we return to the days when ajax was just a household cleaner.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"Ajax" is just another hype word. It's like how management types run around their companies saying BS like: "employ XML" "facilitate collaboration" "empowering innovators" "strategic thinkers" blah blah blah. it's so much crap. "HTML" was something new. It DID stuff. You wrote and you SAW it on the screen. "JavaScript" was something new. It did all kinds of stuff to make webpages dynamic and functional in new ways. "DHTML" is a craptastic synonym of "HTML with JavaScript" "XML" is utter crap. Try double-clicking a .xml file on your computer and see if anything happens. Then try double-clicking a .html file and tell me which got you to information faster. Don't tell me XML is some revolutionary standard BS, it's like saying "we redefined the .ini" file. For god's sake shut up about XML being anything new. It doesn't do anything.
"Ajax" is another crap term. It's management majors realizing after so long that "WHAA! We have XMLHttpRequest in our JavaScript specification? WOW! WOW WOW WOW we have to come up with a new name for it! It's so great we can't just call it JavaScript!"
argh.
Ajax is getting hyped to the point where it isn't funny anymore. I bet it will go the way of XML - simple and interesting at first, then the "Enterprise" folk run away with it and within 2 years we have W3C AJAX standards that span 1000 pages. Wanna bet?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
The thing that made AJAX catch on is that a few of the very first notable web apps were very heavy on graphic design and well-thought-out layout.
So now everybody thinks that if their website can just be written with AJAX technology it will automatically come with a smooth, user-friendly and beautiful interface.
AJAX is just one technique. You still need to be highly skilled at all the other web-coding disciplines else to end up with a great web app.
It's the system. They really need to work out a better way of displaying threads where the first post is hidden.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
AJAX makes sense wherever the app should be interactive or realtime (relating to server-side data). Keep in mind, that a non-AJAX, plain HTML version should be kept as an option for all users.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Whenever a great technology comes about (or in this case a fusion of existing technologies) you always have the people who gotta play devils advocate, you know, the guy nobody likes to hang out with because he's negative about everything. Here's one of my favorite parts FTA:
"Last month, I was on my way to visit a friend. It was dark and I got lost, and I tried to find his address in my computer. His coordinates were included in the e-mail he sent me that day. Unluckily for me, that e-mail message was sent to my GMail account, and, being disconnected from the Internet, I was left with quite a negative experience. In one split second, all the benefits of zero-install, a cool UI, labels, free targeted advertisements, an extremely useful search engine, and platform independence were annihilated when I could not find my friend's address because I was out of range of a Wi-Fi hotspot."
GOD DAMN YOU AJAX, CLEARLY YOU HAVE NO COMPASSION FOR THE ILL-PREPARED!! This would have never happened had you been using a non-ajax internet mail application, or even GMail's HTML only version. Ajax isn't only overhyped, it's out to get you. Here's another great snippet:
"JavaScript applications run in a browser, and can be easily reengineered. By loading JavaScript files on demand, you can fool Internet Explorer users; but other browsers, such as Firefox, will eagerly show a user the current DOM in its entirety through the context menu's View Selection Source option. If someone really wants to see your application's entire JavaScript source and analyze it, a simple script built with the Mozilla® Greasemonkey extension, a debugger like Venkman, or a custom Internet Explorer toolbar would do the trick."
Yes folks, he is correct here. Ever since ajax has come about, all the sudden your javascript and DOM is viewable to anyone with enough inclination to do the digging. Before "Asynchronous" and "and XML" came along, this certainly wasn't the case, I liked the good ol' days when it was just "J."
I could go on and about the evils of ajax, but what I would really like to point out, as this guy already has, is that the heart of this evil scourge is the internet itself. Never mind the fact that any 16 year-old girl going to meet a sexual predator on mySpace has the capacity to print a map out before hand because clearly, the intarweb will no longer be available once she has departed on her journey. But thats beside the point. Uninstall your browsers immediatly.
Similes are like metaphors
It's not Ajax per se that disallows it. The problem is that a lot of developers use <a href="#" onclick="..."> and don't provide an actual URI to open.
Yes, it is, and I've said as much in the past. It's actually even worse than the average clueless developer, because it doesn't even use <a> for links - it uses <span> and click handlers to provide really, really crappy emulated links. Of course, doing so immediately throws the normal link handling your web browser provides out the window, including (but not limited to) opening them in new tabs or windows.
It's not. It's usually either developer ignorance or developer apathy - they either don't know how to do it or they don't care.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Frameworks help decouple a lot of things. For example, instead of using M$ 'Atlas' Ajax framework which is not only a bugger to use but introduces a lot of unnecessary coupling, I use Anthem.NET. It takes the existing ASP.NET form tags and extends them. This produces 3 net effects: 1) I don't have to do the crap load of mundane javascript coding (Anthem.Net takes care of that), 2) Should javascript functionality be disabled on the client, the form objects revert back to their regular POST behavior (because of inheritance), and 3) Should I wish to strip out my AJAX functionality there are a lot less dependencies in my code.
If you go the Atlas route, you're looking for a load of trouble in any of those three scenarios.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Finally something telling people when NOT to use ajax....
They already did, and it's called the quote button. If what you quote doesn't match the text it appears you're replying to, then readers will know that there's a hidden post in between.
No - you couldn't find your address because you were stupid enough not to jot it down on a piece of paper when you had the chance. Seriously, blaming GMail for not being able to access data locally is asking a bit too much of the Internet, le talone of Ajax!
Couldn't you just do a frameset with no borders and a single frame of 0 px?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Once every2-3 years it seems like "the new big thing" is hyped. Call it Java, ASP, php, Ajax... The enterprise world is then ready to show you that the curent hype is the Holy Grail and the best thing since a cold beer. Ajax is getting hyped to the point where it isn't funny anymore.
Part of it is driven by the desire to have "rich GUI" apps that work like and have the features of desktop app GUI's. The world is wanting. Wether AJAX can deliver that or not is another matter. Getting HTML to act like a desktop is like trying to lick your own a$$.
Table-ized A.I.
And I would argue ZK is (while different) much more useful to me personally.
We don't have or want a Java back end. That would pretty much rule out either ZK or the GWT. right? What to do? So far, we've been programming a bunch in YUI, which is pretty nice because it's so extensible. Most other toolkits, especially scriptaculous (or scriptalicisousness or whatever, here's a couple of dots to spray in random spots in the url: .....) are nice and fast but not as extensible as YUI.
It had me confused... spent a few minutes wondering how such an innocent post started such an AC choir. For me, it needs improving, if only because of that experience.
If you don't mind losing some of the Ajax functionality, you can switch to "basic HTML format"; it's a link at the bottom of the page. It will now behave a lot more Yahoo webmail.
And the reason is, to quote from the article:
"Yahoo continues to be the overall Web audience leader with the largest number of unique users and most time spent online. The page view change in November is related to the use of Ajax and other Web 2.0 technologies across the Yahoo network," Yahoo spokeswoman Nissa Anklesaria said Tuesday.
So forget about Ajax if metrics mean anything to your bottom line. BTW, Ajax is making Yahoo a pain in the ass. All those little "helpful" popup balloon are just killing me and there's no way to turn it off.
With Firefox and Opera, one is able to open a link in a new tab by middle clicking on it. But unfortunately, many AJAX-enabled Web apps disallow such functionality, for whatever reason.
GMail is a major culprit. Being able to open a number of messages simultaneously is essential....
I've had that problem with some AJAX pages too, thought it only rarely bothers me in gmail. Flash sites have the same problem, and I actually am annoyed by it in them way more than in the AJAX ones.
And for viewing multiple gmail messages at a time, did you try the open in a separate window button? It works even thought it isn't tabs. Either that or you can go through the unwieldy process of opening a message, copy the URI, past into a new tab, go back to first tab, repeat....
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace