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
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.
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
Hmm...did I miss something? While Atlas does add quite a bit of features, if you're sticking to ajax functionalities, 1, 2, and 3 are handled quite gracefully... For example, my sites that use Atlas's ajax functionalities degrade perfectly to normal post behaviors if javascript is disabled.
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!