Proof of Concept For Ajax Without JavaScript

JonathansCorner.com writes "Even if Ajax was backronymed to 'Asynchronous JavaScript and XML,' it works with JSON substituted for XML. Here's a proof of concept that JavaScript/VBScript are not strictly necessary either. The technique, besides being used standalone, may be useful to provide a better 'graceful degradation' for Ajax applications used by clients with scripting turned off."

Comments

Re:How is this new?

[rliden]

It's not new. I got to the article before it was slashdotted. The author (who is also the author of the story) created a python script that spits out different inline CSS depending on the button you select to style some text, loading it into an iframe, in other words the sort of messy 'dynamic' pages that many sites used before being replaced by AJAX.

It's often messy, but doesn't have to be. For that matter AJAX can get ugly and messy at times.

I think the good point to take away from this, that many sites seem to have tossed away, is to provide a way to interact with the site if a user has Javascript disabled. One thing /. pedants often harp and bark about is how they have Javascript disabled and their shock that everyone doesn't. Maybe site owners and developers aren't interested in providing their pages to those who won't allow them to run JS, but that doesn't mean this isn't a useful lesson to those who might like that.