All about AJAX.

[kev woodman]

It's the trendy technology of the moment but there are downsides to Ajax, particularly for people using assistive technologies. So what does everyone think? Is Ajax here to stay or is it just a stop-gap until something better comes along? Should we continue making Web apps that act like desktop software or is a new paradigm for Web user interfaces required?

[harry]

Hello Kev,

I think, today webmasters are more attracted towards implementing AJAX features for their site. It provides an advance way for serving web services, for eg : service from Google “ Google map ” , image sharing applications as Flickr and many more which is totally based on AJAX and are most popular and visited.

So AJAX would be the future….

[kev woodman]

But if you're going to use Ajax you have to be aware of the implications - one of which is that people using a screen reader isn't going to be able to access anything served via it. That might be ok for the likes of Google who will plan for this and offer alternatives but many people won't. It wasn't so long ago that Javascript was 'evil' - the reasons why it was considered so haven't gone away just because Ajax is 'sexy'.

[paul]

Originally Posted by kev woodman

Ajax is 'sexy'.

Ajax is sexy because geeks love it though its not revolutionary, IMO, at the moment both Ajax and Ruby on Rails are among the two most popular things in the world.

[kev woodman]

You'd think so woudn't you - given the amount of attention they get. To be honest I don't think RoR is nearly as widespread or popular as people would have you believe.

Ajax is though - so is it a move in the right direction or should we be looking for a new paradigm for Web application interfaces (ooh sounds like a Phd thesis ).

[paul]

For ROR you may wish to look on this, the rating based on Programming Community worldwide.

[kev woodman]

hmm Tiobe is a fundamentally flawed rating system because it's based on the perceived popularity of a language based on search engine results. For example Java always tops the list but there is no way that Java is being used more widely than C or C++. In fact you could argue that it actually shows Java to be less popular (for reasons I can't be bothered to go into ).

For all the fuss about RoR I can't name a single major development project that uses it (other than the 37signals stuff).

[Falesh]

I think Ajax is here to stay, but there are a lot of issues with it. Like you say accessibility can be an issue, not just screen readers but things like other devices that don't use Javascript. Also there is still quite a lot of people that simply have Javascript turned off (stats). Having said that there are a lot of good uses too but it should be approached from the right angle.

I don't know RoR but I think some of the comparisons to PHP are unfair. A lot of people compare to PHP 4, which is particularly pretty due to lack of OOP features. But PHP 5 code can be beautifull and secure, it's got nice things like abstract classes, interfaces, etc.

[kev woodman]

It's pointless comparing languages - always ends up in a row. You should use whatever seems best for the job at hand and get familiar with as many as possible.

[kruelintent]

The best thing about AJAX is partial page postback. Makes pages so much faster when you are only reloading the bit you need.