New acronym.. new lot of hype.
This article says:
“Ajax lets programmers reduce the cost and time to build programs, says Bret Taylor, a Google project manager.”
Obviously Bret Taylor from Google has never tried debugging an AJAX app that suddenly stops working and has eaten the error message that explains why..
I’m trying not to make the judgement that using the word AJAX is admitting you’re a webdev muggle, but I’m just waiting for the first lot of AJAX sites that work like those flash-only sites from about 1999. Anyone who’s had to spend two days scraping the content out of one will know what I mean.
I do actually think the technology is seriously cool.. I just wish that the people talking about it would talk about why it’s cool and how using it will actually make your sites better rather than making stuff up that isn’t true.
Comments
Using the term Ajax won’t make you a webdev muggle, but using ‘Web 2.0′ just might…I fear for what the marketing team in the company I work for will do when it starts using these terms…
If you have to develop all the components of your application (and can’t use any developed by 3rd parties), there probably isn’t an advantage in terms of total development time with AJAX, and the difficulties with debugging can make it take longer.
The advantages are better responsiveness for the end user. If web pages don’t need to be reloaded in their entirity as often, it is possible to make a web application feel much more like a windows application. This will mean that some windows applications can be replaced by AJAX web applications, saving costs in deployment, but not costs in building the application in the first place.
That’s my point, Richard. It does have heaps of advantages, particularly for the end users. The people talking about AJAX should be talking about these things rather than making statements that aren’t true and that could lead people to try and use the technique where it’s not the best option.
It’s good stuff! They should sell it on its merits.
I agree Helen. The main problem I’m seeing (in my workplace) is people say ‘we must add ajax to our application’. Rather than ‘how can we improve the user experience’. The latter may use ajax or it may not.
Yeah, that just makes me frustrated, Chris! I think it kind of misses the point of what we’re supposed to be doing.