An Ajax Reality Worth Worrying About 79
An anonymous reader writes "This article discusses the hype that currently surrounds Ajax and it's shortcomings. Reliable Ajax frameworks are still under construction, and you should worry about navigation history, bookmarkability, feedback, persistence, concurrency, and security. This article will help you avoid the major problems inherent in Ajax development."
Sessions (Score:3, Insightful)
I know... I know, I should be using whatever function is built into their website. But, I'm sorry, clicking Back or hitting backspace is just such a habit, its really a deal breaker for me...
I have no idea how much time I've wasted refilling in forms on my bank's website because it cant figure out what I'm doing when I press back!
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Re:Sessions (Score:1)
Re:Sessions (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Re:Sessions (Score:1)
Blame HTTP Post (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Blame HTTP Post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blame HTTP Post (Score:2)
The interesting thing is that I, a total amateur, figured this out on my own when making my image gallery application, so how can any paid-for professional justify not realizing it ?
Simply have each POST operation redirect to the same page a
Re:Sessions (Score:2)
Don't excuse poor usability. Your browser already has a back button which as you say is often used reflexively. That's a good thing. Webpages that break your learned navigation skills are bad as they cause needless frustration and require uncecessary relearning. Sure, it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but add up a million tiny frustrations and before you know it you're tearing your hair out and gett
Re:Sessions (Score:1)
Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
What REALLY ticks me off about working with some designers is when they want to place text on a page in the form of images so they can force the user to look at the design exactly the way they want it shown.
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
The main culprit as far as I have seen is people working as web designers who started as print designers. They are used to having their design rendered exactly as they envisioned it, but that is not how html works so they try to force it to the detriment of all concrned.
quit blowing smoke (Score:2)
If done badly, yes.
Anyone with any kind of disability has problems with it, ...
Are you aware of text image replacement [google.com]? Those of us who use it understand well how to create sites accessible to people with disabilities [webstandards.org]. Your remark suggests otherwise.
Thanks for the news flash. We'll take it into consideration.
No, it is not [alistapart.com].
Re:quit blowing smoke (Score:2)
Give it up. Text as images is a WTF. [thedailywtf.com]
Re:quit blowing smoke (Score:1)
>If done badly, yes.
it is *always* done badly. it is a bloody stupid practice, and there is no excuse for it.
text-as-images makes the incredibly stupid assumption that the viewer's display is the exact same size and resolution as the author's display - if the viewer has a large, high-resolution display (e.g. 21" at 1920x1440) then any textual images created at, say, 1024x768 (or, worse, 800x600) will be unreadable.
this is annoyin
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
Font size is the easiest thing there is for the end user to adjust to their preference if the page is designed correctly. My eyes are not at all good, but a couple of taps on ctrl+ made this page quite easy to view.
Tapping ctrl+ gets old real quick, especially if you do a lot of page-hopping on a bad site. Fortunately Firefox/Mozilla users can enforce a minimum font size through either the font preferences panel (fails on a lot of sites) or a personalized userContent.css. If you wanna go the extra mil
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
I think the point being made by the post to which you are replying was that because the font size is specified in pixels, the text can't be resized by anybody using Internet Explorer for Windows, up to and including version 6. As you say, the page needs to be designed correctly, and specifying font sizes in pixels is wrong for as long as the dominant browser has this misfeature.
Thinking it through from first principles (Score:1)
The issue is the credibility of a page on the topic of website design. It is easy enough to say that a web page is a bit like an ink on paper page and to translate print layout ideas to the web by analogy. So there is no need to read other persons vague analogies.
The reason for reading somebody else's views on website design is the hope that they might have attempted to do the hard stuff, responding to the web as something new and thinking the principles of layout through from first principles. An obvious
Re:Thinking it through from first principles (Score:2)
The author's title at IBM is "Performance Engineering Team Lead". His bio mentions that he has worked on user interfaces in the past, but there is nothing to suggest that he is responsible for the www-128.ibm.com design.
Re:Maybe it's just me... (Score:2)
Abbreviations are for saving paper (Score:1)
Take a look at the medical journal The Lancet. Its paper version is mailed all over the world and the publishers economise on mail costs by using small type on thin, high quality paper. Obviously one uses abbreviations to avoid wasting paper and incurring avoidable transport costs.
What are abbreviations doing on web pages? Literate adults tend to recognise whole words or even whole phrases. Decoding the abbreviations slows us down. Sometimes we don't recognise the abbreviation, which brings us to a halt.
Re:Just finished an AJAX shopping cart (Score:1)
Re:Just finished an AJAX shopping cart (Score:1)
Ajax is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
I find it deeply ironic that after Java failed to transform the face of computing into a network-centric model, so many dollars are being funneled into JavaScript development for applications intended to supplement or replace native ones.
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Is the web to the point where it needs to improve the back and forward model without completely tossing it? What about refresh and stop? It all seems it
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
As for improving the back/forward, refresh, and stop issues, I don't think they are broken enough to justify changing them. I don't think they could be made si
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
Nebekh it was never open-sourced.
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Should use Konqueror (Score:2)
Funny, but I hit the back button in Konqueror all the time and it does exactly what I want, both when browsing the web or my local files.
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
We have that. It's called Java applets. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:We have that. It's called Java applets. (Score:1)
Trouble with FreeBSD too. I installed Firefox painlessly using the package system, but it came without Java because of some licensing issue that I didn't understand. My response has been to ignore websites that depend on Java. It is not as though I have read all the non-Java websites on the web and now have spare time to piss about with Sun's license SNAFU :-)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:1)
I suppose no one expects applications to have undo/redo either...
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
SixD
Re:Ajax is not the problem (Score:2)
Well you've just described the rewritten (with applications in mind) and improved Flash 9, coming in 3 months...
Even better, Adobe will release a free compiler and component framework for Flash 9, so the barrier of entry is $0.
...Unless you use a tool that already fixes these (Score:1)
Re:...Unless you use a tool that already fixes the (Score:1)
Re:...Unless you use a tool that already fixes the (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, you can (with ASP.NET), but it's an awfully long-winded method for generating bloated HTML pages which don't work without JavaScript. Try Front Page, or save a Word doc as HTML; either is a much quicker way of generating shoddy code ;-)
Re:...Unless you use a tool that already fixes the (Score:1)
Tell that to Rincewind.
Ajax on Web Analytics (Score:1)
Re:Ajax on Web Analytics (Score:1)
Re:Ajax on Web Analytics (Score:2)
And as per normal, they forgot about security (Score:2)
Ajax security presentation for OWASP
http://www.greebo.net/?page_id=329 [greebo.net]
Just because Ajax is being used should you abandon years of security knowledge.
Hop-on Lemmings! (Score:1)
I feel the same about AJAX! :) It may have improved the user interface and the browsing experience a lot, but AJAX pages eat up so much memory! Maybe its an issue with the browser implementation, but it does drag the system's responsiveness down. One should really think about it before one decides to go for AJ
goodbye accessibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not also forget accessibility and backward compatibility. Neither of which you have if your site heavily relies on Ajax. Ajax is fun and all, but if you build a site or application that relies on Ajax (as so many do these days), you're completely leaving behind those with disability that prevents them from using a graphical browser and those who can't or won't use the latest versions of IE, Firefox, or Safari. (Let's at least be honest for a moment and admit that those are the only three browsers that Ajax authors ever attempt to target and even throwing Safari in there is a bit of a stretch.)
For awhile there, we were making good progress toward better adherence to web standards. Now it seems like "oooh shiny!" is rapidly taking over web design again.
Of course it's possible to build a site or application that is backwards compatible and accessible and thus uses Ajax only as a enhancement. But if the site works just fine without Ajax, why would you waste time implementing a few extra Ajax features just for show?
AJAX not always "just for show" (Score:1)
Most of your comments are right on the money - if you are building a site that relies on AJAX, you are building incompatibility into the site (for now).
However, I must take exception with your last statement. Just because a site "works fine
Re:goodbye accessibility (Score:1)
Stop the presses! (Score:1, Funny)
Reliable Ajax frameworks are still under construction, and you should worry about navigation history, bookmarkability, feedback, persistence, concurrency, and security.
Stop the presses! Someone has discovered that AJAX applications should follow the same usability guidelines that have been researched, reported, and [often to a lesser extent] used in all other applications.
Art of the State (Score:2)